Yes, it is. Bands at Amazon (where the comp was lower compartively) were raised to at least compete with the other FAANGs, but that was before the layoffs/freeze situation when they thought they still had to do that. Comp is majority stock at most of these companies, TC has gone down by definition of stock dropping, and places like Amazon assume growth in fact when calculating your target comp and what to allocate. Refreshers are very unlikely to make up for this drop since they don't have to (supply/demand).

I assume when stock prices are down, then more stock is granted to make up for it no? Obviously, the stock continuing to fall after the grant will result in less tc.

They can and will give some stock refreshers (to those that aren't laid off or marked low performing) but I doubt they will make up for the large drops that happened this year, and the drops that are likely to keep happening over the next year. You have to do that when there is competition, but cross-industry reduction in demand and a want to actually shrink companies (attrition) for software developers means you don't have to do that to keep the number of people you want.

There is a material change in comp when a 'growth stock' stops growing.

speaking of, does anybody know if layers and/or glassdoor have any temporal aspect to their numbers? For example, glassdoor has been around for 15 years, and back then a FAANG comp was very very different than now. Do they just average out the salaries for the last decade when they show average? or is there any way to look at the recent trends on either site? or anywhere else for that matter.

PS maybe worth "asking hn" for this one, note to self