4 ms·

It seems like a lot of these pay sources use total compensation as their metric, although I'm not 100% certain of that. If that's the case, though, things star

It seems like a lot of these pay sources use total compensation as their metric, although I'm not 100% certain of that. If that's the case, though, things start to get real fuzzy talking about salary. If you're at a startup with X stock options, you can start talking about total compensation when the company IPOs. Also, if you work for FAANG, you get RSUs which don't vest until some time, but do count towards total compensation before then. Take a lot of those numbers in that context and they make more sense.

helen___keller 5y ago
> Also, if you work for FAANG, you get RSUs which don't vest until some time, but do count towards total compensation before then. I think the most common vesting cliff is 1 year, which isn't really that long so it's reasonable to count towards total compensation. It gets fuzzier if the vesting schedule is backloaded (amazon is notorious for this: something like 5% vesting after the first year, and then high turnover as the kicker), but from my understanding you'll often see signing bonuses to make up for this.
- res0nat0r 5y ago
  Most places I've seen use a 4 year vesting schedule, andd 50% of the RSU's vest in the last two years. So you get maybe 10-15% of your RSU's year one, 20% more the next year, then the rest in the last two years. This forces people to stick with the company likely longer than they would normally would.
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    Your experience is a complete outlier. The only company that really does that is Amazon. All others in FAANG are 25% per year, paid either monthly or quarterly. Most have even removed the 1 year cliff, meaning you might be vesting stock 30 days in.
  - mercutio2 5y ago
    This is not common. I’ve only ever heard of Amazon doing this. Everywhere else I’ve ever worked or had friends work it’s linear.
    - dang 5y ago
      Sorry for the offtopicness but could you please email hn@ycombinator.com? I want to send you a repost invite.
      - mercutio2 5y ago
        I attempted to do this, but Google returned all three (gradually more wordy) messages I attempted to email you.
        dang 5y ago
        Yikes—that's extremely weird! On what grounds did they do that? It looks like there's an email address in your profile now, so I'll try sending a repost invite that way.
  - dlp211 5y ago
    As others have pointed out, I don't know any company outside of Amazon that does this. Complete outlier IMO.
dlp211 5y ago
I have just over 6 years in the industry and in my current job, my initial total comp was $500+k start. That was 190k salary, 60k signing, $300k stock with a 4-year vesting schedule, 25/25/25/25. My actual take home per year is constantly growing and is well in excess of $300k every year I've been with the company. So if I understand your point, I agree that the total comp numbers are a bit weird considering how the compensation is structured and a lot of refresh grants do not ever equal your initial grant, but the ability to bring home over $300k, $400k, $500k is not that difficult if you work at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. The key to this is to change companies every so often and in doing so, seek higher positions (promote in transition). These 2 things combined easily push your salary up. That said, I'm at a point in my compensation that I don't really care about extra money (it's nice, don't get me wrong, but outside of spending some additional money on my hobby's, it mostly will just get saved) and this is really empowering because now I am looking for positions that I feel will be rewarding in terms of the project instead of just looking to grow my compensation further.

helen___keller 5y ago

> Also, if you work for FAANG, you get RSUs which don't vest until some time, but do count towards total compensation before then. I think the most common vesting cliff is 1 year, which isn't really that long so it's reasonable to count towards total compensation. It gets fuzzier if the vesting schedule is backloaded (amazon is notorious for this: something like 5% vesting after the first year, and then high turnover as the kicker), but from my understanding you'll often see signing bonuses to make up for this.

res0nat0r 5y ago
Most places I've seen use a 4 year vesting schedule, andd 50% of the RSU's vest in the last two years. So you get maybe 10-15% of your RSU's year one, 20% more the next year, then the rest in the last two years. This forces people to stick with the company likely longer than they would normally would.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  Your experience is a complete outlier. The only company that really does that is Amazon. All others in FAANG are 25% per year, paid either monthly or quarterly. Most have even removed the 1 year cliff, meaning you might be vesting stock 30 days in.
- mercutio2 5y ago
  This is not common. I’ve only ever heard of Amazon doing this. Everywhere else I’ve ever worked or had friends work it’s linear.
  - dang 5y ago
    Sorry for the offtopicness but could you please email hn@ycombinator.com? I want to send you a repost invite.
    - mercutio2 5y ago
      I attempted to do this, but Google returned all three (gradually more wordy) messages I attempted to email you.
      - dang 5y ago
        Yikes—that's extremely weird! On what grounds did they do that? It looks like there's an email address in your profile now, so I'll try sending a repost invite that way.
- dlp211 5y ago
  As others have pointed out, I don't know any company outside of Amazon that does this. Complete outlier IMO.

dlp211 5y ago

I have just over 6 years in the industry and in my current job, my initial total comp was $500+k start. That was 190k salary, 60k signing, $300k stock with a 4-year vesting schedule, 25/25/25/25. My actual take home per year is constantly growing and is well in excess of $300k every year I've been with the company. So if I understand your point, I agree that the total comp numbers are a bit weird considering how the compensation is structured and a lot of refresh grants do not ever equal your initial grant, but the ability to bring home over $300k, $400k, $500k is not that difficult if you work at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. The key to this is to change companies every so often and in doing so, seek higher positions (promote in transition). These 2 things combined easily push your salary up. That said, I'm at a point in my compensation that I don't really care about extra money (it's nice, don't get me wrong, but outside of spending some additional money on my hobby's, it mostly will just get saved) and this is really empowering because now I am looking for positions that I feel will be rewarding in terms of the project instead of just looking to grow my compensation further.