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> RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Is this really true for more than the top subset? For instance, are there r
by vonmoltke 9y ago
> RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay.
Is this really true for more than the top subset? For instance, are there really a significant number of engineers at Oracle or Cisco getting that much non-salary compensation?
- bgentry 9y agoI haven’t heard about how those two companies pay. It’s definitely a common occurrence at Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, & Salesforce. Bonuses are often structured as a % of your base salary based upon your rank. More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. This is separate from RSUs, which vary a lot more widely. Their value is especially dependent upon company stock performance.
- Domenic_S 9y agoAdd eBay and Paypal.
- vonmoltke 9y agoThose are in the top subset I was referring to. Most engineers working for established companies are not working for that subset. I'm not aware of Oracle, Cisco, or similar-tier companies giving stock grants to engineers. Cash bonuses are a different animal. I agree with your range (at least if you exclude defense contractors). Those alone are well short of doubling compensation, though.
- lostboys67 9y agoMany FTSE 100 companies in the UK do have share save schemes available to all employees
- onion2k 9y agoMore senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. The reason part of your salary is a bonus rather than the base is so that it can be withheld if necessary, eg in a bad year. Believing that bonus is an automatic extra 10% will, one day, leave you 10% short of your expectations.
- fpisfun 9y agoYep, my company cut bonuses this year, so no 10% for me, definitely not something to count on.
- lostboys67 9y agoDepends if its contractual or not
- htormey 9y agoDefinitely true for Apple/Facebook/Linkedin/Google (I worked for 2 of these).
- echevil 9y agoThat is the "top subset". It is untrue for a lot of other established companies
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoYes, but that to subset is what, like, a couple hundred thousand of the best paid engineers? Halving their salary in a survey is going to make its results almost meaningless.
- vonmoltke 9y agoOut of, what, 1.5M or so in the US? Also, I am skeptical that it is actually that many whom are employed by that subset. I have not seen any of them break down their headcount by role, but the majority of their employees would need to be software engineers and I don't see how that can be the case.
- JOnAgain 9y agoMore true at Amazon. Amazon actually has a salary cap, and everything else is stock. Amazon pays towards a "target total comp" number, which includes vesting RSU's. They do not do bonuses.
- htormey 9y agoTangentialy I have heard that Amazon has a vesting schedule for stock where everything skews towards the last two years.
- notyourwork 9y agoThis is true. I think it discourages ship jumpers after 12-24 months which isn't a bad thing in my opinion.
- user5994461 9y agoFinance companies give cash bonuses instead of RSU.
- kabdib 9y agoDefinitely true at Microsoft (in the Seattle area).
- wils1245 9y agoDuring my last job hunt I was told that some companies target 30% of total comp in stock. If you get options and the stock goes up, you can do quite well.
- monaghanboy 9y agoThis can happen outside AppleFaceGoogSoft; as well I worked at a smaller public company getting 70K-100K a year outside of base salary with 4 year vest and annual bonus, and I know people with 25% more RSU than I had.