Google and FB refreshers
To fellow engineers at Google and Facebook, are you always guaranteed a stock refresher grant every year (assuming normal performance)? And if so, do they always vest equally over 4 years each time?
Guaranteed for "meets most expectations" and above. Formulaic based on role, level, and ratings. Always vests equally over 4 years with no cliff.
Are there companies where yearly refreshes are pretty much “expected”?
New employees at google don’t get a refresher unless they do better than meets and up to their managers discretion. The cutoff is beginning of the year. There are some exceptions but this is up to managers discretion. The size of the grant is also up to manager discretion so you may get much less than someone at same level and same rating who happened to join right before the end of the year. Morale of the story, join before cutoff.
Year 4 is the dream year for most senior employees. Typically you want to get promoted to L6/E6 at end of 4th year to ensure you continue making awesome comp
You need to get promoted at yr 2 or 3 otherwise you still would face some pay cut
Quick note here: Levels at FB and GOOG don’t match laterally. Lots of post on Blind say levels at FB and GOOG are the same for ICs but they are not in my case. My stock refresh at FB was same to my stock refresh at GOOG, only difference is my Level at FB = Level+1 at GOOG for same perf ratings over year.
Couldn't understand "my Level at FB = Level+1 at GOOG". Your level at FB us higher but you are still getting same refreshers as G?
What are the levels exactly, I will be surprised if this is true past senior software engineer
So you’ll technically will have an outsized amount of stock vesting at year 4 due to initial grant + 3 refreshes? That seems very generous?
My 4 year cliff came last year and my income went from 600k to 400k. Yep, crazy generous.