For your first job this is easily explainable and as long as you leave on good terms with your employer you should be ok for any future reference checks too.
The concern with a short tenure at a job is when it becomes a pattern, say 3+ jobs w/o having stayed for about 2 years or more. That's when you might fall into a red-flag sort of situation when looking for future employment.
Your company does not have unlimited vacation based on how you have described the situation. It's unclear to us how much time you've been with the company. Let's say you've been there just 1 month and didn't mention upfront you'd be taking those 6.5 days off, then that feels like minor abuse of the policy on your end. Let's say you've been there a "significant" period of time of > 3-4 months, then they are shafting you.
In my experience unlimited vacation is only as unlimited as the person asking for it. Many people are too timid to actually ask for the days off. It seems like you've already done the asking, and this is more of a company culture problem and you are right to consider leaving or having a frank talk with your supervisor about what unlimited means. Perhaps you can change it to be 5 weeks a year with them and they'll feel better with a bounded number for you and you'll feel better being able to take off when you want.
Recently interviewed someone and was mentioning the work/life balance and unlimited vacation and their response was "Come on...unlimited vacation is a scam" I then explained that I had already taken off about 3 weeks this year with another 3 planned, and that it's "unlimited" if you ask for it. Maybe my situation is unique, or maybe people are too timid, I'm not sure. I'm glad I'm working at a place where taking vacation is part of the culture for long term success.
I'd also encourage anyone interviewing with a company that has unlimited vacation to talk to a non C-Level or founder employee about what vacation they've taken so far this year and their opinion of how well the unlimited policy works at their company - hopefully you can get a straight answer as this is just as important as monetary compensation.
First, a paid lawyer who has dealt with taxes on options is the best way to get a legitimate answer to your specific situation.
Speaking for US taxes - it depends on a lot of things. The first of which are they NSO or ISO's? Most likely they are ISO's.
If they are ISO's, them vesting has no tax implications until you exercise them. The company should have given you an exercise price. This is the per option price you would pay to own the shares after the vesting date. Let's say they gave you 1,000 options each year for 3 years at an exercise price of $1.00. Then after that first year it would cost you $1,000 to exercise those options. You would then be liable for AMT gains from the current fair market value of the options minus the exercise price. Let's say that when you exercises the 1,000 options, they were worth $2.50. Then you would have had a "gain" of ( 2.50 - 1.00 )* 1000 = $1,500 even though you haven't sold them or received any money. This gain is used to compute your AMT. The AMT has certain allowances so depending on how much that "gain" is and your salary you may or may not owe extra taxes on the gain for the current year.
If this was confusing - do some googling on ISO AMT and then contact a lawyer.
You shouldn't be "forced" to see ads. Quality content can exist with and without ads. But, ads are the price to pay to visit one of these sites with ads. My suggestion was leading towards that if you don't like a site with ads, then don't visit it. As opposed to using an ad blocker as a filtering method.
With respect to "the web existed long before ads" - Water has also existed before water companies. If you don't like to pay them, you can't just hook in directly to their water lines and syphon it off to yourself and bypass payments. You could however go out and get your own. Just like you could create your own news stories, online games, sites etc without ads.
Your search engine idea is a novel one, and it'd be neat to see that exist.
You should find the support channels at any websites you visit that don't offer ad free viewing options via paid subscriptions or otherwise and encourage them to add support for that. Then you can pay each of these websites individually.
If you're not into that, give some funding to a startup which is working to make micropayments on websites viable to remove ad-enabled content.
If you're not into funding something like that, try creating your own company or means to do that or joining a company which is working to advance ad-free viewing.
Now, if you're not into that, then stop visiting any site which has ads on it.
Lastly, if you're not into that, then suck it up and just view the ads which enable revenue for these sites to run.
What is the argument for AMT on ISO's? The Uber employees would own an asset which is not liquid, but a tax on them as if they were. And, if investors are buying preferred shares and not common stock which the employees own, how is the fair market value of the ISO's determined?
Just curious if someone can make an argument on the positives of AMT holistically.
Affirm has taken on a lot of debt funding as opposed to equity funding. Partly because they are in the business of issuing loans and paying equity for the loans would be silly for founders/investors/employees.
The total amount of money raised is probably < $100mm in pure equity, and the valuation is probably a favorable $800mm when fudging the numbers.
With a recent WSJ article citing that 43% of student loan borrowers are currently not paying back debt, and with Affirm largely trying to issue loans to that "millenial" market, we will see how this high risk lending plays out.
While doing this for your own profile could be useful for you and some metrics you may want, someone else could be a bit more nefarious.
On a high profile/traffic blog, web app, or site - could just include some targeted, random, or interesting LinkedIn profiles, and then all of these people would be bombarded with misinformation about who's viewed their page.
Want to confuse sales team at XYZ Startup Corp., sure have all of their profile links in hidden IFrames too...
Unless it's actually "your business" and you are a founder, then leaving on Friday after this 80 hour week is ok.
If it's 6pm or 7pm on a Friday and you have worked 80 hours that week, and you need to work more, then you've scheduled something wrong or management has.
And, if you're a founder, who is imparting a culture of leaving to get rest on a Friday evening is not ok, or working 70-80 hour weeks is the norm, then good luck with that culture when people turn resentful.
Respecting yourself and your life and your employees lives while trying to be successful ... that's how it works.
Not quite sure how Facebook is in fact full of old people. If all your friends are "old people", then your facebook is full of "old people." If your friends are "young people", how do the "old people" bother you?
Facebook is what you make of it. If every person you've ever met is your "Friend" then it'll be noisy. If someone posts stuff too much, block them or even unfriend. It's hard to understand complaints when they literally allow you to manage who you're friends with.
Have run a web-app with 30K+ users. Only been 'harassed' when I've been warned that I'm running the CPU at 350% of max rate and I should be concerned. That's ok in my book.
I'm a big fan of Linode. Have had one of their mid-range servers for about 2 years now and have had no troubles. When it came time to upgrading, or any other questions I had, their support staff is 1) quick, 2) knowledgable, 3) thorough & helpful.
I've used DO in the past for quick spin-ups, and they're great for that. But for long running applications I'd stay away. Was actually considering DO for a new project, but this kind of tipped the scales the other way.
If you're looking to switch, I think Linode gives you the best bang and reliability for your buck. Have also used Rackspace for a previous startup. A bit more pricey, but also a great service if you're considering switching.
The concern with a short tenure at a job is when it becomes a pattern, say 3+ jobs w/o having stayed for about 2 years or more. That's when you might fall into a red-flag sort of situation when looking for future employment.