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Comment by laxatives | Hacker News Reader

What is the significance of May 15th?

Employee stock vesting day. If you get stocks granted as a bonus (most of us do), they vest in may and November.

I know guys who've never sold any of their stocks. This will be literally $10k or more in their pockets, if they finally decide to sell.

Jeff just made $6.1B afterhours...

It's "papers" money. It's not cash until cashed out.

If he's giving any of his "paper money" away, I'm first in line.

The vesting schedule at AMZN is 5% after 12 months, 15% in 24 months, and 20% for every 6 months thereafter. For me (SDE I), that works out to $2200 in year 1 and a projected $7000ish in year 2. MSFT, on the other hand, has their stock vests 25% after 12 months and 25% for every 12 thereafter.

> If you get stocks granted as a bonus (most of us do),

Or by bonus do you mean just the amounts they give you as regular refreshes?

AMZN doesn't give cash bonuses; the RSU refreshes are treated like a bonus that pay-off in the future

I was mostly just curious if RSU refreshes was what was meant by bonuses.

Just never heard the term bonus used to describe them, but that makes sense.

Do other places typically do additional stock grants (bonuses) that don't vest for 2 years?

Does that event generally lower share price on the market?

Non-executive employee stock comp is a tiny fraction of total stock. Yes, the sales will increase supply and push the price down by a pitifully-small amount, and an institutional investor will buy them and push the price back up.

Probably when stock vests for college hires.

All hires

That is not 100% true. My AMZN stock vests in October for example, granted I'm an odd case.

Once you start getting part of your regular comp in stock, it will vest on November 15th, and May 15th. This may or may not occur until after your initial grant has vested depending on your yearly total comp (your manager should be telling you this ;-) ).

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