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I have a verbal offer for Staff Software Engineer in Ripple in the UK. Base £130 Bonus 20% Options: 13000, Strike Price 20. Currently in Amazon, L6. Been told in Performance review I’m knocking L7 door in a year. I’m finding it hard to reasonably evaluate the Options value. Got informal info from rec that a recent tender offer was ~60. That puts the option value at $520k over 4 years, I don’t buy it. Any good souls working at Ripple, care to DM me? #ripple
Then why do you want to leave Amazon
Mostly just the structure of the comp and not the comp itself. Base is just £95k. Long story short - there’s too many moving parts in Amazon comp. Increasingly tired of getting the comp “one year out”. I could launch a rocket this week. I’ll only be baked into my 2026 comp. No protection against downside. But 15% mark up for stocks that vest the following year, and another 15 the next. The way I look at this, the comp is good at the current valuation, being realistic it’ll most likely saturate or go down next year. If it stays I lose 15% of my stock value. If it goes down i lose 15% + whatever. Been L6 for just over 3 years now, all with decent ratings, have suffered a pay cut all three years. It took a record-breaking quarter in Amazon to make up for it in 2024.
Regarding options, I would evaluate the liquidity and the price on secondary markets; not only the tender offer info. https://www.reuters.com/technology/ripple-buy-back-285-million-its-shares-valuing-company-11-bln-sources-2024-01-10/ Tender offers are not guaranteed in the future and they can be oversubscribed which means that in this example you’d be selling less than the % suggested in the article. Regarding the role, I would verify your manager’s / skip’s / skip+ ‘s credentials : it is likely that they are all from Amazon.
Oh wow that’s a good shout. I thought the % restriction was only for institutional investors. Do you mind if I DM you? Just looking for a couple of more details.
I won’t share anything that’s not public information. You can ask the recruiter about liquidity options or other compensation details. The idea with equity in startups is to weight your best and worst case scenarios to evaluate risk. You’ll also have a 1 year cliff. Do you get a sign on?
Which org are you joining?
Ask the recruiter how much percentage on the vested stock was bought by the company during the last tender. companies tend to inflate the price a lot to show growth but end up buying way less from employees. U could end up in getting peanuts. Recruiters generally hide those details. They all project the price but not the percentage buy back.
As with most pre-ipo companies assume your equity is worth $0. Then decide whether the opportunity you are being presented is worth it. Scenarios like getting a significant level and pay bump or outsized scope that will help level up your career might make it worth it. However if cash in hand is important then you might be better off targeting public or private companies with clear IPO path.
How much are you making at Amazon?
Inflated TC £220 with stock surge. On paper £185.