“Ellen Pao, the interim CEO of Reddit, has seen women struggle with salary negotiations. So she’s eliminating money talk from the company’s hiring process.

In her first interview since losing the landmark Silicon Valley trial, Pao told The Wall Street Journal that she has eliminated salary negotiations from the hiring process at Reddit, where she currently serves as interim CEO.”

— Mashable http://mashable.com/2015/04/06/ellen-pao-reddit-salary/

“Men negotiate harder than women do and sometimes women get penalized when they do negotiate. So as part of our recruiting process, we don’t negotiate with candidates. We come up with an offer that we think is fair. If you want more equity, we’ll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation.”

— Ellen Pao, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal

“I appreciate ... that it actually puts a substantial burden on Reddit to pay what they think someone is worth, not what they think they can get away with. This is not an easy way out for them - far from it. ”

— Gayle Laakmann McDowell @gayle via @quora http://qr.ae/LNR0U

“As an aside, some companies now write in a repurchase right on vested shares at the current common price when an employee leaves. It’s fine if the company wants to offer to repurchase the shares, but it’s horrible for the company to be able to demand this.”

— Sam Altman, YC

What can you do about it? Ask before you join:

“Can the company take back my vested shares?”

— Mary Russell, Stock Option Counsel

For more from Sam Altman, see his post, Employee Equity. For more on questions to ask to make sure you have true startup equity, see our post, Startup Equity Standards - A Guide for Employees.

Attorney Mary Russell counsels individual employees and founders to negotiate, maximize and monetize their stock options and other startup stock. You are invited to contact Stock Option Counsel for help in negotiating and evaluating your job offers and post-acquisition employment agreements, making stock option exercise and tax decisions and identifying your rights and opportunities to sell startup stock.