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DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

blog.doordash.com

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Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#251

Post by celticninja »

ericpruitt wrote: post #245
endtime wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't necessarily that the employee expects to want to leave in under a year, so much as they don't want the company to have an incentive to let them go in under a year.

Something I don't see mentioned in the sibling comments is that this can also put the employee in a bad position when they don't like their job but are in the mid to late stages if their first year. You either tough it out the remaining _X_ months or quit and take a huge hit in income because you're leaving before the equity cliff.

I could see that with a 2-5 year cliff but 12 months is not a long time in a job.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#252

Post by mathattack »

riffraff wrote: post #236
endtime wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't necessarily that the employee expects to want to leave in under a year, so much as they don't want the company to have an incentive to let them go in under a year.

Do companies really fire people at week 51 to save some stock? Hiring is tough and you waste a lot of time onboarding people and getting them to a productive state, firing them just to save some stock after 50 weeks seems a bad idea, not to mention the morale implications.

Companies do let people go to avoid granting stock. Banks also do it to stiff employees on their bonus. For startups it’s a forcing function to decide if they want to keep someone. (I’m not saying this is right, just explaining why it happens)

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#253

Post by rightbyte »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #238
MattGaiser wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so fascinated at how my grandfather would spend decades at a company, my Dad would spend a decade, and now people decline jobs over the expectation that they stay 1 year. And I was in my first job 51 weeks. I don't think you are wrong in doing so as the market in tech moves fast while employers move like slugs, it is just such a shift from what I grew up to expect.

I was in a meeting the other day where one of the attendees had been working at the company for 20 years and another for 15. By my guess, I reckon people work here for about 7 years on average before moving on. In my experience, people tend to be either lifers and stay for 10+ years, or bounce between jobs every year or two. Lifers tend to accumulate in companies that cater towards them (good work/life balance and jo…

I believe this is right. Also, bad companies with high attrition like eg. Amazon hire alot more (hires/FTE/year). So you have a higher chance ending up at such places then their share of all companies.

I mean, average tenure is probably the best indication of how good a employeer is (unless there are few companies at a location). I was pretty suprised to hear it was 2 years at Google.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#254

Post by aiisjustanif »

paxys wrote: post #161
deregulateMed wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really "the works" if you have to move to SV? I'm profiting 100k/yr in the Midwest, and it's a junior-ish position. Could be worse, could be Tesla 90k/yr revenue.

Bay area is expensive for sure but such salary comparisons are always exaggerated. Housing is the only thing that makes a significant difference to the annual budget for a ~22 year old, and even a $20K salary bump is more than enough to cover the difference in rent and other basic monthly expenses. It will almost always be worth it career-wise and financially to work in silicon valley for a few years, especially at t…

I guess no state income tax isn’t even a factor then?

I’d argue the $200k compensation in Texas is on par with the $300k compensation in SV after everything is said and done.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#256

Post by TheGigaChad »

snotrockets wrote: post #157
novok wrote: post #120

TBH I'd feel jittery working at door dash. COVID is going to end completely soon and the boom in deliveries is going to drop with it, probably along with their stock price. If was to go work there, I could start selling every month. But they also don't give you units of RSUs as stock comp, just cash equivalents, so that is another major downside working there.

You should sell every month regardless. You already invested in your employer by betting your future on them. Diverse the rest.

Idiotic advice, if you see that the company is going well - hold. Of course the subhuman idiots in hackernews will like your comment and you will get upvoted.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#257

Post by draw_down »

ronhav3 wrote: post #255

How is it that companies that don't offer any equity can still compete in this market ? Who joins Oracle/IBM...etc' these days ?

Probably the people who don’t fit the demographics for companies like Door Dash. Oh excuse me, my mistake, we call that “team fit”

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#258

Post by arnvald »

ericd wrote: post #173
arnvald wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in EU and there are a few things that have changed: - tons of remote offers, even with technologies like Java where in the past very few offers were remote - salaries significantly up compared to 1-2y ago (getting 90-100k eur for a remote position in EU was rare, now it's not surprising to see such numbers) - companies shorten interview processes, both in terms of numbers of rounds but also the time the whole…

Are you seeing more offers from US companies? I've been assuming that SV-based engineers are sort of shooting themselves in the foot by demanding their companies go remote, because there are so many good engineers in the EU making a small fraction of what an SV engineer makes (even at 100k EUR).

I do (though this is anecdotal data, nothing I dug into).

I have some LinkedIn job searches saved for Amsterdam, NL and I started noticing jobs from companies like Twitter, Github or Stripe where now they allow working remotely from EU countries. It's different than it was 2y ago.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#259

Post by davidlee1435 »

gopalv wrote: post #143
bww wrote: post #88

> Because we see equity as part of total compensation, we believe employees should receive equity as it’s earned — every quarter. This reads to me like someone looked at the data and discovered that almost everybody who stays employed for a quarter goes on to stay for a year. So they decided to try to juice some marketing value out of a policy change that makes no functional difference to anyone. Why else would they…

> Why else would they choose to have equity vest quarterly instead of with each pay period? This makes sense for reduced paperwork if the company is buying back 28% of the shares to pay taxes instead of selling it to the market to pay the taxes - the company can reduce the open market sale on vesting days, but keep it as a single event within the quarter (advance tax payment per quarter).

Is this the only reason why we can’t have biweekly vests? This sounds like something solvable with technology, no?

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#260

Post by bootaccount »

pmh wrote: post #221
bogomipz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say how does the "rear weighted" approach works? Is it just RSUs with a cliff? Also I would curious what you left Amazon before those vested?

It's RSUs vesting at: - 5% after 1yr - 15% at 2yrs - 20% every 6 months for years 3 and 4 The 401k match also has a 3 year cliff. But as they said, years 1-2 you typically get a signing bonus

I was exposed to this while talking to an Amazon recruiter recently, while I also hear stories about how they seem to work people to a breaking point.

The median tenure at AMZN is also 1.5yrs, per linkedin. Their strategy seems to be to work their people extremely hard to earn their RSUs and pay them like plebs with hard caps on earning potential (base comp).

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