It doesn't, but if you accepted an offer where the base salary doesn't cover your financial needs, then that's on you.

And it's good to remember, that while RSUs are nice for the reasons you state, companies that give them out tend to pay a lower cash salary because of that, and if those stock prices go down, so does your TC, and it could be quite a big drop.

Well, all indications are that the BigTech companies are issuing new stock to at least keep people at their initial cash+stock compensation grant+a modicum of a raise.

I’ll know myself in a couple of months.

I’m in my 3rd year and my first full year of base + RSUs instead of base + 2 years prorated signing bonus + back heavy vesting schedule.

(Yeah I know, how do I say where I work without saying where I work)

I passed on interviewing there b/c I hear the culture is brutal with no work life balance. Is that true in your experience?

I work in Professional Services as a billable consultant (cloud app dev). Most of us are much older with families and wouldn’t deal with interference with our home life. Our division is much more “enterprisey”.

Also, since our division is mostly remote (even pre-Covid) and most of us are established in our career, we have much more optionality, a larger network, and hopefully a larger nest egg.