Comment by Grimm1
6 years ago
Edit: The sites I'm using make it seem like the RSU compensation is the one time grant for 100k+ over the 4 year period so if its really a 400k+ stock grant over the 4year period then yes there's really no way to compete with that for early stage companies and leaving that amount of money on the table is inadvisable if you can avoid it. That said I still hold my point about the type of experience you'll gain at a startup and how quickly you'll gain it.
People keep talking about how "they don't know anyone at the big tech companies making less than a 225k salary with the average being more like 300k". Those numbers are bunk, the salary is the base amount before stock contributions and you are most certainly including RSUs to get those numbers. Including RSU's in your annual salary is a crazy and incorrect thing to do. The average turn over at large tech co is a little over 2 years. This means 50% of people never see more than half of their RSU compensation. An L5 (5 years or so xp and roughly the same across companies) for instance has an average base salary of 165k and an additional 100k in RSUs. Assuming that person works at large tech co for the average 2 years and they sell the RSUs as soon as they can their total compensation in a given year is 165k + 25k, or 190k. Successful startups most certainly can come close to that. Anyone making a base + 225k salary before RSU is an L7 or distinguished contributor with 10+ years of experience. So while maybe startups can't compete for compensation for people who are very established in there careers, I've seen more than a few who can compete for people in the 0-10yr range. I've always seen startups as a way for people to prove themselves very quickly in ways that would take people who took the corporate path 15 years to do. High risk, high personal growth, and hopefully high reward.
That said I think startups do need to rework their equity compensation structure for earlier employees to make them more fair. It is very easy to get screwed as an IC in startups right now even as an early one.
Maybe I misunderstood what you’re saying here but I don’t think it’s accurate. My salary plus stock compensation has been $300K+ each year as long as I’ve been with my company. Of course there’s market volatility in RSUs but I have yet to take home less than $300K in any year during the 5 years I’ve been at a FAANG. I’m an engineer FWIW.
I may be inaccurate, I've been using sites like payscale to do the measuring here for averages. If that really is the case then RSUs are quite insane and I'd have to revise my statement.
Edit: The sites I'm using make it seem like the RSU compensation is the one time grant for 100k+ over the 4 year period so if its really a 400k+ stock grant over the 4year period then yes there's really no way to compete with that for early stage companies and leaving that amount of money on the table is inadvisable if you can avoid it.
I wouldn’t use Payscale or even Glassdoor. Levels.fyi is more accurate I think, although obviously some people definitely inflate their numbers, and there’s a self reporting bias.
FAANG total comp is crazy... obscene. I earn quite a bit more than one of my siblings who’s a doctor, and all I have is a bachelors degree.
All this does have a cost. Not counting potential monopolistic practices, ads being literally cancer, etc etc, the stress and anxiety level is high.
I don’t expect to keep doing this for 20 years. In 5 years I’ve learned a ton and still meet people who are way smarter than I am and have better judgement.
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Try something like levels.fyi that lists the RSUs on a yearly scale.
It's 100k per year not over 4 years... I can assure you that these numbers are not bunk and are very real. A lot of my friends have been offered 1.2M in RSUs for L6 positions.
I myself am an L5 and I got a 600k RSU grant - so I get 150k in vested RSUs per year (which started vesting after about 3 months, and which vests continuously throughout the year).
I also get 120k of RSU refreshers (which vest over 4 years) each year as well.
So yes, when I say my TC is 400k+/year, I mean I actually earn that much per year. This isn't accounting for stock appreciation either, my RSUs have increased in value by over 50% since I joined early this year.