Ask HN: What happens to unvested grants at Twitter?

[backslash_16]

Hey HN, I'm curious about what happens to engineers who have unvested stock grants at Twitter.

Do they get cash instead, do they immediately grant, or do they go poof and disappear?

[wanderingstan]

A friend of mine started at Twitter a month ago so I asked him this exact question. They said there’s no acceleration, but they will now be paid cash equivalent on the same schedule where they would have received RSUs.

[vmception]

It’s usually in the contract to accelerate them in times like this, meaning the employees get all the shares or the cash equivalent, saving them up to four year of their lives.

Buy anything could happen. Cleanest to accelerate.

[booblik → vmception]

The point of RSUs is to tie the employee to the company. Converting them to cash on the spot is about the dumbest thing they could do. Might as well wave most of them goodbye.

[vmception → booblik]

Its the point of options grants as well, its common to have change of control clauses that cause acceleration.

[booblik → vmception]

Absolutely, in early stage startup, not common in public companies.

[gwittel]

Unfortunately It depends on the agreement. You could get nothing or something. There will have to be an SEC filing with details soon.

More commonly, twitter will try to do something to prevent people from jumping ship. It’s likely your RSUs will be converted to cash grants. Then they might vest as cash awards on a schedule. The vesting may be on the same as RSU schedule or different.

[Dracophoenix → gwittel]

What are the tax implications of grants as opposed to RSUs?