As an employee this opens a few uncomfortable discussions. If your comp is heavy on equity, you may find yourself facing a paycut next year. For many engineers

As an employee this opens a few uncomfortable discussions. If your comp is heavy on equity, you may find yourself facing a paycut next year. For many engineers this could easily be a sudden 50% paycut during performance reviews. If a company chooses not to refresh your grant at the same level in 2-3 years time, then you'll have had plenty of warning to leave or for you and the company to figure things out. The problem with a 1 year grant is that it provides an unstable compensation target, for a public company most employees will prefer cash to shares that may be up or down 15% at year end.