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.

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.

Googler here. dabfiend19 is correct, around ~2019 I believe new L3 hires were switched to this new grant schedule. Prior to that, it was based on a fixed number of shares.

Fwiw, I asked around and couldn't find a hire where this was the case. The schedules are different but the conversion to shares happens once just after your are hired.

This is a bit of a change from e.x. when I was hired and my offer letter said N shares, and so when I joined 6 months later my grant had increased in value significantly. But it's still not the situation in these other companies, where you vest 6.25% of the dollar value each quarter, converted to shares or whatever.

Actually that wouldn't really be compatible with googles vesting schedule, now that I think about it.

you have misunderstood your friends, or your friends have misunderstood their grants

Your friends might be getting mixed up with annual refresher grants. Except for some rounding of fractional shares, your initial grant will vest the same # of shares every month for 48 months

Well if the stock tanks you’ll probably be laid off. I don’t see any upside with this model for the employee.