Can confirm, we do a low-pressure, non-timed, non-puzzle, somewhat realistic, short take-home exercise. But we don't (and can't) add 20+% to your salary in RSUs.

20% seems very low to me. In the 2 FAANG's I've worked at, the RSU's ended up being 100+% of my salary (which was average for my level).

Initial grant was 100% of one year's salary you mean right? So +25% of yearly salary before appreciation?

Otherwise you're saying something like a 250k base, 1MM RSUs before stock appreciation... which is a very lopsided looking offer

The non-faang but with faang pegged compensation company I work for does yearly grants

My L5 comp is ~$150k base and $140k equity per year (I'm based in UK, would be higher if I was in the US)

I guess this is just lower base than I'm expecting

I work at a company in a similar situation (we get a lot of Xooglers and pay accordingly) and my L6 base is 250k and I have 150k worth of RSUs vesting per year for the next 3 years.

I do negotiate base aggressively vs equity so that might be skewing my view of things

L6 (~ Staff eng) new hire offers at rich big co usually are af 250 base and 250-300k/yr in stock. See levels.fyi for some recent ones.

250-300k and 250k base still seems pretty uncommon for my role (mobile development)

The only company I see doing that somewhat consistently is Fa.. Meta, and they're slipping into the same place Amazon is, where they need to pile on TC to make up for an image problem

I can tell you this is not true.

It's common at top companies - they are all competitive with FAANG comp. You will easily pull in $400-500k in total compensation as a mobile dev at sayyyy an AirBnB or similar. Roughly even split between base and equity.

Isn't your comment confirming what I said?

If 400k (where I am with 250k base) to 500k (where I'd be with a 50:50 split) is the entire range you're mentioning, that's the same as saying "250k - 350k RSUs with 250k base is uncommon" isn't it?

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It might be relative to my situation: I have 8 YOE experience, I'm in mobile, and most people I can talk to candidly about salary are similar. So the numbers I hear directly might be tinted by the fact ~8 YOE isn't usually enough for band topping L6 offers

That being said, even Levels.fyi isn't showing me mobile devs negotiating 250k base without giving up anything on RSUs is a common situation (it definitely wasn't when I got my job, but even with the current market craze that feels like a stretch)

If I'm missing something I'm glad to know more, one undersold upside of the current market is you don't absolutely have to job hop to push for more comp

Yeah I think that's fair, maybe I misread your comment. I find that base maxes at $250k but equity has a much higher ceiling as the eng levels get higher.

I meant 100% yearly, but after reading your comment I double-checked my offers and I was wrong. RSU grant (per year) was at ~45% of base salary.

I was going by my tax filings, and because of the stock growth (and additional grants), I end up with 100+% yearly, but that's quite different from the initial award.

Thanks for pointing this out.

This is actually a common offer. Some companies that wanna continue to offer high compensation without this upfront sticker cost are now resorting to one year rather than 4 year grants (stripe, Lyft).

Stripe and Lyft are definitely not aiming to avoid upfront sticker cost with their 1 year grant scheme.

An exceedingly charitable view is that they're limiting downside, but realistically they're limiting upside so that you don't end up with people reaching targeted compensation for the next 4 years in a year or two and then leaving regardless of unvested shares

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But I also mentioned in a comment above, I think my view is skewed because I negotiate base aggressively

As an L6 I make 250k base, and my initial grant was just over 600k in RSUs at a non-FAANG company. I think that's a higher base than median but lower equity than median for FAANG

Why? Unless you’re sure that the stock price will tumble, it makes no sense to increase your base pay aggressively. Most higher engineering levels will top out their base in the 200-300 range and all the rest of compensation will be via RSU.

We're barely a year removed from some of the most volatile stock market action since 2008

Barely removed from a lot of people taking massive haircuts as COVID darlings are down 50%+ from ATH

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To me equity is an investment you can't back out of for 4 years.

I'm not sure the bottom isn't going to fall off the market for tech period, so I'm happy to trade equity for the ability to have some control over my investment

It can be over 100% per year depending on level (more senior = more equity). Check out https://www.levels.fyi/

If you're senior L5, it can be around 100% per year even before appreciation. Above that and it starts going above 100% per year.

Great Senior Engineers are making 370-500k. Are you paying even 80% of the lowest end of that range?

Can you tell which company this is? I would like to know.

Do they typically offer RSUs? I'm asking because my RSU awards double the total compensation, so if you're counting 80% of just the salary part, then that number would end up being 40% in my case (and I assume for everyone else at my level).

My employer offers RSUs and is a public company.

Do you have any pointers for those who’d like to filter for that?

I recently came across this list which might be useful: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards

It's really not that hard to prep for interviews.... Why take the paycut?

The prep itself may not be that hard. Depending on your non-work life, finding the time to do said prep may be difficult. I would like to double my comp. I also have young kids who occupy most of my wake-work and then work-sleep time. There are maybe three hours at the end of the day that aren't spoken for, but then there's housework, spouse time, and just being tired. It's difficult to fit "grind leetcode" in there. This is due to choices I've made, and I'm happy with those choices! I blame no one but myself for them. But I also think I'd make a good employee at leetcode interview companies were it not for the leetcode, and I think there are a good number of people like me.

If it’s helpful i got into the leetcode grind in a similar situation by getting up 60-90 minutes early and doing 1-2 questions a few times a week. Thoroughly understanding top 50-100 questions will take you very far. So long as you do similar questions in groups (ex: all binary tree questions) it makes it easier to understand and retain. Then even if you take long breaks between study (months), you’ll mostly retain the underlying techniques and can just refresh when it’s time to interview (ex: a week off work for a final review). it’s very annoying. But don’t sell youself short, you can mix the grind with breaks to retain some sanity. Just make sure to have a plan (ex: do top 100 questions )

Spoken like someone without kids or external responsibilities. Free time is a precious resource for those with families.