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Comment by angarg12 | Hacker News Reader

Hi Gergely, thanks for bringing salary transparency to the EU! Some of those numbers make me consider moving back ;)

Since this is early stage here is something for your consideration: so far I'm not very keen on how many of these websites account for equity/RSU in the salary information. For example, during my first 4 years at FAANG, my salary increased 50% due to stock appreciation alone. But the I faced a cliff where my comp went down after the 4th year. How to represent this data accurately?

If I introduce my comp at hire I'll discount how much I truly earned during that period. But if I introduce my data on the 4th year that'll give a distorted view of how much engineers at that level usually make. It will also discount the fact that my salary went down afterwards.

I don't know the answer but it feels difficult to capture with a single number a compensation package with a large and very volatile component.

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> How to represent this data accurately?

One useful approximation - look at the grant values of your RSU grants. That is exactly how much your employer values you and is willing to pay you. Appreciation or depreciation of that grant is beyond your direct control.

They didn't offer to do another equity round after year 4? I really wonder what their motivation there is, it is almost as though they are incentivizing people to quit at that point.

They did, but my new grants came in 2021, when stock was at the highest. Stock price more than 3x in the 4 years after I joined. Now my grants are worth less than when they were granted. So I got overpaid for a few years and now I'm getting underpaid. They supplemented me with new grants but those won't kick in until next year. But hey I am still very well paid, I don't think I have much to complain about.

Ah I see, ok so then over time it sort of levels out. The big problem is always if the stock is not liquid and you want to get rid of it so if the stock is publicly traded then that's something to see as a plus and then temporary fluctuations don't matter as much (unless they are significant and going down ;) ).

Thanks! This is a tricky one as you already pointed it out.

I’m voting for simplicity: capturing the number in the point of time, and also capturing whether the equity component has appreciated or depreciated.

My bet is that having the date of the submission plus data on whether this was a new offer plus the indicator of how the equity changed will give a good enough sense for the sake of using this data.

Thanks, I appreciate choosing simplicity.

As a software engineer looking to optimize for comp (among others) I'm interested in how reproducible those numbers are. If someone got lucky and their initial grant is now worth several times more that's great for them, but doesn't tell me much about what to expect for myself. I agree that filtering by new offer works best when comparing offers.

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