Risk adjustment is definitely appropriate, but I think the author is being conservative even with this in mind.
You're right that "Senior" is still mid-level, but the author is being conservative.
The reality at a healthy, profitable company is something like this: $250k being the "total comp" for someone is a T5 seems right to me, even adjusting for risk. A T5 at Google, Facebook, or Apple is likely earning much more than this as their stock from 4 years ago is vesting at a much higher price than it was granted at.
150k guaranteed comp, 25k bonus, 75k vesting equity is low for the companies w/ equity run-ups in the past several years, in my opinion. Also worth noting -- the bonus is basically guaranteed. It can be much higher if you get very good performance ratings.
The author also didn't include 401k matching (about 8.5k there), free offsites to go skiing or go to Vegas (w/ team trips to Hawaii not unheard of for high profile, long-term projects), generous medical/dental/vision benefits, free food, free gyms, matching charitable donations...
And IDK if it's just my team, I don't see people working extremely long hours.
You're totally right that you're at the mercy of stock prices in some regard -- but it works in two directions. Both FB and GOOG have gone up something like 150% in the past 5 years. So if someone got an initial stock grant of 200k vesting over 4 years, last year that 50k at vest time was more like 100k. Meanwhile they've gotten subsequent equity refresh grants -- the actual equity comp might be more like 200k, not 75k.
> 150k guaranteed comp, 25k bonus, 75k vesting equity is low for the companies w/ equity run-ups in the past several years, in my opinion.
You're right, assuming that everything continues as it has. Nothing is guaranteed; that 150k can vanish in a puff of smoke through no fault of your own, and take all your unvested comp along with it.
> the bonus is basically guaranteed.
No, it is not. Many, many people will tell you of their time spent at BigCo when the economy is not booming, and after the free donuts, the first thing that goes is the bonus. You have to read the bonus plan very carefully to understand how it's computed. It's quite possible that your bonus at Facebook or whatever depends solely on your own rating, but at most companies that's just the final multiplier and all kinds of other things have to happen in order for the bonus pool to exist at all. In even mild headwinds, it's likely that only a part of the expected bonus will be paid, and not unusual for there to be none at all. Furthermore, the bonus plan is usually determined one year at a time, so the fact that whatever needed to happen this year for everyone to be paid at 100% did happen is no guarantee that the criteria in next year's plan will be satisfied.
Do not assume that the future looks exactly like the recent past. It is certainly possible that the near future will be even better than the recent past, but at least some kind of mean reversion is a hell of a lot more likely. I predict that very few people will end up receiving as much total cash for their work over the next 5 years as their simplistic and rosy-eyed calculations of today would indicate.
You're right that "Senior" is still mid-level, but the author is being conservative.
The reality at a healthy, profitable company is something like this: $250k being the "total comp" for someone is a T5 seems right to me, even adjusting for risk. A T5 at Google, Facebook, or Apple is likely earning much more than this as their stock from 4 years ago is vesting at a much higher price than it was granted at.
150k guaranteed comp, 25k bonus, 75k vesting equity is low for the companies w/ equity run-ups in the past several years, in my opinion. Also worth noting -- the bonus is basically guaranteed. It can be much higher if you get very good performance ratings.
The author also didn't include 401k matching (about 8.5k there), free offsites to go skiing or go to Vegas (w/ team trips to Hawaii not unheard of for high profile, long-term projects), generous medical/dental/vision benefits, free food, free gyms, matching charitable donations...
And IDK if it's just my team, I don't see people working extremely long hours.
You're totally right that you're at the mercy of stock prices in some regard -- but it works in two directions. Both FB and GOOG have gone up something like 150% in the past 5 years. So if someone got an initial stock grant of 200k vesting over 4 years, last year that 50k at vest time was more like 100k. Meanwhile they've gotten subsequent equity refresh grants -- the actual equity comp might be more like 200k, not 75k.