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Comment by cdiddy2 | Hacker News Reader

Cost of employees has gone up as stocks drop due to such high RSU compensation. Stock is 40% off its highs which means they have to make up that difference in either cash or more stock, and neither look good to investors at the moment so smooth the financials 10% layoffs is the go to for large tech here.

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I don't follow. RSUs being worth less than they used to be means employees are cheaper. You gave out $X a couple of years ago and when it finally vests it's worth 0.6*$X or similar, that's a direct drop in employee compensation.

Are you reasoning that employees paid in RSU are not amused by this and are likely to leave if not "made whole" somehow? Seems like waiting for people to quit would get headcount down fairly quickly if so.

Ya basically people will feel they are getting a pay cut, and since the higher you go in the company the larger percent of your salary is from RSUs those are the people most likely to be unhappy. You potentially lose your high level core employees while entry level are much less affected

edit: this graph shows how much of your compensation is stock by level at google https://imgur.com/a/wlpa6Wm

Employees will (fairly reasonably, IMO) expect a same dollar-value RSU grant in the upcoming grant cycle. That will result in Google having to grant additional RSUs in an upcoming round. (The currency to Google for past grants is the number of shares/RSUs, which doesn't change as the stock goes up or down, but new grants are cheaper to Google in terms of dilution if the stock keeps going up.)

When Meta stock started going into the toilet, they gave out huge top-up RSU bonuses. Amazon is much slower to react, but they give you a target comp that they hope is fulfilled by stock price growth. If it isn’t, they give out-year grants to get you to target.

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