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CMV: All employees should be given equity in the company they work for.
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If I'm a small business owner who believes in second chances for felons, do you think enforcing this would encourage or dissuade me from hiring them?
Would you want to provide equity in your business to an employee you aren't certain is going to stay beyond a couple weeks?
As is the case with many existing equity structures, there are vesting benchmarks before their equity becomes valid - business owners could certainly continue to utilize vesting structures.
I’m not sure exactly how this relates specifically to felons.
Well I would think it's justifiable that I may want to give a second chance to a felon and allow him a chance to live life, but I do not want any business decisions or input from him.
So, are you changing your position from "all employees" to "some employees, after they've been with the company for a certain period of time?"
I was just asking the relevance, not saying felons shouldn’t be provided equity. If you don’t want to hire a felon under this structure, then don’t.
Well the relevance would be that some people who happen to be felons and would benefit from and possibly turn their lives around given a second chance would now be SOL, so to speak.
I think that would be a bad thing.
Why? OP already explained the concept of "vesting"- the felon doesn't immediately get access to any equity at all. After a year, or any amount of time that you want to specify - then they get the equity. Not even all of it at once, just the first portion. Example:
You hire FelonA with the promise of 10 shares of your company, equivalent to a 1% stake, vested over 5 years. On their start date, the shares are technically theirs but they cannot do anything with them and if they quit they forfeit the shares. A year later, 2 of the shares have vested and they can sell them or hold on to them. After another year they get another 2 shares, until after 5 years they have the full 10 shares.
Knowing this, you understand that there is no immediate extra risk when hiring a felon. The only extra risk is that they 'lay low' for 5 years and then all of the sudden they 'go mad' after they have control over their shares... what are you afraid they're going to do with 1% of your company? They have no power to make any decisions with that. At worst they can sell the shares, which any other employee could do as well. So why are you all-of-the-sudden discriminating against felons? It doesn't make any sense.