I think most people should understand by now, these massive option grants are basically playing roulette with a huge chunk of your remuneration package. It's meant to align your interests with the company but let's face it - no one starting at facebook today will have any meaningful impact on the share price as an individual. Instead it's a great way of companies making their employees take significant risk.
When I graduated I could have worked at 3 generally similar companies, the lowest salary offer was £27k, the highest was £35k, all had significant RSU packages (nothing like crazy US numbers). In the 5 years following my graduation, 1 company got bought by Intel providing a 50% pop for the share price, 1 company got bought by Softbank providing a 50% pop for the share price, 1 got eviscerated by Apple and practically destroyed the share price. There was no meaningful way of knowing which way any of those would go. As a graduate I had no real chance of impacting the shareprice of those events. Yet for some reason between 0-30% of my renumeration was determined by it!
right. what was the moral lesson of this story? that I should flip coins for profit or that the FAANGs are prone to hiring millennials who don't share the same shame as my generation in discussing their financials so openly?
No moral lesson here - I suppose my point is that you rarely get to have such a clear-cut comparison of what would've happened if you took the other path at the fork in the road.
I can see where it comes off as gloating, though. Do you think I should modify this to focus more on the fork aspect? (genuine question)
it's hard to make a story about you making money compelling unless you have something to share that can help others get there too. there's not too much of that here (and i'm not sure there could be in this case)
When I chose Facebook, I believed that Uber was a better offer. A $100B+ valuation for them seemed plausible to me. I thought I was going to be making $35-55k less.
So, I actually was not a genius here. It was total luck.
People rarely examine their non-decisions ("what would my life be like if I went left at that fork in the road?"), and I thought this was a particularly clear-cut example of that.
The reality was it wasn't even a coin flip. They based things on pie in the sky estimates - treating them as factual evidence. If you're going to believe a recruiter on futures of stock options (not even RSUs) you're mad. Beyond that Facebook, at the time of consideration, was still a massive behemoth financially compared to Uber who had yet to publicly show an earnings report. I wrote this up right before Uber went public, but it was clear this stock was going to sink vs swim. They have nothing but debt, very little R&D that has long term viability any of the FAANGs couldn't just buy up as collateral, and have been throwing darts at how to monetize into the black since becoming commonplace. Had Uber had a few shreds of conservative approach to what they're doing I'd be far more behind them. But I was out at one of their research facilities on the east coast a couple of years ago and I couldn't believe the sheer amount of unknown and money (they didn't have) being dumped into autonomous at the time. Fast forward years and they still have no operational product. They're not Apple or Google with wads of cash to burn. The goal with going IPO was to accelerate the end product that makes them profitable, which they have yet to deliver.
Personally I don't think there was any choice that would have made sense other than Facebook to net you the most guaranteed cash. Cambridge was never going to sink FB, at least not in any timeframe that would have impacted your vesting schedule. You got in at the perfect time. Timing is everything, and the takeaway is make decisions on the known, not a recruiter floating numbers they don't remotely understand and are incented to make sound amazing.
How so? It seems to be a pretty standard compensation package for a software developer in California, and his post is clearly targeted at that audience.
To my mind, in order to be a humblebrag, he'd have had to be posting about a much higher income than his target audience. E.g. posting this same thing to a general audience, not other Silicon Valley devs. Or posting to the same audience, but about a $500k+ income.
I think there's some real value in people openly actually laying out what their compensation package is, how it worked out and the risks involved is actually really valuable. Obviously we shouldn't be making too many decision from anecdotes, but more awareness of peoples' compensation in the industry is a good thing.
Nice, thanks for sharing. It wasn't clear to me whether you cashed in your options. Is there still the chance you could lose that gain if the stock went down?
He actually didn't gross $92k. That's not only unrealized stock options, it also assumes he'd stay in Facebook for next 3 years. He actually grossed 1/4th of that, given he stays in Facebook till end of first year.
Facebook vests quarterly - there actually isn't a one year cliff. In the last picture, salary + signing bonus + (4 * Quarterly RSU) + expected year end bonus gives you the total pay for the first year.
From February until October 5th, I lived at [NEMA](https://www.rentnema.com/) downtown in SF. I was in a 450 sqft. apartment, and it was $3270/month. I absolutely hated it. NEMA was fine, but SF is not for me.
On October 5th, I just moved down to Menlo Park next to FB. I'm in a 3BR 1BA which is $1850/month. It's much better here.
They're not getting paid $300k a year. They're getting paid $160k a year and the delta is made up in RSU. I'm not sure how FB transacts on stocks for you but depending how they deal with the taxes involved OP could be off by a large factor in the net calculation. Also not sure how FB vests stock, but if it's traditional OP still hasn't vested anything (1 year cliff).
It's not traditional actually. We vest quarterly, and I've sold my stock as soon as I've received it (two vest days so far). My third vesting is November 15th.
The last picture gives you my estimated total comp for the year, $343k. It will be something close to that unless $FB has a major change between now and next vesting date in February 2020.
