u/xziphoz wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This answered my question perfectly, as did the other couple of replies in the sub. But this was very in-depth and I appreciate that. Thank you!
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Some more comments to complicated things even more. At top tier companies, it's quite complicated. I don't have time to write a full guide to RSU but some things to consider:
1. Not all companies have the classic 4 year / 1 year cliff. Amazon is a big one that does NOT, Google does NOT, and some companies are starting to do 1 year grants that a issued every year based on performance.
2. A lot of these companies will do performance related bonuses and refresher RSU grants, which will vary so much with performance. At Facebook, the range can be 0 to 3X multiplier of your bonuses based on your performance. This difference makes stressing over thousands of dollars in TC large irrelevant.
3. The dollar value quoted is usually converted fairly into a number of shares based on some weighted average of the stock price around when you started. So the value when VESTED can be different from the expected value when granted. At some companies, they actually convert on VEST, so it IS a guaranteed value on vest time, but you lose the upside and downside possibility - where the upside is the main benefit of getting RSUs over cash.