Ask HN: Are RSUs worth your loyalty?

[mutaaf]

I have been in the industry for quite sometime and received many different benefits from all types of employers. RSUs have been one way I determine my job security or lack thereof. What benefits or lack thereof do RSUs have for Engineers or Engineering Leaders?

[mabbo]

You should think of RSUs no differently than you think of your paychecks.

There is a scheduled date (every 2 weeks for my paycheck, every 6 months for my RSUs) where I will be given some <money> dollars if I am still working here. I will pay income tax on that income. One is in the form of money and the other is in the form of stocks, but really you should sell those stocks and buy something more stable and not tied to your employer.

If you quit or get fired, you won't get your paychecks on the days you expected to in the future. Nor will you get your RSU vests. Same thing. Just bigger numbers and lower frequency for one of them, with some additional variability in amounts.

They aren't golden handcuffs. They aren't job security or threats. They're just pay to keep you working, like anything else.

edit: I lost a word or two.

[lnanek2]

Aren't RSUs the opposite of job security? If you get fired or leave before they vest, you lose them. In the bay area they are often called golden handcuffs because developers halfway through their 4 year term often have another million in RSUs vesting, so can't go leave and work on their friend's awesome startups and the like, since the startups can't afford to match the compensation.

[ryandrake]

Look at it this way: say you make $100k per year. This means you’ve got $1M coming over 10 years! If you leave after 2 years, do you feel like you are giving up $800k?probably not. So why not think of RSUs the same way?

That’s how I think of RSUs: they aren’t yours until they vest: they’re just like future pay, so you’re not really giving anything up if you leave “early”.

[mrbonner]

The first few years (2 or 3 in my case), is tough. You don’t get any more RSU hence you need to stick with it. After that period, I got awarded more every performance review. So, the vested schedule is bearable but I still feel it is a golden handcuff. If I quit I would lose any unvested shares (1-2 years from now).

[calypso]

Would this only be a problem if they vest in non-uniform quantities? At the company (Shopify) I work for they vest in even amounts over 4 years but you have to wait 1 year to get 1/4 of them then every quarter after that.

[dominotw]

> have another million in RSUs vesting

I would gladly wear these handcuffs :D

[qeternity]

If you get fired, unless it qualifies under some due cause, the options should immediately vest.

[matmann2001]

RSUs are a decent way of aligning company success with employee success. But there's plenty of pitfalls with RSUs too.

1) From an investment risk perspective, your personal livelihood is already significantly tied to the company because you rely on the company for a salary. Holding a significant chunk (relative to your total investments) of stock in your company as well adds to that risk.

2) Unless you're a C-suite exec, your actions will likely have no direct impact on the stock price. And obviously, insider trading is illegal. That means holding your own company's stock has no fundamental advantage over holding stock of a company you don't work for. If that's the case, you're better off picking stocks based on actual performance and eliminate the personal bias.

3) You can sell your RSUs once they vest in order to diversify, but you have to wait a year after vesting or short term gains tax will apply to any gains post-vesting. So, it might be advantageous to wait a year if you don't plan to sell immediately upon vesting. Also, with some companies, a portion of your shares will be surrendered back to the company to cover income tax on the shares.

4) From a tax filing perspective, RSUs and ESPPs can be a PITA. In my experience, tax software and general tax filing services often don't know how to correctly record the cost basis, which means you end up getting taxed twice if you don't know what you're doing.

5) When cash is tight, companies might lean more heavily on RSU-based compensation if they can't afford raises or cash bonuses. You need to make sure your company is giving you what you need.

6) The golden handcuff effect. You want to leave for a better job, but you've got a nice chunk of RSUs that haven't vested yet and could be worth quite a bit in just a couple more years. Is that new job worth the opportunity cost of giving up those shares? For companies that award RSUs as part of yearly performance reviews, you're pretty much always going to have some RSUs that are 3 years out from vesting. It's just difficult weighing the potential value of RSUs vs a new job's salary/benefits and whatever reasons you wanted to jump ship in the first place. It's very personal math and ultimately you have to determine an answer for yourself.

[alex_young]

> 3) You can sell your RSUs once they vest in order to diversify, but you have to wait a year after vesting or short term gains tax will apply.

This is incorrect. RSUs, once vested, are taxed as income, and any gains or losses from the day they vest are treated as any other stock would be from that day on. There is no tax benefit in holding on to them rather than selling and diversifying.

This detail makes RSUs equivalent to income from an employee's perspective, and offers no incentive alignment post vesting IMHO.

