What are you willing to sacrifice to vest those RSUs, besides just time?

Your mental health?

Your physical health?

Watching your kids grow up?

Your marriage?

Etc. As other folks have alluded to it can sound relatively trivial (and sometimes it is, but often not) until you're actually staring into the abyss. The flip side is that quarterly RSU vesting is highly effective as a retention tool. I've known brilliant people pushed to their absolute breaking point before they finally leave (Amazon, I'm looking at you).

From observation there is no connection between unhealthy workplaces and compensation. If anything, it seems the more you get paid, the better you get treated. There may be exceptions obviously.

Yep, sounds like Amazon. I used to joke that the only Engineers who were there longer than four years were either getting divorced or were already divorced. You did not find very many who were married with kids AND happy working there.

I already sacrifice those :D

Believe me, perspective changes once you are in them.

The grass is always greener. It can be pretty frustrating to be at a job you’re not very satisfied at because the expected value of leaving just doesn’t make sense. Sounds silly to complain about having golden handcuffs, but it does change the decisions you make (potentially in a way that makes you less happy).

Depends on the actual numbers. They could be worthless or worth millions. Every funding round changes that.

RSUs should be a lot more reality based, these are not options to purchase on a hypothetical future liquidity event, they're restricted stock that turns into real shares on public markets upon vesting.

Ahh I was thinking they were options. Never mind. Does one still pay taxes every year on the RSUs should they rise in paper valuation before vesting?

Yeah kinda, you pay taxes on the market value of shares when they vest (become unrestricted). But only on the shares that have become unrestricted, not your still-restricted shares.

RSUs are for public companies.

They are more common at public companies, but a company doesn't need to be publicly traded to give people RSUs. Conversely, a public company can pay in options rather than RSUs (or both) if they want.

Source: Work for a non publicly traded company and have RSUs not options, previously worked for a publicly-traded company that issued RSUs and options as part of comp