So even if it's an honest miscommunication, it's still a painful one.
"Salary: $180k. RSUs: $80k (100 shares)"
VS
"Salary: $180k. RSUs: $80k"
With the former, I can easily spot check the share price and make sure it's correct. With the latter, I cannot, and take it at face value.
That's exactly why the notice should (and usually does) state both the RSU # and the present $ value while also indicating that it is the present value.
But the point that’s being made (as I understand it) is that certain companies, including Amazon, first decide on a dollar value, notify the employee of that value, and then later grant the commensurate number of stock units based on the price at that later time.
There are several events that happen with refreshers/bonus:
1) Notification period 2) Granting period 3) Vesting period
When the notification period happens, the manager doesn't say "You are getting X units of stock". The compensation system actually at this point has zero idea how many units of stock you are getting. Instead you get told "you are getting $x worth of stock".
Then there's the granting period, in which those unvested stock units are actually granted to you.
This is important because there's a lag time between the notification period and the granting period. If your boss tells you you are getting $10k worth of stock and the stock price is $100 per share at the notification period, but is $105 per share at the granting period, you are granted 95-ish stock units instead of 100, because the number of stock units granted was based on the Dollar amount they communicated to you.
I've never heard of RSU grants that might vary with market price where the person did not know 1) That any $ amount quoted was based on the current market price of the stock; 2) The actual # of RSUs being granted; 3) That when they vested their value would be dependent on the stock value at that time.
I know sometimes grants are made in the fashion of "10% of your base salary". But whenever the grant value might vary with market price I'd be very surprised if the actual # of RSU's was not information available to the employees. Even if the company dropped the ball in a compensation notice & didn't explicitly state the # of RSU's, that is still information that would almost definitely be included within the employee's compensation section in the company's HR portal.
For example, my company unlocked annual amounts on August 15th and I was told I was getting $56k worth of stock. The stock was granted into my account on August 31st.
My stock at grant time was exactly Units * Price on August 31st = $56k. If I was granted stock when the annual amounts were announced (August 15th) the same number of stock would have been worth ~$62k