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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

You should think of RSUs no differently than you think of your paychecks.

There is a scheduled date (every 2 weeks for my paycheck, every 6 months for my RSUs) where I will be given some <money> dollars if I am still working here. I will pay income tax on that income. One is in the form of money and the other is in the form of stocks, but really you should sell those stocks and buy something more stable and not tied to your employer.

If you quit or get fired, you won't get your paychecks on the days you expected to in the future. Nor will you get your RSU vests. Same thing. Just bigger numbers and lower frequency for one of them, with some additional variability in amounts.

They aren't golden handcuffs. They aren't job security or threats. They're just pay to keep you working, like anything else.

edit: I lost a word or two.

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My experience has been that the value of RSUs can be unstable to be considered as a paycheck. My last employer had a price based vesting.

For example, they gave me $10000 RSU vesting over 4 years. Then they used the current share price, say $10 as the fair value. 10000/10 = 1000 RSU vesting over 4 years.

If within those 4 years, share values go down below $10 I have made a loss. Because $9 * 1000 = $9000 worth of shares. And it happened with my last employer.

In such cases, it is no longer a paycheck. Rather a bonus which might or might not pan out.

When I started searching for a job it actually put me at a disadvantage. Whenever I talked with employers who had no RSUs benefit plans they always tried to reduce the value of my total paycheck. The refrain often was "You said $10 but I see only $9. So, you are not getting $10000 shares rather $9000 worth of shares".

Wait, how did they know that sort of thing though? Why would you show them?

By "they" I guess you mean the people I was interviewing with. I showed them and it was mistake which I later learned not to repeat. For my current employer we worked out the RSU details without going into what I was paid earlier.

Is $10,000 in RSU over 4 years significant, in comparison to what the FAANG gives out?

This sounds like a pittance. It’s only an extra $208/month. It doesn’t even pay for your average monthly gasoline expenses.

And it’s even less than what some companies give out for annual Christmas bonuses. It sounds like these companies give out these fake RSUs in order to avoid having to distribute a meaningful annual bonus.

These are not US salary figures.

If you consider the salaries being in the range of $2-3k a month. $208 is an extra 10% a month. I'd still consider RSU as a bonus than a paycheck.

Or if the company is sold before you vest, the new management can decide not to honor your RSUs. It happened to me!

Holy crap that would suck, how many staff did they loose when they decided to screw with peoples pay like that?

I would think, as a company, you would just be shooting yourself in the foot unless you did something like increased base-pay to cover the loss of RSUs.

This is why legitimate companies vest quarterly or more frequently. Your 0.01% equity stake is does not make you a powerful investor.

You're company decided to give you a pay cut. They wrapped that present around reasons like a buy out, but that's what they did. Who cares if it's your new management or old management, it's your employer and that was what they chose to do.

It's no different than if they said hey, we're going to pay you less money every paycheck, because <reasons>.

All you can do is ask if your remaining pay is worth the work you do.

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