Hacker News Reader

a possible way out is to tie more of senior's compensation with equity, including senior manager's.

you don't automatically get more pay the more senior you become - you get more pay by increasing sales or products or customer retention etc, which increases equity value.

If everybody just plans and reviews, equity value will not grow.

View on HN

If you're working for a FAANG or any company of similar scale, it's virtually impossible for an individual contributor to move the needle in terms of stock price. So the rational thing to do is plan and review with an eye to your own promotion, and let the busy bees in Ads lift up the stock price by churning out tens of billions in revenue.

Let’s say there are two ranks. Senior 1 and Senior 2, with Senior 2 being a higher ranking position.

Senior 2 will naturally come with more equity than Senior 1. The fastest way to increase your pay will be to be promoted from Senior 1 to Senior 2. You’re incentive will be to do whatever it takes to move from Senior 1 to Senior 2, which more often than not isn’t putting shovel to dirt.

Go to Levels.fyi, and look at how equity increases as you raise the ranks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com