Comment by eudamoniac
3 hours ago
In the worst case, it's highly misleading. Imagine you get paid a pittance but with a huge RSU grant vesting on a 2 year cliff. Salary 50k, total comp 500k. Then they fire you after 23 months. You took the job because of the stock grants, you had no intention of quitting, but they got 2 years of good talent for 50k.
Well sure, we could throw out all kinds of theoretically abusive situations, but how often does that happen in the real world? I haven't seen any companies granting RSUs that pay a pittance in salary. And it seems many tech companies have dropped their one year cliff as well. Who has a two year cliff?
Now to be clear, stock options are completely different, and in the vast majority of cases, I'd value those at zero or near-zero.
> I haven't seen any companies granting RSUs that pay a pittance in salary.
If you recognize something as wrong in principle when taken to the extreme shouldn't you also regard milder instances to be wrong as well? "Well sure, if you steal $1M that's obviously immoral but that guy only stole $100."
Of course in this case I recognize that there's quite a bit of uncertainty over how exactly the intent and representation of RSUs ought to be interpreted. I had always seen them as akin to a signing bonus but it's clear now that many people don't share that perspective.
I’ve read probably thousands of negative comments about layoffs over the years, and I don’t think any of them centered on unvested RSUs.