It reads to me he's talking about the pool of equity allocated to this year's grants. At companies like LinkedIn, you receive new grants every year to layer you

It reads to me he's talking about the pool of equity allocated to this year's grants. At companies like LinkedIn, you receive new grants every year to layer your equity and keep you there past your 4 year mark. Everybody does it differently, but it's usually something like "We have $x in equity comp available, lets do some magic calculation based on base pay and annual review to allocate this between our employees." Also, I can't speak to this personally but I've heard that LinkedIn offers are heavy on cash, less equity.