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Comment by lnanek2 | Hacker News Reader

Aren't RSUs the opposite of job security? If you get fired or leave before they vest, you lose them. In the bay area they are often called golden handcuffs because developers halfway through their 4 year term often have another million in RSUs vesting, so can't go leave and work on their friend's awesome startups and the like, since the startups can't afford to match the compensation.

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Look at it this way: say you make $100k per year. This means you’ve got $1M coming over 10 years! If you leave after 2 years, do you feel like you are giving up $800k?probably not. So why not think of RSUs the same way?

That’s how I think of RSUs: they aren’t yours until they vest: they’re just like future pay, so you’re not really giving anything up if you leave “early”.

The first few years (2 or 3 in my case), is tough. You don’t get any more RSU hence you need to stick with it. After that period, I got awarded more every performance review. So, the vested schedule is bearable but I still feel it is a golden handcuff. If I quit I would lose any unvested shares (1-2 years from now).

Would this only be a problem if they vest in non-uniform quantities? At the company (Shopify) I work for they vest in even amounts over 4 years but you have to wait 1 year to get 1/4 of them then every quarter after that.

> have another million in RSUs vesting

I would gladly wear these handcuffs :D

Believe me, perspective changes once you are in them.

Depends on the actual numbers. They could be worthless or worth millions. Every funding round changes that.

RSUs are for public companies.

They are more common at public companies, but a company doesn't need to be publicly traded to give people RSUs. Conversely, a public company can pay in options rather than RSUs (or both) if they want.

Source: Work for a non publicly traded company and have RSUs not options, previously worked for a publicly-traded company that issued RSUs and options as part of comp

RSUs should be a lot more reality based, these are not options to purchase on a hypothetical future liquidity event, they're restricted stock that turns into real shares on public markets upon vesting.

Ahh I was thinking they were options. Never mind. Does one still pay taxes every year on the RSUs should they rise in paper valuation before vesting?

Yeah kinda, you pay taxes on the market value of shares when they vest (become unrestricted). But only on the shares that have become unrestricted, not your still-restricted shares.

What are you willing to sacrifice to vest those RSUs, besides just time?

Your mental health?

Your physical health?

Watching your kids grow up?

Your marriage?

Etc. As other folks have alluded to it can sound relatively trivial (and sometimes it is, but often not) until you're actually staring into the abyss. The flip side is that quarterly RSU vesting is highly effective as a retention tool. I've known brilliant people pushed to their absolute breaking point before they finally leave (Amazon, I'm looking at you).

From observation there is no connection between unhealthy workplaces and compensation. If anything, it seems the more you get paid, the better you get treated. There may be exceptions obviously.

I already sacrifice those :D

Yep, sounds like Amazon. I used to joke that the only Engineers who were there longer than four years were either getting divorced or were already divorced. You did not find very many who were married with kids AND happy working there.

The grass is always greener. It can be pretty frustrating to be at a job you’re not very satisfied at because the expected value of leaving just doesn’t make sense. Sounds silly to complain about having golden handcuffs, but it does change the decisions you make (potentially in a way that makes you less happy).

If you get fired, unless it qualifies under some due cause, the options should immediately vest.

This is not true in most contracts - you can negotiate for it if you're high enough level or early enough, but otherwise it's rarely the case.

Besides, if you get fired from a startup and it's not for cause, then it's probably because there are layoffs, so it might be a bad choice to exercise your options anyway.

Only if you are an executive. Rank and file tend to get the short end, which means you lose RSUs whether you leave voluntarily (took another job) or involuntarily (fired for cause, fired for no cause, or laid off).

Did you just make that up?

Literally how my options are written.

> If you get fired, unless it qualifies under some due cause, the options should immediately vest.

That definitely didn't happen at my company. We had a round of layoffs and the package offered to people who signed an agreement not to sue only included a couple weeks of accelerated vesting. There was no performance management system in place either, so the people fired were basically just the bottom of the stack rank their managers were asked to turn in, which was often based more on personal like or dislike than performance.

There was one engineer entering his fourth year, who had saved the company 30 million dollars during his term with infrastructure efficiency improvements, who was laid off and lost millions in the RSUs that would have vested that last year (he was on a 10/20/30/40% schedule). All the ICs speculated he was fired so the company wouldn't have to pay.

> There was no performance management system in place either, so the people fired were basically just the bottom of the stack rank their managers were asked to turn in, which was often based more on personal like or dislike than performance.

And that differs from the result of a performance management system how? Maybe that rank and file didn't have to spend as much time writing reviews?

> (he was on a 10/20/30/40% schedule).

That's a terrible vesting schedule, but he still made millions on the 60% he vested?

Interesting how all coments on this one interpreted it as if “qeternity” describes how things are now, instead of how the poster thinks it ought to be. Whereas to me it reads as the second kind. Wonder why is that?

> options should immediately vest.

Well, I agree with you that they should, but they don't. I got laid off from a job a few years ago when my department was made redundant, and I only had 25% of my shares vested - they let me keep the 25% that was vested, but that was it.

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