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“ Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Pool

“ Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his five years.” Lol such a dishonest representation of FANG employment. Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff, and about average in terms of team switches

staticassertion 6y ago
5 years at Google is forever, and it's not uncommon at all for people to jump around projects at the company. It's also a full year beyond what's necessary to vest. Really silly way to write that.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  European here - what's it mean to vest shares? It sounds like some sort of stock options became unlocked? I haven't heard of this thing before, just of stocks being part of salary for small startups that don't have actual money to pay you (or at least, that's what I've heard warnings for on HN).
  - johnzim 6y ago
    Yep - your options trickle in over a vesting period. Typically there’s also a ‘Cliff’ at the start - a period during which no options are available to you. addendum: the ‘standard’ Silicon Valley stock option deal is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff. Eg: first 12 months, no options Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to you Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly cadence The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      Worth noting that Google and Facebook no longer have a cliff, and Google has also started experimenting with frontloading your initial vest (something like 40/30/20/10) to avoid the "dreaded" fifth year drop.
  - sixstringtheory 6y ago
    Yep you got it. Usually you vest 25% of your hiring offer per year, so after four years you’re fully vested. Some companies skew it towards later in the four year period to keep folks from jumping ship after the first payout (“golden handcuffs”). I’ve seen Amazon’s stock vesting schedule set at 5-15-40-40.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    Big corps pay RSUs as part of your compensation package. This helps them reduce compensation during hard times. Salaries are very sticky; it’s hard to cut salaries. So they offer RSU comp because it’s tied to stock price. When the company is doing poorly, they can pay less. But it also lets the pay high compensation and retain long term talent.
  - subsubzero 6y ago
    depends, for a public company like google when you get hired in addition to base salary you may get a yearly bonus and also RSUs which are free google shares, dispersed evenly over 4 years. When you get to year 1 at the company you get the first years shares(1 year vested) deposited in your brokerage account, and then they "vest" and are given to you on a quarterly cadence until the 4 years are up(if you are employed the entire time). In addition to the initial grant at year 2 during your review some employees get more shares on top of the initial grant(that vest over a certain time frame, usually 2-4 years), these are called stacking RSU grants and its why people stay at FANG companies a long time as these grants stack higher and higher all the while your career progresses and the company stock goes higher.
dang 6y ago
That was from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-poole-leaves-google/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-.... We've since changed the URL - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916649 That spin had so much torque I'm surprised the article stayed motionless.
joshuamorton 6y ago
> Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff This is sort of misleading. The 2 year quote often thrown around is a measure of the average tenure of current employees at the company, not a measure of the average tenure of people leaving. I like to note that a company with exponential growth (and all of the major tech firms, excepting perhaps microsoft since it's been around longer count here) can have a seemingly low tenure by that first metric even if no one has ever left the company.

staticassertion 6y ago

5 years at Google is forever, and it's not uncommon at all for people to jump around projects at the company. It's also a full year beyond what's necessary to vest. Really silly way to write that.

lucb1e 6y ago
European here - what's it mean to vest shares? It sounds like some sort of stock options became unlocked? I haven't heard of this thing before, just of stocks being part of salary for small startups that don't have actual money to pay you (or at least, that's what I've heard warnings for on HN).
- johnzim 6y ago
  Yep - your options trickle in over a vesting period. Typically there’s also a ‘Cliff’ at the start - a period during which no options are available to you. addendum: the ‘standard’ Silicon Valley stock option deal is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff. Eg: first 12 months, no options Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to you Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly cadence The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    Worth noting that Google and Facebook no longer have a cliff, and Google has also started experimenting with frontloading your initial vest (something like 40/30/20/10) to avoid the "dreaded" fifth year drop.
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  Yep you got it. Usually you vest 25% of your hiring offer per year, so after four years you’re fully vested. Some companies skew it towards later in the four year period to keep folks from jumping ship after the first payout (“golden handcuffs”). I’ve seen Amazon’s stock vesting schedule set at 5-15-40-40.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  Big corps pay RSUs as part of your compensation package. This helps them reduce compensation during hard times. Salaries are very sticky; it’s hard to cut salaries. So they offer RSU comp because it’s tied to stock price. When the company is doing poorly, they can pay less. But it also lets the pay high compensation and retain long term talent.
- subsubzero 6y ago
  depends, for a public company like google when you get hired in addition to base salary you may get a yearly bonus and also RSUs which are free google shares, dispersed evenly over 4 years. When you get to year 1 at the company you get the first years shares(1 year vested) deposited in your brokerage account, and then they "vest" and are given to you on a quarterly cadence until the 4 years are up(if you are employed the entire time). In addition to the initial grant at year 2 during your review some employees get more shares on top of the initial grant(that vest over a certain time frame, usually 2-4 years), these are called stacking RSU grants and its why people stay at FANG companies a long time as these grants stack higher and higher all the while your career progresses and the company stock goes higher.

dang 6y ago

That was from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-poole-leaves-google/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-.... We've since changed the URL - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916649 That spin had so much torque I'm surprised the article stayed motionless.

joshuamorton 6y ago

> Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff This is sort of misleading. The 2 year quote often thrown around is a measure of the average tenure of current employees at the company, not a measure of the average tenure of people leaving. I like to note that a company with exponential growth (and all of the major tech firms, excepting perhaps microsoft since it's been around longer count here) can have a seemingly low tenure by that first metric even if no one has ever left the company.