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Comment by suzakus | Hacker News Reader

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suzakus·

OpenAI doesn't offer traditional rsus (at least to regular employees?), but instead profit sharing units.

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

Might change how you evaluate the value here.

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The value of any traditional RSU is to treat it as a nice bonus if you get it, so not so much different from any other stock or option package.

I don't think this way at all. RSU (for public companies) is real, tangible money. Sure, there is some amount of risk involved with it, but it is WAY more tangible than options than can just be diluted if the person with the cap table is feeling ornery that day. The key that makes RSU's real money is their immediate liquidity on award, so you can literally just treat them as cash compensation in this regard if you decide not to hold them.

When you work at BigCorp for an extended period of time, your salary often ends up being majority by RSU as the vest rolls start to stack up

Yeah, agreed. It was options I always thought of as a "nice bonus", but RSUs I always thought of like cash.

The tax situation around options also makes for many more variables in the risk calculation (i.e. do I exercise as soon as I vest to reduce potential AMT, but then I may need to find sizable cash to execute), while RSUs are just much simpler

Most private companies don't offer RSUs.

This is not true. Most fast-growing private tech companies with valuations a fraction of OpenAIs switch from ISOs to RSUs because exercise costs start to become prohibitive.

Of course they aren’t liquid yet, but they’re still RSUs, and it’s much more common than OpenAIs profit shares structure

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