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Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

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Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#51
post #10

Aren't RSUs the opposite of job security? If you get fired or leave before they vest, you lose them. In the bay area they are often called golden handcuffs because developers halfway through their 4 year term often have another million in RSUs vesting, so can't go leave and work on their friend's awesome startups and the like, since the startups can't afford to match the compensation.

If you get fired, unless it qualifies under some due cause, the options should immediately vest.

Interesting how all coments on this one interpreted it as if “qeternity” describes how things are now, instead of how the poster thinks it ought to be. Whereas to me it reads as the second kind. Wonder why is that?

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#52
post #38

RSUs are golden handcuffs. You'll continually get a raise each year and a portion of that will be new RSUs that vest over the next four years. If you ever want to leave, that continually means leaving a substantial amount of money on the table. Thankfully some companies will give you a hiring bonus equal to your unvested RSUs though (edit: the big tech companies poaching from each other will sometimes do it, for thos…

> Thankfully some companies will give you a hiring bonus equal to your unvested RSUs though

Do you have any company names? Also, any numbers from your experience? I’d be quite happy to join pretty much anything for a 600K+ signing bonus.

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#53
post #43

I disagree with anyone saying that RSU's are ideal way to get employees invested in a company's success. In practice, total compensation for an employee is decided by market value of that employee. If RSUs shoot up, you will get lesser base pay, if they go down you will end up getting higher base pay in next appraisal cycle. Your salary might be inflated or underflated (for lack of a better word) for a while but in l…

The problem being I can't think of a single company that offers an all cash deal even close to the FAANG offers (or pre-ipo offers in one of the unicorns).

Even a bunch of giant companies like HBO/Samsung etc. got priced out for the same reason at least in a few cases I know.

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#54

"A restricted stock unit (RSU) is compensation issued by an employer to an employee in the form of company stock."

@al_chemist Thank you! Between software frameworks and embedded systems engineering...oh hell just being in tech. in general there are way too many acronyms. Thank you for actually listing the definition! :-)

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#55
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 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.

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#56
RSUs are a decent way of aligning company success with employee success. But there's plenty of pitfalls with RSUs too.

1) From an investment risk perspective, your personal livelihood is already significantly tied to the company because you rely on the company for a salary. Holding a significant chunk (relative to your total investments) of stock in your company as well adds to that risk.

2) Unless you're a C-suite exec, your actions will likely have no direct impact on the stock price. And obviously, insider trading is illegal. That means holding your own company's stock has no fundamental advantage over holding stock of a company you don't work for. If that's the case, you're better off picking stocks based on actual performance and eliminate the personal bias.

3) You can sell your RSUs once they vest in order to diversify, but you have to wait a year after vesting or short term gains tax will apply to any gains post-vesting. So, it might be advantageous to wait a year if you don't plan to sell immediately upon vesting. Also, with some companies, a portion of your shares will be surrendered back to the company to cover income tax on the shares.

4) From a tax filing perspective, RSUs and ESPPs can be a PITA. In my experience, tax software and general tax filing services often don't know how to correctly record the cost basis, which means you end up getting taxed twice if you don't know what you're doing.

5) When cash is tight, companies might lean more heavily on RSU-based compensation if they can't afford raises or cash bonuses. You need to make sure your company is giving you what you need.

6) The golden handcuff effect. You want to leave for a better job, but you've got a nice chunk of RSUs that haven't vested yet and could be worth quite a bit in just a couple more years. Is that new job worth the opportunity cost of giving up those shares? For companies that award RSUs as part of yearly performance reviews, you're pretty much always going to have some RSUs that are 3 years out from vesting. It's just difficult weighing the potential value of RSUs vs a new job's salary/benefits and whatever reasons you wanted to jump ship in the first place. It's very personal math and ultimately you have to determine an answer for yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#57
post #4

An odd question. RSUs are part of TC, that's it. It is completely unrelated to job security. What has led you to think that there is a relationship?

There are a finite # of RSUs which management can distribute to high performers or valuable team members vested over a period of employment time. Here’s why I feel like job security is oddly related, why would the organization want you tied to them for that vesting period if they did not value you or your efforts or want you there for that period?

It is true that if employers are offering RSUs selectively, the assumption would be that they would offer them to people they wanted to incentivize not to leave the company until after the vesting period at the earliest. However, it offers no guarantee at all that the company would continue to desire the employee's loyalty or that the loyalty goes in the other direction in the first place, since as mentioned the company loses nothing but the employee if the employee is fired or leaves before the vesting period completes.

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#58

RSUs are a decent way of aligning company success with employee success. But there's plenty of pitfalls with RSUs too. 1) From an investment risk perspective, your personal livelihood is already significantly tied to the company because you rely on the company for a salary. Holding a significant chunk (relative to your total investments) of stock in your company as well adds to that risk. 2) Unless you're a C-suite e…

nicely explained!

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#59

RSUs are a decent way of aligning company success with employee success. But there's plenty of pitfalls with RSUs too. 1) From an investment risk perspective, your personal livelihood is already significantly tied to the company because you rely on the company for a salary. Holding a significant chunk (relative to your total investments) of stock in your company as well adds to that risk. 2) Unless you're a C-suite e…

> 3) You can sell your RSUs once they vest in order to diversify, but you have to wait a year after vesting or short term gains tax will apply.

This is incorrect. RSUs, once vested, are taxed as income, and any gains or losses from the day they vest are treated as any other stock would be from that day on. There is no tax benefit in holding on to them rather than selling and diversifying.

This detail makes RSUs equivalent to income from an employee's perspective, and offers no incentive alignment post vesting IMHO.

Re: Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

#60

RSUs are a decent way of aligning company success with employee success. But there's plenty of pitfalls with RSUs too. 1) From an investment risk perspective, your personal livelihood is already significantly tied to the company because you rely on the company for a salary. Holding a significant chunk (relative to your total investments) of stock in your company as well adds to that risk. 2) Unless you're a C-suite e…

> 3) You can sell your RSUs once they vest in order to diversify, but you have to wait a year after vesting or short term gains tax will apply. This is incorrect. RSUs, once vested, are taxed as income, and any gains or losses from the day they vest are treated as any other stock would be from that day on. There is no tax benefit in holding on to them rather than selling and diversifying. This detail makes RSUs equiv…

I meant that short term gains tax applies post-vesting. I'll try to make that clearer. Of course, you're right in that selling immediately incurs no additional tax, as you'd be paying short term gains tax on essentially $0.
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