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by magneticnorth 1843 days ago
At a FAANG? Why not? If the company is public you can immediately sell it for cash upon vesting, and I pretty much always do.
1 comments

Consider the story that we're discussing. If you're hired by someone whose incentive is to fire you to meet a metric, then you're never going to get that equity payment. And they have every incentive to load your offer up with as much equity as they can.

And even if they don't, there are lots of ways to find yourself in a toxic workplace. If you're depending on that vesting schedule, your life can suck as you're trying to wait out an arbitrary deadline.

If you treat vesting as a nice optional bonus that you don't plan on, neither situation will feel bad to you.

A few companies under the FAANG umbrella do monthly/quarterly vesting.
Lots do monthly/quarterly vesting. But all have 1 year cliffs. With the idea that you get nothing if you don't last.

I had the wonderful experience of being hired at Google many years ago, and pulled into an SRE role. I was in the roughly half that they do that with that don't work out. And I didn't work out for exactly the reason that I initially expressed doubts about. (I don't task switch that fast - not a problem in a SWE but a major problem for an SRE.) I was let go 5 days before my 1 year cliff.

That is one of the reasons why I, personally, discount equity compensation.

> But all have 1 year cliffs.

Google and Facebook don't anymore. You start vesting right away.