| I'm not saying Google makes horrible offers, but I'm not sure how their recruiters marketing matches up with their internal calculations of target comp. I have read complaints on blind that Google is using it to show higher first year offers or to compete with other offers. 100k with frontloaded vesting at (33/33/22/11) is much better than 100k vesting at 25% a year. But 100k frontloaded wouldn't equal 132k vesting at 25%, only the first year would be equal. So that answer would not be sufficient if I had a competing grant at 132k, and was worried a second year comp drop. It may be true that Google gives really good refreshers and my above average performance will increase my comp. But I think of that like depending on a percent bonus, it's less reliable than base and my initial equity grant. And if I start using refreshers, raises, and stock growth with Google, I should also use it when looking at competing offers. > you don't ever feel like your compensation has flatlined. Emotionally that may feel bad, but I think it's caused by employees getting lucky. I don't think it's a problem that needs to be solved. 1) It's objectively bad if I have a cliff because my employer hasn't increased my comp as my market value increases. I should probably look for a new job. 2) It's objectively good if my cliff is because the value of my initial grant exploded. The drop will be bad. But if it's such a noticeable difference I'm probably sitting on hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in profit from my initial grant. |
I can certainly believe this, lots of companies play games to make first-year comp look higher, I certainly don't put it past my employer.
What I'm describing however, isn't anything to do with external hiring, its a common complaint made by existing google employees about how they feel comp drops in year 5. I agree with you that its not totally rational, but people aren't totally rational, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if doing something like this improved retention past the 4 year mark (but it also wouldn't surprise me if the better year 1 comp makes Google appear more competitive with Facebook. Two birds or something).
And yes, you should absolutely compare stock refreshes (if you can get data) when comparing offers! FWIW, I have no clue if Google's are particularly good or not.