Do you prefer sign on bonus up front or spread out?
As some people know, Amazon back-loads stock awards with a weird vesting schedule. To stay competitive they offer large sign on bonuses to keep the first 2 years compensation competitive.
In my case the bonus payout is spread out over 2 years, so it just looks and acts like my salary is doubled in terms of each paycheck.
From an Econ 101 perspective I know the time-value-money computation means it's worth slightly less to me and balances out the employer's finances a little bit in their favor. But psychologically, I actually prefer seeing the nice paycheck every 2 weeks, and I don't have to stress about paying anything back if I leave.
In 2 years if I'm still around and stock starts vesting, my bi-weekly paycheck will get cut in half, and I'll start stressing about counting down to each vesting date. Even if the stock stays strong and the total comp is great, I know from past experience I'll still stress about it.
I guess this might sound silly and irrational to a lot of people but I value psychological health more than giant payouts.
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The stock vesting schedule alone makes a $250k FB offer slightly more valuable than a $250k AMZN offer, assuming other components of TC are identical. In reality they're not because of the Y1-2 bonus at AMZN, which is offered specifically because their stock vesting schedule makes a given TC worth less than a company that vests evenly over 4 years.