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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

#41

Post by dahfizz »

digianarchist wrote: post #33
DebtDeflation wrote: post #26

Not surprised. I'm probably a fair bit older than the average HN reader (finished undergrad in 1995). This is the hottest job market I've seen since the height of the dotcom bubble (mid 1999 to early 2000), and if it continues along it's current trajectory it will pass that by year end.

Browsing /r/cscareerquestions it looks like entry level folks are having a hard time breaking into the industry. Employers are mostly recruiting senior levels it seems.

I think there is a bit of a selection bias going on in that subreddit.

I finished undergrad last May and had multiple offers to choose from well before I even graduated. Maybe covid has slowed hiring since, though.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#42

Post by piercebot »

bentlegen wrote: post #31

The article seems to intentionally obscure whether the previous vesting period was quarterly or not. My cynical read of this is that they are changing the vesting schedule to quarterly (instead of monthly, which is more typical), and burying the lede on that by painting this as a benefit to employees (when it really only impacts new employees). Does anyone know if this is true or not?

Typically, there's a "cliff" after the first year, at which point it switches to quarterly.

So you get nothing the first three quarters, but after quarter 4 (your first year at the company), 25% of your 4-year grant is immediately vested. Every quarter after that is another 6.25% of your initial grant.

I believe the point they were trying to make in the article is that, instead of quarterly grants following the pattern of:

    [0%, 0%, 0%, 25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, ...]
It would instead follow the pattern:

    [6.25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, 6.25%, ...]
```

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#43

Post by whimsicalism »

dahfizz wrote: post #41
digianarchist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsing /r/cscareerquestions it looks like entry level folks are having a hard time breaking into the industry. Employers are mostly recruiting senior levels it seems.

I think there is a bit of a selection bias going on in that subreddit. I finished undergrad last May and had multiple offers to choose from well before I even graduated. Maybe covid has slowed hiring since, though.

Eh, I talk to a fair number of undergrads and I think it has been tough this past year.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#44

Post by nostrademons »

dabfiend19 wrote: post #10
r00fus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's common in the industry to see RSU grants shown as say, "$50k" - but that's $50k in stock as of the grant time. Once the grant is finalized, the value of the RSU grant grows with the stock. ie, if the stock is $100, then it's the same as 500 share grant. This Blind post is saying that Instacart/Stripe says you only get $50k no matter the price of stock? How would you even structure that kind of grant? Why…

all of my friends at google say the grant is in dollars and stays in dollars at google. at the end of the quarter you get a variable number of shares based on current stock price. While this reduces upside, it also reduces downside.

Wasn't true when I was (re-)hired a year ago. Grant is in dollars, it's converted to shares based on the share price when you start, and then you that fixed number of shares divided by the number of vesting periods over the term of the grant. The vesting period depends on how big the grant is; low-level employees will likely vest quarterly, mid/high-level monthly. No cliff; they removed it a couple years ago.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#45

Post by QuercusMax »

potatolicious wrote: post #29
dabfiend19 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all of my friends at google say the grant is in dollars and stays in dollars at google. at the end of the quarter you get a variable number of shares based on current stock price. While this reduces upside, it also reduces downside.

I've been at Google fairly recently, that's not how it works. Your offer states that you will get $X of shares, vesting over 4 years. The $X is converted to a number of shares shortly after joining, based on market price, and is locked in from that point forward. Your friends are mistaken.

This is correct. I believe the share-price they pick is something like the average daily share price for the next full month after you join. So if you join Jan 28, the $$ value of your stock grant will be evaluated around March 1 to determine your grant-price, and then you'll get your first vested shares monthly (around the 25th, I think?).

I believe they used to due quarterly vesting for folks who didn't get much equity, but now that you can have vesting of fractional shares, ~everybody should be on a monthly vesting schedule.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#46

Post by pm90 »

RussianCow wrote: post #23
londons_explore wrote: post #3

The 1 year cliff never really made sense... It effectively gave the company a discount on employees who stayed only 364 days - or to look at it another way, a 'trial period' of 1 year where the pay was substantially less.

Am I the only one that doesn't see that as unreasonable? It's not like you aren't accruing equity during that time; you still get the full year's worth of options at the 365 day mark. And the ramp-up time with new engineers can be so long that the first year isn't nearly as productive as consecutive ones. A buddy of mine who worked at a giant company (not strictly tech but you'd recognize it) said he heard from his b…

I think we need to consider each company separately.

Smaller firms may have smaller codebase and less complex infrastructure and processes to get familiar with. Learning all of that wouldn’t take more than a week or a month, tops.

Larger, public companies like FAANGS will often have completely custom stacks, specialized developer tools and a ton of checks before anything you write hits production. Learning to navigate this will take a lot longer. IIRC Facebook has a bootcamp of several weeks (months?) just to get new engineers familiar with their shit.

In either case, I personally don’t think it’s a “wash” since even at the bigger company it’s not like you’re not doing anything and once you get familiar with the stack you can be productive af.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#47

Post by bboylen »

digianarchist wrote: post #33
DebtDeflation wrote: post #26

Not surprised. I'm probably a fair bit older than the average HN reader (finished undergrad in 1995). This is the hottest job market I've seen since the height of the dotcom bubble (mid 1999 to early 2000), and if it continues along it's current trajectory it will pass that by year end.

Browsing /r/cscareerquestions it looks like entry level folks are having a hard time breaking into the industry. Employers are mostly recruiting senior levels it seems.

As a self taught guy transitioning from chemical engineering, I hope its not too hard. Starting my search in a couple months

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#48

Post by jshen »

whimsicalism wrote: post #43
dahfizz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a bit of a selection bias going on in that subreddit. I finished undergrad last May and had multiple offers to choose from well before I even graduated. Maybe covid has slowed hiring since, though.

Eh, I talk to a fair number of undergrads and I think it has been tough this past year.

Something is off then. Are they in big cities? Do they not know where/how to apply? We’ve had a hard time hiring anyone, including entry level.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#49

Post by antiterra »

dahfizz wrote: post #41
digianarchist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsing /r/cscareerquestions it looks like entry level folks are having a hard time breaking into the industry. Employers are mostly recruiting senior levels it seems.

I think there is a bit of a selection bias going on in that subreddit. I finished undergrad last May and had multiple offers to choose from well before I even graduated. Maybe covid has slowed hiring since, though.

New grad jobs are often a completely different pool from the rest of the roles, so that doesn’t necessarily conflict.

Re: DoorDash removing 1-year cliff for equity grants

#50

Post by milofeynman »

digianarchist wrote: post #33
DebtDeflation wrote: post #26

Not surprised. I'm probably a fair bit older than the average HN reader (finished undergrad in 1995). This is the hottest job market I've seen since the height of the dotcom bubble (mid 1999 to early 2000), and if it continues along it's current trajectory it will pass that by year end.

Browsing /r/cscareerquestions it looks like entry level folks are having a hard time breaking into the industry. Employers are mostly recruiting senior levels it seems.

I think this is a problem across the industry. Companies don't want to give engineers adequate raises so they get trained as juniors and walk out and get 20-30k raises. So then everyone is only interested in seniors.

Senior has all but lost its meaning too... It describes how long you've been in the industry, not if you have the skills to be a technical leader, etc.

At larger corps when a senior leaves, you're often given budget to re-hire a senior, so there is no incentive to hire a junior/entry level. A lot of companies don't even have pathways from internships to entry-level positions. They just let them finish their internship and say "good luck"

This is a problem for diversity as well. Look at the makeup of the seniors in the industry. Now look at the junior/entry level folks coming out of master programs, colleges and boot camps.

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