This is incorrect. At FAANG companies, in my experience, you will be given an initial large grant and an additional grant every year thereafter. However, if you aren't seeing upward performance, those annual grants may not fully match the compensation you received from the initial grant, resulting in a dip at year 4 that some folks call "the four year cliff."

This is complicated by the fact that earlier grants tend to be from when stock was worth less, so the are a comparatively high number of shares. So your comp will gradually inflate over 4 years because the value of the stock has gone up, meaning you are taking home more than the company 'intended' to pay you.

Really? When I've worked at FAANGs and other BigCos, there was a yearly re-up of stock vesting over 4 years each time.

It is all up to management discretion. I have known several cases where people's new stock grants were cut to zero in the hope that they'll just quit and save managers from going though the PIP/firing process.

For sure. At least at amazon while they don't demote you, if they are not that excited by you on the team equity goes pretty low.

https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-compensation-explaine...

Depends on performance. Corey Quinn's article is on point (linked a few comments below)

This makes sense, but specifically promotion tied bundle? Or was it just a shortcut for "did not get promoted" AND "did not get next stock grant"?

I guess I am trying to understand whether this is causation or correlation relationship.

Your total compensation at FAANG is base salary + bonus (usually % of your base multiplied by your perf and company perf) + stock.

When you get promotion your base salary will increase, your bonus will also increase (due to being % of base, but also higher levels have higher %) and your annual stock refresher will be higher, as you are now on new level.

She would get annual stock refresher even without promotion, but with promotion refresher would be bigger and total new comp could have compensated for drop after initial grant has finished.

You can check levels.fyi for comparisons of total median comps between levels at Google.

L3 - $189k[0], L4 - $265k [1], L5 - $350k [2]

[0] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

[2] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...