When I was last there (albeit 6 years ago), following reviews managers determined what your new “total yearly comp” would be. Base pay was pretty low compared t

When I was last there (albeit 6 years ago), following reviews managers determined what your new “total yearly comp” would be. Base pay was pretty low compared to industry, but RSUs were used to make up the difference based on the price on a certain date with a 4-year vesting period, distributed quarterly (16 distributions). For example, if your total comp required 20k extra per year and the stock price was $100, you’d be granted 800 shares. If the stock price had fallen to $80, you’d be granted 1,000. We always wanted the stock price to have a temporary low around review season because that would benefit our RSU grant. Any dollar amount assigned to the grant on the given review date was understood to be based on the current stock price, subject to change, and as a way to communicate total comp. If the stock dropped over the course of the year, there was occasionally corrections, either in base pay or RSUs. This was also complicated by the fact that you could have up to four years of grants stacked on top of one another, all vesting on the same schedule. Obviously, that was taken into total comp calculations, so if you got lucky with a low price and big grant in the past four years, your yearly grant might end up low as a result.