[Guzba]

Roblox is dilution-maxxing, stock based comp is up 10x since EOY 2020 whereas revenue is only up 3x. SBC is also ~ 1/3 of revenue.

It's pretty cool to get shareholders to pay your employees so you can be called "operating cash flow positive" as if their comp isn't an expense.

[staticautomatic]

IDK about the stock but I’ve interviewed there and their cash comp is legit FU money. Am I misunderstanding you?

[Guzba]

I'm referring to companies financial statements where these numbers are reported. It doesn't mean the cash comp isn't high or that a specific job offer won't have a lot of cash comp.

What it does mean is that, in aggregate, Roblox has issued $1B in new shares to employees in the last 12 months, diluting shareholders by 4% or so. This is the most significant factor making the company cash-flow positive while remaining not profitable. It's essentially the same as investors putting more money into the business constantly.

[endtime]

I'm a pretty senior IC at Roblox, and my new hire offer was 40% cash / 60% RSUs. It's now closer to 33/67 with refresher grants.

Roblox pays very competitively (see levels.fyi). The apparent strategy is to try to hire lots of long-tenured L6+ Googlers (seriously, it's crazy how many former Googlers I work with).

[pm90]

Having lots of ex Googlers could honestly go either way. I wouldn’t automatically assume thats a good thing.

A former mid size company that I worked at had the same scenario and it was definitely not good. They over engineered not just the systems but literally everything else, including the promotion process which involved the whole horse and pony show and was a constant distraction to shipping features while the companys finances struggled.

[ckdarby]

Not a good sign for Roblox. Yes, many smart people, but they weren't industry changing (Google almost never loses) and they didn't get or turned down Google's renewal program to retain talent.

Looks like a lot who wanted the high pay, but coast along and leverage their past experience to not be dared questioned.

[eru]

Wouldn't that be a fully generalised argument against ever hiring anyone who ever worked at Google?

(Btw, some people also leave Google for other reasons.)

[Jensson]

If you want people who know how to build stable large scale infrastructure it is hard to go wrong by hiring people from Google. Google rewrites all their products all the time, they shut down and launch new internal systems just as often as they do external, and it is still stable, so the people from there has probably been through a few rewrites of some infrastructure part and knows what are required for that to work.

[paulryanrogers]

For some definitions of 'stable'. As a user having to swap apps and lose functionality randomly makes it all feel very tenuous.

[endtime]

> coast along and leverage their past experience to not be dared questioned.

This has not been my experience at all.

[paulpauper]

Roblox's salary ranges from $140861 in total compensation ... Levels.fyi collects anonymous and verified salaries from current and former employees of Roblox.

does not seem like fu to me

[SkittlesNTwix]

That's $140k for an administrative assistant. Look at the software engineering roles. IC1 starts at $234k and goes significantly upwards from there.

[outside415]

They pay very well for senior roles . Like $700k+ tc

[Mistletoe]

Beginning to see how they aren’t profitable…

[ryandrake]

Every company pays well when you look only at the very top of the engineering pyramid where there are fewer people.

[outside415]

I am talking like IC-5/6. Senior / Staff level.

[skeeter2020]

what's " + tc"?

[iosjunkie]

I'm reading that as $700,000 or more total compensation.

[rvba]

What's total compensation?

Doea this mean 700k base salary (real cash) + bonus (stock options)?

On a side note, do senior engineers get company cars?

[dflock]

Total Compensation

[MuffinFlavored]

> SBC

stock-based compensation