[mrbonner]

#3 is incorrect. If you choose to “sell all” when vested instead of “sell to cover” then the RSU award will be just ordinary income. If you sell to cover and then sell the remaining vested RSU within a year (sans insider trading rule) any profit will be taxed as short-term gain.

[fatnoah]

>4) From a tax filing perspective, RSUs and ESPPs can be a PITA. In my experience, tax software and general tax filing services often don't know how to correctly record the cost basis, which means you end up getting taxed twice if you don't know what you're doing.

Oh boy, this is a thing I have to watch out for every year. Even better are the inserts that come with my tax statements from the brokerages which state things in a very confusing way.

[mcfunk]

nicely explained!

[bduerst]

RSUs are golden handcuffs.

You'll continually get a raise each year and a portion of that will be new RSUs that vest over the next four years. If you ever want to leave, that continually means leaving a substantial amount of money on the table. Thankfully some companies will give you a hiring bonus equal to your unvested RSUs though (edit: the big tech companies poaching from each other will sometimes do it, for those asking).

As with all things labor related, RSUs are transactional. "Loyalty" shouldn't play into it because a large publicly traded corporation can only be so loyal to every one of it's employees.

[throw2773sgge]

> Thankfully some companies will give you a hiring bonus equal to your unvested RSUs though

Do you have any company names? Also, any numbers from your experience? I’d be quite happy to join pretty much anything for a 600K+ signing bonus.

[maxwellg]

> Thankfully some companies will give you a hiring bonus equal to your unvested RSUs though

I've never head of this before. Seems like 2-3 years of RSUs could easily be over $1 million for someone later in their career. A $1 million signing bonus would be insane.

[crmrc114]

Oh it gets even better! If you work for a nicely performing stock like a FAANG you can encounter this gem:

(Simple Round Numbers) 1. Get Base 100k + RSU 100k over 4 years 2. You work hard, company does better, yay! 3. Stock goes up RSUs now = 200k 4. I am sorry we cannot give you a raise because your total compensation = (Base+All RSUs) is over out allowable funding for your role. No raise for you! But keep up the good work! 5. Anytime yet get stock #3 happens... you get stuck with a low base and monopoly money.

Try getting a bank to give you a loan with a huge RSU number... it can be done, but oh my god what a PITA.

[apexkid]

I disagree with anyone saying that RSU's are ideal way to get employees invested in a company's success. In practice, total compensation for an employee is decided by market value of that employee. If RSUs shoot up, you will get lesser base pay, if they go down you will end up getting higher base pay in next appraisal cycle. Your salary might be inflated or underflated (for lack of a better word) for a while but in long term the company will balance it out with market standards.

If you think of RSUs as an investment, then its a different game. However, it is no different than owning stock on NASDAQ. You can get rich if you buy the right stock.

Hence, my perspective. All cash better than RSU. If you wanna buy stocks then just buy from stock exchange of whichever company you want.

Caveat: For startups where you get equity this argument doesn't hold true. There the startup might end up a unicorn and you make ton of money.

[SubuSS]

The problem being I can't think of a single company that offers an all cash deal even close to the FAANG offers (or pre-ipo offers in one of the unicorns).

Even a bunch of giant companies like HBO/Samsung etc. got priced out for the same reason at least in a few cases I know.

[didibus]

RSU's aren't as good a deal as the equivalent worth in salary, but are a better deal than a lower salary, unless the company stock tanks.

They allow the business to transfer some of the risk from them to you. Basically a kind of I'll pay you more if I can.

Think of it as, I'll pay you X dollars now, and in 4 years, I'll pay you an additional Y dollars * how much I can afford, unless you no longer work here. Where "how much I can afford" is basically the stock price.

It's better than the same salary without RSU. It's worse than a higher salary of equal worth. For anything in between, it depends on your risk tolerance and when you'll need the money.

[ThrustVectoring]

RSUs are worth very slightly more than straight cash compensation due to the optionality. Your compensation will go up and down as the underlying stock moves, and you are allowed to switch jobs when the stock price moves downwards.

[ozten]

RSUs are worth more due to tax implications?

I'd rather have a dollar now versus the equivalence of a dollar in a stock which is unavailable for up to 4 years...

Even if your companies stock is out performing the market, I'd rather have a dollar now to buy company stock and keep my mobility.

Employees need to be careful to diversify their portfolio. A dollar today can be put in any type of investment, whereas RSUs can lead to folks having too much of their egg nest in one basket.

[tanderson92]

You still lost that money though, the optionality isn't worth anything because you gain nothing on the RSUs by switching jobs.

