Here's how I've seen it work, and this is specifically relevant to Bay Area compensation (although it prob works the same in other markets, just scaled down). You come into either one of:
- top tech company (i.e. FAANG)
- high growth, public, mid-sized tech company (e.g. top enterprise cloud companies)
Your base salary will be between maybe $130K - $160K. And not just for engineers, technical product/program/project managers make this as well. Your bonus will be 15-20% of your base, so another $20-30K, bringing your total comp minus RSUs to $150-200K. Your first RSU grant will prob be worth $100K per year once you start vesting. If you are a top 20% performer, you will get another grant within the next year or two.
After you've been at the company for three or so years, you will have multiple RSU grants starting to vest. Once you stack these RSU grants on top of each other, your total comp can easily reach $400K for some period of time.
A couple of caveats/risks with this comp structure
- it seems companies are much more willing to throw more RSU's at you than a significant base salary increase.
- as long as the markets are rewarding growth vs profitability, the RSU's will continue to flow
- if the market crashes, the whole comp structure may crumble.
- top tech company (i.e. FAANG)
- high growth, public, mid-sized tech company (e.g. top enterprise cloud companies)
Your base salary will be between maybe $130K - $160K. And not just for engineers, technical product/program/project managers make this as well. Your bonus will be 15-20% of your base, so another $20-30K, bringing your total comp minus RSUs to $150-200K. Your first RSU grant will prob be worth $100K per year once you start vesting. If you are a top 20% performer, you will get another grant within the next year or two.
After you've been at the company for three or so years, you will have multiple RSU grants starting to vest. Once you stack these RSU grants on top of each other, your total comp can easily reach $400K for some period of time.
A couple of caveats/risks with this comp structure
- it seems companies are much more willing to throw more RSU's at you than a significant base salary increase.
- as long as the markets are rewarding growth vs profitability, the RSU's will continue to flow
- if the market crashes, the whole comp structure may crumble.