[dredmorbius]

Bonuses, and especially stock or option grants, can be difficult to reasonably evaluate. If you're at a large company, forsee staying there through your vesting period, and the stock value is reasonably stable, it's rather more a sure thing.

Being an early/mid stage hire at a startup with a high probability for failure, transition, or dramatic restructuring may well make both bonus and options grant promises little more than wallpaper.

And for a typical young engineer starting out with little experience in either negotiating such terms or understanding how they work and the associated probabilities, making a rational and accurate assessment is at best difficult.

So: no, they're not something you'd completely ignore, but (as with other forms of indirect payment, compensation, revenue, etc.) they make determining fair market price rather more difficult.