Hacker News Reader

Comment by rco8786 | Hacker News Reader

At GOOG/FB a large chunk of that comes from equity. 400k for a senior+ level engineering job at one of the "big" tech co's in the valley/SF isn't outrageous at all. Base salary ~200, bonus/equity another ~200.

View on HN

Being paid in equity is just plain annoying. It makes your taxes far more complex and, at least at Google) unless you set up an autosale program a year in advance, your money is tied up in company stock until the next trading window.

The taxes on equity are a huge PITA when equity is a large fraction of your salary. This is because they withhold at only 25%, even if your tax bracket is higher. This means you have to file quarterly estimated tax payments or over-withhold from your salary.

I much prefer Netflix, where I just get salary. I might even be able to do my own taxes again!

Anyone finding their $200K in tech company equity to be a big pain in the ass should feel free to send it to me. I'll grudgingly bear the burden for you.

Sheesh!

Perhaps I am missing something, but the idea behind getting paid partially in equity is that your total compensation is higher.

As long as the company('s stock) is doing well, yes.

But it's also a tax hassle...though it's hard to complain about it.

Did you consider simply skipping estimated payments and paying the interest? It's only 3% above the federal funds rate. (Historical real return on equities is usually computed to be higher.)

Or a hybrid (pay a reasonable amount in estimated taxes but don't put any serious effort into getting it exact).

Parent poster is being silly. It's trivial to withold some money for taxes. The pain is in calculating get your 1099 because the stock brokers get it wrong evey year, often more than once .

I'm painfully aware :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com