"only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company.
They make it sound like he barely managed to get any stock. That's like saying, "person worked at X for 1 year, just long enough to get 1 year's salary." Well, yeah, but if they left in 11 months they'd get 11 months salary. It's not like if Poole left at 1 year or 4 years or anything in between he would have left with anything different proportionally to his tenure.
What an odd article.
The article sounds like the reporter heard a soundbyte about google's typical four year vesting period, and then did zero actual research into what that means.
I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.
After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make less money than during the first 4 years. At that point the incentive is to move to some other company and start the 4-year clock again...
Thank you for the explanation ;)
Actually we should already have changed it - that's standard practice when one article cribs from another. But I missed it in this case.
Meanwhile I've been at 4 startups, from seed to Series B . I just get bored so easy.. after 3 or so years I NEED a change. Or maybe is because startups dont care about w/l balance and drain you until you quit.
I've never worked anywhere where people were much use before 2-3 years in harness. Too much domain knowledge maybe.
A lot of the time it may be warranted. But just as often, like in this article, it definitely is not.