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Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

cnbc.com

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Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#11

Post by idunno246 »

nodesocket wrote: post #10
idunno246 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are stock and not options, so you own them outright without needing to buy. So once vested you can sell, and owe tax immediately since they have real value. Usually you’re given a number of shares when you join, and the value of those shares change as they vest. This can lead to some really overinflated comp packages if a person joins before huge growth that a new person would not get. There’s often restric…

That's what I thought. Public company stock is so much better than options. It's guaranteed income/value, unlike options, and when you leave you don't have to pay for them.

I took a “pay cut” moving to a public company, unless you discount the startup claims of value, as you should since a dollar of options is worth significantly less than a dollar of public stock, and financially much much better off

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#12

Post by opportune »

nodesocket wrote: post #7

I've never worked for a public company (such as Facebook, Netflix, Google), when it says $120,000 in stock is that essentially free shares at a given price? I.E. you are open to sell them whenever? I worked at a small series B level startup, and when I left I had the option to buy my shares at the last valuation price, but at just over $20,000 total I declined. I decided I could use that capital better than waiting a…

Yes but you do still need to think about vesting schedules. If you are at a company that doesn't do uniform vesting, then e.g. $400k stock/ 4 years might be more like $50k this year, $100k next two years, $150k the last year. Not sure how levels.fyi handles this but I would say that is not really the same as +$100k/year TC during your first year, given that people can change companies often, get promotions and refreshers, etc. To me it's more like an automatic raise.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#13

Post by joshuamorton »

opportune wrote: post #12
nodesocket wrote: post #7

I've never worked for a public company (such as Facebook, Netflix, Google), when it says $120,000 in stock is that essentially free shares at a given price? I.E. you are open to sell them whenever? I worked at a small series B level startup, and when I left I had the option to buy my shares at the last valuation price, but at just over $20,000 total I declined. I decided I could use that capital better than waiting a…

Yes but you do still need to think about vesting schedules. If you are at a company that doesn't do uniform vesting, then e.g. $400k stock/ 4 years might be more like $50k this year, $100k next two years, $150k the last year. Not sure how levels.fyi handles this but I would say that is not really the same as +$100k/year TC during your first year, given that people can change companies often, get promotions and refres…

Just as an FYI, my understanding is that Google, FB, and MS all offer 25% annual vesting with no cliff, the exact vesting schedule depends (for Google, for example, it depends on the exact grant, but a 400K grant would vest monthly). Amazon offers a 5/15/40/40 backloaded vesting schedule, but cash bonuses in years 1 and 2 to compensate (sort of).

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#15

Post by huac »

magicnubs wrote: post #6
ody4242 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My former employer used "Towers Watson grading" which is sort of a global grading system. Obviously the purpose was not to maximize the compensation of an employee, quite the opposite.

Exactly. All of these "pay banding" methods are used to enforce a culture of no one asking for more pay regardless of the value of their contributions, because "sorry, even though I think you deserve a raise, you're at the top of the pay band for your role/title, there's nothing I can do". If your manager has to convince their manager to fight with their own manager to get you an out-of-band pay increase, it's almost…

VP is (apparently) also a title which legally denotes that the holder is an "officer" of the corporation, and can enter into deals on behalf of the corporation. Having a lot of those people around is typically a good thing for financial institutions (e.g. for quicker decision making).

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#16

Post by huac »

joshuamorton wrote: post #13
opportune wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you do still need to think about vesting schedules. If you are at a company that doesn't do uniform vesting, then e.g. $400k stock/ 4 years might be more like $50k this year, $100k next two years, $150k the last year. Not sure how levels.fyi handles this but I would say that is not really the same as +$100k/year TC during your first year, given that people can change companies often, get promotions and refres…

Just as an FYI, my understanding is that Google, FB, and MS all offer 25% annual vesting with no cliff, the exact vesting schedule depends (for Google, for example, it depends on the exact grant, but a 400K grant would vest monthly). Amazon offers a 5/15/40/40 backloaded vesting schedule, but cash bonuses in years 1 and 2 to compensate (sort of).

I know Google has no cliff, is that also true now for the others?

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#17

Post by ithkuil »

nodesocket wrote: post #10
idunno246 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are stock and not options, so you own them outright without needing to buy. So once vested you can sell, and owe tax immediately since they have real value. Usually you’re given a number of shares when you join, and the value of those shares change as they vest. This can lead to some really overinflated comp packages if a person joins before huge growth that a new person would not get. There’s often restric…

That's what I thought. Public company stock is so much better than options. It's guaranteed income/value, unlike options, and when you leave you don't have to pay for them.

You're guaranteed to receive some stock. As for the value, that depends on the company performance. But yeah being public stock you know how.much is worth and you can actually sell it

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#18

Post by Zaheer »

notgivingemail wrote: post #14

I tried this on mobile and it never fully loads. When I click on the chat button to report it, it asks me to enter my email address. Not sure what that's about, but I'm not doing that.

Maker here, what device & browser are you using? The email in chat is optional. You can ignore the input message for it if you would not like to share email address.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#19

Post by joshuamorton »

huac wrote: post #16
joshuamorton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as an FYI, my understanding is that Google, FB, and MS all offer 25% annual vesting with no cliff, the exact vesting schedule depends (for Google, for example, it depends on the exact grant, but a 400K grant would vest monthly). Amazon offers a 5/15/40/40 backloaded vesting schedule, but cash bonuses in years 1 and 2 to compensate (sort of).

I know Google has no cliff, is that also true now for the others?

My understanding is that Google dropped their cliff after facebook. I think MS is still on 6 months, but that's just their vest schedule.

Re: Interview with the creators of levels.fyi

#20

Post by sweeneyrod »

magicnubs wrote: post #6
ody4242 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My former employer used "Towers Watson grading" which is sort of a global grading system. Obviously the purpose was not to maximize the compensation of an employee, quite the opposite.

Exactly. All of these "pay banding" methods are used to enforce a culture of no one asking for more pay regardless of the value of their contributions, because "sorry, even though I think you deserve a raise, you're at the top of the pay band for your role/title, there's nothing I can do". If your manager has to convince their manager to fight with their own manager to get you an out-of-band pay increase, it's almost…

I think that quote about VPs overstates things - a VP in IB will usually manage some analysts/associates.
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