Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS
1 month ago
I don't think this way at all. RSU (for public companies) is real, tangible money. Sure, there is some amount of risk involved with it, but it is WAY more tangible than options than can just be diluted if the person with the cap table is feeling ornery that day. The key that makes RSU's real money is their immediate liquidity on award, so you can literally just treat them as cash compensation in this regard if you decide not to hold them.
When you work at BigCorp for an extended period of time, your salary often ends up being majority by RSU as the vest rolls start to stack up
Yeah, agreed. It was options I always thought of as a "nice bonus", but RSUs I always thought of like cash.
The tax situation around options also makes for many more variables in the risk calculation (i.e. do I exercise as soon as I vest to reduce potential AMT, but then I may need to find sizable cash to execute), while RSUs are just much simpler