Hacker News Reader

Comment by vonmoltke | Hacker News Reader

People should be reporting the dollar values they were awarded, not what the shares are worth when they added their comp.

View on HN

But refreshes and new offers are matching the current stock value not the original

$60k worth of stock is $60k worth of stock. Initial and refresh awards are converted to shares from a dollar amount. If new grants were $200k six years ago and are still $200k now, what the stock price has done in the interim is irrelevant.

This is evidently false. Stock has pulled total numbers comp up significantly. Employer is not going to give an engineer refresh that brings tc lower (in $ value) than the year before unless it wants to lose that engineer.

This is false - employers do give less. My own FAANG stock for my initial compensation when I joined my company was at $105k in RSUs, and they jumped up about 35% (was even higher, but the market is a little volatile currently). My refresh grant after a little over a year was $125k in RSUs, which turned out to be less stock by a not insignificant percentage compared to my first grant!

My read of the numbers floating around the internet suggests my refresh grant was for outperforming and my TC is high for my band. Whether my new TC is less than my first year, who knows. I'm happy with my work, and while the comp could be better (I should be at the next band but promotions are slower to come by in FAANG), I don't know if I'll ever even leave my company given that my total comp for a mid-level software engineer (at my employer) is already over $300k.

Is the stock posted here a full package (vesting over several years) or yearly vest amount?

Full package vesting over 4 years - you typically get annual refresh grants, which are new 4 year grants that stack on top of your existing grant.

Google grants RSUs. So $60k is 12 RSUs for someone hired in 2014.

In 2018, RSUs are worth twice as much as 2014, so people hired for the same role in 2018 get 6 RSUs ($60k) while the people hired in 2014 are still getting [at least] 12 RSUs ($120k).

This is what I'm talking about with regards to stat inflation on this reporting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com