Does the compensation listed on YC jobs include stock converted to cash?<p>For example, Retool (https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/retool) claims to be paying $600k to someone with 6 years experience. I find this hard to believe.
For late-stage startups like this, RSUs are common instead of options. Because stock is issued rather than purchased (like an option), I don't think this is dishonest. (If a company valuation stays flat, stock options are worthless - but RSUs have value).<p>Either way: A thing to keep an eye out for is startups that describe the compensation value of stock using the preferred stock price, but then issue you common stock. I've personally seen one late-stage YC company doing this - you sign the offer letter with $Xk in stock, then the paperwork shows up later with $(X/4)k in the grant.<p>If a late-stage startup is including stock-based compensation in this number, I think it's likely they are pricing the stock inconsistent with its class in the 409a valuation. Keep an eye out for this - I think it's a common and dishonest way to boost perceived compensation.
This is an attainable, but uncommon, TC for someone who joined F/G right out of college and got many promotions very quickly (much more attainable at F than G). At 6yoe even higher TCs are possible at certain financial firms.<p>So it’s not-impossible that this is a non-appreciated offer designed to compete with/recruit away from such compensation.
Keep in mind that the law only requires salary to be listed. Large companies typically only list salary, because it helps them hide the true compensation numbers.
In my startup we track another number in order to normalize our compensation.<p>We do a quick "expected valuation" calculation on the share price and use that, instead of the 409a or the valuation. This is how I actually value it in my own head, so we just kind of canonicalize.<p>example: I think there's a 1% chance 1billion a 5% chance we make 100M. A 40% chance we make 20M. So that's a 23M and then I calculate the value of an option based on that.<p>Using that, I can then try to "match" a salary from a public company. So we set our comp as 80% of the google levels.fyi data. (Chose google bc it has the fullest levels.fyi data).<p>This gives us a full compensation benchmark for any roles / levels. ie a Sr engineers makes 263k. But we pay 140 in cash and 123k in equity.<p>Then I can explain to an engineer. We feel like we're paying you as well as you would be paid at google, but you need to believe that we have a 1% chance at a billion. 5% chance at 100M etc. They can easily tweak these expectations too so they can compare offers. If they think there is a zero percent chance of 1B they can adjust the offer themselves in their head.
Opportunistically chiming in :)<p>I lead engineering here at Retool -- reach out to snir (at) retool if you're interested in learning more! We're hiring across several key roles, including AI, performance, our core products, and infra.