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Comment by dbancajas | Hacker News Reader

why did you quit?

I started a startup a few days after I left. Also had a baby a few months before leaving and really liked the schedule flexibility when I was on paternity leave.

Can you speak about your experience building a startup with a newborn nearby?

Not the parent, but I have some experience here - my cofounder and I both had kids a month apart (four years ago). It switches you to playing the startup game in "hard mode", but it is doable with the right spouse(s).

YMMW, but FWIW. You no longer have the luxury of hours-long uninterrupted coding streaks, but it doesn't prevent you from thinking through things that need to be done (e.g. when you are walking outside with a stroller). The net effect of it is that when you do have a chance to sit down and code, you produce something that requires no rewriting or refactoring later on. If you then compare time it takes to get X done, the think-then-code comes on top of code-then-rewrite and by a large margin.

In a sense having a baby forces you to become a more thoughtful and effecient programmer :)

All FAANG/MANGA are two years stints. Its a common experience but of course many people stay longer and are comfortable with that traditional view of being married to a corporation.

A) Netflix is an ideal first company in the Silicon Valley circuit because their compensation package is a simple formula of <every other FAANG’s compensation package but in all cash>, which makes negotiating the next place much easier because you’re more liquid already and already know what the total compensation should be - or would balk at any other base salary because the cash portion is so much lower, forcing companies to entire you with more shares than they were prepared to. And B) because you simply made enough money to attempt something else in your life.

Why are they two year stints when usually you're getting RSUs as part of your package that often have a 4 year vest?

People are either vesting 1/48th immediately every month, 3/48th every quarter, or are in the same circumstance a year after starting. The 4 year part is irrelevant for them as there is no actual waiting involved. They simple are able to negotiated being enticed by another company that will exceed how much cash they are already collecting. The company they work for gave them a signing bonus that required them to stay one year, the next company will too, as well as a higher base salary and higher dollar amount of shares that begin vesting quickly.

four year vest doesn't mean you get all the RSUs at the end of four years. or if it does, that's not how it actually works at google, facebook, microsoft, etc. typically you get an offer with a certain amount of RSUs, and then you get 25% of that each year. amazon is an exception; you get most of the RSUs in the third and fourth year. but you also get a large signing bonus paid over the first two years that mostly makes up for that.

tl;dr: your yearly TC doesn't change much at these companies unless you get an actual raise. I don't fully understand the reasoning behind the four year schedule, but AIUI, it does not strongly incentivize sticking around for the full four years unless you assume significant stock appreciation.

I know it doesn't mean you get all the RSUs at the 4 year mark but if you leave after 2 years, you only get 50% of your RSUs. Why leave potentially hundreds of thousands on the table to jump after two years? I've never heard of this two-year stinting.

You shouldn't view the RSUs as different from any other compensation package, even just an all-cash package.

If Google says they'll give you $200k per year in cash + $400k split over 4 years as RSUs, that's the same as just getting $300k per year in cash.

Why would you leave $300k per year in cash on the table? Because another company is offering you $350k per year (or more likely in the case of FAANG, another company is offering you the same $300k/yr but with significantly less stress).

Yeah I guess I'm just surprised that, once you're at the FAANG level, the packages are going to vary that much that one would jump every two years. Also, having just interviewed at the FAANG level, they are very weary about job hoppers to the point where if you haven't worked at a place for longer than 3+ years, they want a detailed explanation why.

> if you haven't worked at a place for longer than 3+ years, they want a detailed explanation why.

Interesting. At my FAANG (Amazon) we explicitly are told to not ask this. It would be kind of weird for us to ask that, really, considering the tenure of most people here is <2 years.

This has not been my experience at all. I've job hopped every 2 years to promote in transition and take on significantly more compensation. I'm about 18 months into my current role and I'm looking for the exit. Why? Because my future compensation at these companies is based on "impact" instead of what the market is willing to pay. So even if I have the highest levels of impact, I'm losing compensation staying at my current company.

Yeah I mean historically I've done the same. Most of my jobs have been at most 2 year stints. This is my first experience under this kind of scrutiny. It does make sense, since most of the people (at least on this team) are all 4+ years tenured but it was a surprise.

>If Google says they'll give you $200k per year in cash + $400k split over 4 years as RSUs, that's the same as just getting $300k per year in cash.

It’s not; the RSUs are priced at grant, not at vest.

Plus there’s annual top-up grants.

You’re not factoring in stock appreciation there. It’s somewhat common these days to see people sitting on huge unvested grants, so in your example, your yearly comp won’t be the $300k/y you had at year one. Then it’s pretty hard to get a match on your “inflated” TC anywhere else. You don’t get that in an all-cash package, even if you buy stock from the company with your cash comp

If you're granted an equal amount each year, then you'll get a similar amount in your first year at a competitor who also grants an equal amount each year.

Also - for talented engineers at companies I've worked with, we gave starting bonuses ~equal to the value of the unvested options as a recruiting tool.

Facebook does stock refreshers every year, so there is _some_ benefit on sticking around, as you’ll have more stock vesting every year (until the 4y cliff at least)

At the FAANG level, it's sometimes possible to have your offer include a buyout of unvested RSUs which you would lose by accepting the new offer.

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