[jiveturkey]

An odd question. RSUs are part of TC, that's it. It is completely unrelated to job security. What has led you to think that there is a relationship?

[mutaaf]

There are a finite # of RSUs which management can distribute to high performers or valuable team members vested over a period of employment time. Here’s why I feel like job security is oddly related, why would the organization want you tied to them for that vesting period if they did not value you or your efforts or want you there for that period?

[agentofoblivion]

I have one of the happier cases perhaps. At time of hire, my target comp was around $160k, RSUs were backloaded to mainly vest in years 3 and 4. I’m now in those years, and stock has risen a lot. Now I’m making more like $230k. Sure, they used that once to not give me a big raise, but I got promoted once with a 25% raise and it’s hard to complain when I’m bringing home far more than I would have thought. So RSUs can be good.

[deepaksurti]

Your loyalty is to doing your job to the best of your ability and trying to improve as much as is realistic, assuming all other things being equal by which I summarily mean you don't work in a toxic place.

As for RSU's, as others have mentioned, it is great to think of it as additional money and base everything on your base pay (pun unitended). Never sign up for a job where your base pay may vary based on RSU grants, I am surprised to read something to that effect on this thread.

As for job security, I don't think it is a function of your role, salary base pay or stock grants. It is a function of market dynamics and how your company is doing well in the space it operates in, so it is our job to keep an eye on that. If you see winds of change that may hurt you, one better ensure not getting caught in the crossfire.

So I think it is better to be loyal to your own career and the good side effect of that is being loyal to your role and hence your current employer!

[al_chemist]

"A restricted stock unit (RSU) is compensation issued by an employer to an employee in the form of company stock."

[avionicsguy]

@al_chemist Thank you! Between software frameworks and embedded systems engineering...oh hell just being in tech. in general there are way too many acronyms. Thank you for actually listing the definition! :-)

[zaptheimpaler]

RSUs are worth more than cash if you're optimistic about the stock and worth less if you're pessimistic. Over the last 10 years they've probably been worth a lot more than cash if you held on instead of selling, but no one knows about the next 10.

[frank2]

I disagree that RSUs can be worth significantly more than cash because the recipient of the cash can use the cash to buy (unrestricted) stock units if he or she is optimistic about the stock.

[pcmaffey]

I wonder. If you took the average value of all RSU/options granted over the past 10 years in tech, I'd venture to guess the number would be closer to 0 than not.

[makecheck]

I treat them as being worth $0, as an unexpected bonus. In other words, determine what you can “afford” (rent, etc.) based on NOT seeing a penny from an RSU.

There is no way to be exactly sure what they will be worth. Stock prices not only go up and down but the “long term” (lower tax) date to sell them is even further away. Even well-known companies see major shifts in stock value.

RSUs are also a different “class” of stock typically, meaning that in the event of a catastrophe your shares are not at the top of the list. Company goes under? More important investors get their payouts first, your shares may be worth literally zero. Less if you believe in lost opportunity costs, etc.

[Kirby64]

At a publicly traded company, RSUs are definitely not worth $0 and shouldn't be treated as such. I agree you shouldn't base their value at some arbitrary inflated number and should live within your means, but if you truly think RSUs are worth $0, then you also think the company is going to go under (or you get fired) before they vest.

I typically value them at some percentage of the current value of the stock (less than 100%) depending on the company. For most signing bonus RSUs you're getting some of them after a year anyways. That's not a long time to wait, so risk/opportunity cost is low.

At a startup or some privately traded company, yeah sure. Their value is effectively $0.

[SamWhited]

Money (or options, RSUs, or other potential gamble that you'll get money) are handcuffs, you can't be loyal to someone who has you in handcuffs, even very nice ones (unless they're the fun fuzzy kind maybe, but that's a different situation).

Save your loyalty for a nice non-profit or co-op doing some good thing that you feel passionate about in your community, just give your employer your time until such a time as things change and you feel it's no longer worth it.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

I view them more as golden handcuffs than security or loyalty. They factor into the opportunity cost of considering new opportunities external to your current employer. A new job will not only have to match your base, but give you an equal amount of stock, or an even larger base salary.

[paxys]

RSUs are the best feature of the tech industry for me. It is the ideal way to get employees invested in a company's success, and the best way to share that success with those who made it happen.

[sys_64738]

You'll know your worth to the company by how little they give you for RSUs.

[dmak]

How is the volatility nature of RSUs indicative of job security?

[30Hayekliam]

hack shiwo