- RSUs are taxable at vest, and if the shares aren't liquid, offloading enough of them to pay taxes is a huge headache (sometimes the company will help buy some back, but it's also a headache for a startup to do this, so they often don't)
- Stock options are "cheaper" for a startup to give out than RSUs, so you get more shares, ie your equity is higher-leverage. So if things go well, you end up with much much more money than had you gotten RSUs (and yes obviously if things go terribly, you get nothing).
> Stock options are "cheaper" for a startup to give out than RSUs, so you get more shares, ie your equity is higher-leverage. So if things go well, you end up with much much more money than had you gotten RSUs (and yes obviously if things go terribly, you get nothing).
Is this generally true? I’m not sure it applies for the typical engineer joining a larger company (a Databricks or Stripe, say) where you’re not really affecting the cap table all that much. Do companies really give out more options than RSUs?
My one personal piece of anecdata here is when considering an offer from a startup (that I didn’t take), they offered during negotiations to change the mix of RSU+options into just all RSUs (same total number).
- Stock options are "cheaper" for a startup to give out than RSUs, so you get more shares, ie your equity is higher-leverage. So if things go well, you end up with much much more money than had you gotten RSUs (and yes obviously if things go terribly, you get nothing).