For those of you who have been at Snap long enough to know the answer to this, what do annual equity refreshers and salary bumps look like at the company as a % of base salary or % of initial grant amount? Talking to a friend who is considering an offer that comes with $1M equity, which makes his potential Year 4 income look great, but he'd be making less all-in in Year 1 than he's currently making at FB. He is also wondering if that means his earnings will fall off a cliff in Year 5 compared to Year 4. Anyone have any insight on this?
All the refreshers used to be back-weighted just like initial stock grant. So, you need to stay longer to get something out of it.
Snap is new to refreshers and performance bonus company wide. Policy was implemented in 2016. Snap doesn't operate on a % basis they're discretionary on company performance and individual performance. Snap will reward the top 20%+ of eng with significant performance bonus. Each engineer is eligible for refreshers at 2 years employment and the amount is sizable meant to retain employees for the long term. Keep in mind these values change over time based on performances so I can't quote exactly how much. After two years the equity refresh is yearly. Lastly Snap promotes quickly (quarterly reviews) and you receive higher amounts at each level. Levels are egalitarian meaning salary and base are non negotiable. Everyone joining at said-L receives the same amount. Recruiters have some flex on sign on amounts. They're often transparent about this flexibility and is baked into the decision process. Lastly the strategy is to pay employees substantially more if they stay for 4+ years compared to competitors. We reward tenure. Happy to answer more
Does Snap gives yearly merit increases like most tech companies? If so are they uniform across all employees for a level?
Refreshers are every 24 months, did he/she not get the details from the recruiter?
The refreshers are 10-20-30-40 and are 1/3 the size of the new hire grant. They're in theory issued yearly starting after 2 years. If you do math and add them up the equity would be less in year 5 than year 4, and then flatten out, but year 5-8 would actually be less than 1-4 assuming no promotion, even if you get all refresher which isn't clear. However, there is significant confusion internally about who gets refreshers and how often, it seems that everyone has heard a different story. For sure not everyone gets a refresher, no one knows the exact percentage.
Probably not a good idea to reveal all of our comp plan details to a bunch of fb employees on this app. But yeah we pay really well and if you are taking the risk, 2017 is the time to join because of how equity is granted based on price. Worst case scenario you can go back to fb and make the world an even more connected place π
If your comp plan pays well (better than FB/Goog), it might benefit you to reveal the details to a "bunch of fb employees on this app" because you'd have a better chance at recruiting some good talent over to Snap (esp on the infra side). And it's pretty clear that the details haven't been communicated clearly to some of the employees (yourself excluded). Sounds like things are still being figured out on the comp side long term, but pay is very good in Years 3-4 (and potentially Years 1-2 if you can negotiate a large sign-on bonus).
I will say is it's a *very* good idea for a fb employee to go get a snap offer. We usually don't get the employee if you're a star at FB because fb makes insane counter offers for ppl considering snap (it gets escalated). I've heard stories about zuck bringing employees into their office to personally make the counter offer and convince them he's going to crush us. So, do apply :)
Is the 2 year equity refresher for everyone or only certain employees?
Ask for signing bonus to make 1st year same. He should just stay at fb seeing as how his fourth year income at fb will also be more than he's probably estimating