Calculating Total Comp on levels

grant in

Data Scientist 3 months ago

It occurs to me that levels.fyi reports the total compensation of submissions as a simple addition of the annual salary, Stock value, and the bonus.

Isn't this a bit of a misrepresentation? Most community members probably interpret this a the "value" earned per year by this individual, but stocks are often vested over a certain schedule, usually ~4 years, so it would be more appropriate to report the total compensation as the total stock value divided by the number of years it would take to fully vest. Similarly, it's not clear whether the bonuses are one-time sign-on bonuses or recurring annual bonuses.

Am I the only one who wishes the data was clearer and easier to read in this way?

1322

zuhayeerFounder at Levels.fyi3 months ago

Hi, we can definitely work on communicating this better, but we actually do collect the total grant / vesting schedule to calculate the annual stock value. We also specify that the bonus value displayed is the annual recurring bonus summed together with 1/4th of the sign-on bonus (to annualize it). We are working on separately showing fields like the sign on bonus as well.

We show a visualization of the breakdown prior to submitting on the compensation form itself: https://levels.fyi/salaries/add

zuhayeerFounder at Levels.fyi3 months ago

All that to say, the total compensation you're looking at is the actual yearly value.

Calculating Total Comp on levels

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