5/19    I'm working for an early stage startup, and they want to grant me
        stock options.  However, they are claiming that I must either pay
        tens of thousands of dollars to purchase the options at the
        current valuation, or have it be taken as personal income when I
        (eventually) try to cash out.  It seems that both of these
        are terrible choices.  Are there any other ways to deal with
	...

12/15   I remember that when I was in school two decades ago, there was
        one career center which handles co-ops and internships for all majors,
        and another one which handles those specifically for engineering and
        CS majors.  Is that still the case these days?  My company is looking
        to hiring software interns in the next few months, and I wonder if
        there is a better organization than the Career Center
	...

12/2    Help. I've had several jobs and none of them seem to give me
        a good work-and-life balance. While this didn't matter when
        I was young, I'm beginning to realize that I'm reaching an age
        where I really need that balance. What is your workplace like,
        and how do you reach a good work-and-life balance? P.S. I
        don't need tom^H^H^Hgov workers to gloat about cushy gov jobs.
	...

11/28   A really cool fellow Soda CSUA'er is writing a book called "An
        Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups". While many startup
        books are written for founders and geared towards raising funding,
        marketing, networking... this is one is written by an engineer,
        *for engineers*. Take a look at it and if you think it'll be
        helpful for you and/or your colleagues please share the link!
	...

10/28   I live in the Los Angeles area and a lot of jobs near me hire
        people who are 1) Front End developer 2) ASP .NET Developer and/or
        3) MS SQL DBA. Are these things common in Silicon Valley? I don't
        remember seeing so much M$ requirements when I lived in the
        Bay Area several years ago.
        \_ tons for it and enterprise apps. more rarely for cool startups
	...

10/5    any UC berkeley students that had successful startups
        in the past 15 years?
        \_ all the Cal grads I know with MBAs are in VC or finance.
           maybe they are just better at risk analysis... starting a company
           is not a great way to make money!
           \_ I'm a Cal grad with an MBA working in Finance (not High Finance).
	...

9/2     Any opinions on what a developer at a small (10-person) startup
        company should get in the way of stock options?  (As a percent
        of the company, of course).  What are the general numbers?
        Any opinions?  -- First time startup employee
        \_ http://csua.com/?entry=50939
        \_ http://csua.com/?entry=52981
	...

5/23  stupid startup guy here again.  We got a new CFO, a veteran of
      many startups.  I asked him how many shares there are out there,
      and how much the company is worth, and, and I'm not making this up,
      he replied with the exact numbers I wanted.  I don't understand.
      Maybe he's a pod person.  This makes no sense.  What is he doing
      working here?
	...

5/10  stock is great and all but, have any of you ever been told how
      many outstanding shares there are out there when you were discussing
      stock options?  I've worked at 5 startups now, and haven't been
      able to get a straight answer out of anyone, ever.  bunch of weasels.
      \_ http://www.paulgraham.com/angelinvesting.html
      \_ If you haven't gone public yet then the staight answer isn't really
	...