[lostcolony]

"If they already have their budget in mind before the interview process began"

This is impossible to know though, as is its breakdown. Many places have very fixed limits on salary and bonus, for instance, but RSUs and sign on they have a lot of freedom.

Even the places that have fixed budgets all around may have multiple openings of varying levels; a strong interview showing may cause them to bump the level they'd look to hire you at, just to meet your comp expectations (I've seen this happen numerous times as a manager when a candidate came back asking for more).

If they bring it up at the start, great, it saves a lot of time for both of you. If -you- bring it up at the start, though, you're just closing off opportunities.

[sokoloff]

If you’re closing off opportunities that you wouldn’t take anyway, it’s just another form of time savings. I make sure we’re at least in the same chapter if not the exact same page on comp before spending more than a 25-minute intro.

[lostcolony]

As I mentioned elsewhere, I upped my RSU comp 4x what was initially offered by bringing it up at the end, for a position I -was- interested in. Had I come out of the gate saying I expected that, I'm quite certain the response would have been "we can't do that" and moved on.

Fair enough if you only want to work for a company that offers your target comp -without- negotiation (since even if they're open to negotiating at the start, you're doing so when your hand is weakest), but otherwise there is nothing to be gained by bringing it up at the start.

[pedrosorio]

What was X here? Did this involve any competing offers?

It seems so strange that they’d offer X and just after being asked would switch to 4X. That’s a huge range.

[lostcolony]

100k vesting over 4 years -> 400k vesting over 4 years. No; only that I didn't have to leave my current place of employ. The total comp was toward the upper end for my market, though slightly lower than FAANG for the area (and with a company whose stock ticker is less aggressively/consistently rising, so less likely to be a huge gain come vestment). I did not make it explicit that I did not have competing offers, instead using phrasing that may have implied it (for instance, "will next week work for your timeline?" "Yes, though please let me know ASAP if it slips as I can't speak to after that").

Yes, I was surprised as well that they were willing to move that much. However, I know RSUs tend to be a lot easier to move on for companies than salary or bonuses (in fact, the salary offered was about 5% lower than my prior; I didn't even touch on that, instead looking to make up the difference, and then some, in the RSUs), and vary a lot more in the market. There are some companies that don't offer RSUs at all, pre-IPO startups whose grants are of questionable value, companies that grant RSUs yearly but only to a percentage of their employees, companies that give comparatively small amounts of RSUs to all their employees, and companies that give comparatively large amounts of RSUs to all their employees. That means the market range is huge and increases can more easily be justified; market range for salary tends to be far more constrained.

It's possible this may have also been due to being outside of SV; while the company has an office in my metropolitan area, I don't believe it's mostly dev, and while they have salary guidelines for outside of SV for dev, they may not for equity. So it may have been that the initial RSU offer was tailored to the locale, and my ask was okayed because it was in line for dev. Point still stands; they were incentivized to move, and they were able to. Had I asked at the start they would likely not have, simply because a recruiter isn't going to ask to make an exception for a candidate they haven't even interviewed yet.