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"stock-based compensation remains steady. At well over $400 million annually now, that’s double what it was only a few years previously and means CEO Marissa Mayer is loading up valued employees with outsize share grants to get them to stay."

That's the cargo cult she follows from her days at Google: valuable employees like herself get lotza stock, and therefore the company magically prospers.

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Isn't that true of basically every modern company? A term like “cargo cult” is way too strident for a practice which is so widespread – we don't even know whether that's a few executives getting a big payout or a bunch of key lower-level employees being convinced not to bail.

Yep. Giving a total dollar value is meaningless because at most places, the top execs get inundated with stock--millions and millions of dollars worth--and the rank and file get nothing or close to nothing. Would love to see the distribution.

Under Marissa, engineers stopped receiving options and instead were being offered $40,000 in "stock replacement" over 4 years - worth about 3% - 5% of what a Google engineer would expect (unless they were hiring somebody away, and then they would match the previous company.)

So, cab fare for most new engineering hires.

The term cargo cult is getting way overused on Hacker News these days.

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