4 ms·

Salaries are a bit misleading on this page. Let's take LYFT's example - on landing page - salary is $420k but on inside page - it's $396k. What's the vesting p

Salaries are a bit misleading on this page. Let's take LYFT's example - on landing page - salary is $420k but on inside page - it's $396k. What's the vesting period on those stocks? I'm almost sure it's not 1 year. And, that salary is for the first year. They will not be giving you $200k worth of shares every year or do they?

enos_feedler 7y ago
My guess is 4 year vest. Unclear if the bonus is sign on or annual too.
Zaheer 7y ago
$420 is the compensation for that particular individual. The newsletter features verified compensation numbers of individuals. The number on inside page you're referring to is the average total compensation for that Lyft at the same level. The compensation is yearly. Note that this is a senior candidate (third level in Lyft's hierarchy).
cactus2093 7y ago
I think it really is what it seems. I got a similar offer from Uber a few months before their IPO - level 5a position, base salary $200k, $710k shares of RSU's vesting over 4 years, and performance based bonus with a target of $25k (it's not guaranteed the bonus target will be the same every year, but this is an annual bonus not signing bonus). So total comp just over $400k. I'm sure some people are inflating values on levels.fyi and some people are probably mixing up the 4-year vesting amounts of stock with per-year comp. But this example seems legit. Salaries like this are very real (and very crazy)
eshyong 7y ago
From what I heard, they only put the number of shares and an estimated value in the offer letter, so that amount is only accurate at the time they give the offer - since Lyft's shares have dropped in value it's probably worth significantly less now. Some companies give refreshers to compensate, but not sure if Lyft does.
prlambert 7y ago
The headline number is annual total compensation. So yes, ~$200K of shares will vest every year. The normal deal is 4-year grant with even vesting (sometimes after a 1 year cliff), so in this case it would be an $800K equity grant over 4 years. Some places like Amazon and Netflix do it differently, but that's the standard. They usually use the stock price on the day of the offer or the day you start or something similar. So in this example, if the stock price was $100 on the offer date, you would be granted 8000 RSUs on signing, vesting over 4 years. What they are actually worth on the day they vest depends on the stock market, which means each vesting usually results in a slightly different amount in actuality (even though the # of shares per vesting is constant).
jb3689 7y ago
Yes, every year. When your expenses are 7+ figures annually even small scale changes make a big difference. I work for another large company and we have a small change (~2 week effort and ~200 LoC) that is going to save the company $500k-$1M/year. So it's a no-brainer for well-run, high scale companies to pay competitively. And that's not even taking into account the rest of the year's worth of engineering time The thing I find funny is I've worked at much smaller companies, worked way harder, made much less of an impact, and got paid much less (justifiably so - a scalar on a small number is still a small number). It's really just comes down to solving the right problems at the right scale

enos_feedler 7y ago

My guess is 4 year vest. Unclear if the bonus is sign on or annual too.

Zaheer 7y ago

$420 is the compensation for that particular individual. The newsletter features verified compensation numbers of individuals. The number on inside page you're referring to is the average total compensation for that Lyft at the same level. The compensation is yearly. Note that this is a senior candidate (third level in Lyft's hierarchy).

cactus2093 7y ago

I think it really is what it seems. I got a similar offer from Uber a few months before their IPO - level 5a position, base salary $200k, $710k shares of RSU's vesting over 4 years, and performance based bonus with a target of $25k (it's not guaranteed the bonus target will be the same every year, but this is an annual bonus not signing bonus). So total comp just over $400k. I'm sure some people are inflating values on levels.fyi and some people are probably mixing up the 4-year vesting amounts of stock with per-year comp. But this example seems legit. Salaries like this are very real (and very crazy)

eshyong 7y ago

From what I heard, they only put the number of shares and an estimated value in the offer letter, so that amount is only accurate at the time they give the offer - since Lyft's shares have dropped in value it's probably worth significantly less now. Some companies give refreshers to compensate, but not sure if Lyft does.

prlambert 7y ago

The headline number is annual total compensation. So yes, ~$200K of shares will vest every year. The normal deal is 4-year grant with even vesting (sometimes after a 1 year cliff), so in this case it would be an $800K equity grant over 4 years. Some places like Amazon and Netflix do it differently, but that's the standard. They usually use the stock price on the day of the offer or the day you start or something similar. So in this example, if the stock price was $100 on the offer date, you would be granted 8000 RSUs on signing, vesting over 4 years. What they are actually worth on the day they vest depends on the stock market, which means each vesting usually results in a slightly different amount in actuality (even though the # of shares per vesting is constant).

jb3689 7y ago

Yes, every year. When your expenses are 7+ figures annually even small scale changes make a big difference. I work for another large company and we have a small change (~2 week effort and ~200 LoC) that is going to save the company $500k-$1M/year. So it's a no-brainer for well-run, high scale companies to pay competitively. And that's not even taking into account the rest of the year's worth of engineering time The thing I find funny is I've worked at much smaller companies, worked way harder, made much less of an impact, and got paid much less (justifiably so - a scalar on a small number is still a small number). It's really just comes down to solving the right problems at the right scale