19g6xktuhutm8 in
Business Development
How is total compensation calculated?
I came across this article that is the only documentation I could find on how levels.fyi calculates compensation displayed on their website but it does not answer following: as I see the comp in a tech company is made up of following 5 items:
- the base salary
- sign-on RSU
- sign-on bonus
- ongoing RSU as part of annual performance review
- ongoing bonus as part of annual performance review
How does level.fyi reduce these 5 items to the 3 they display on their website?
- base salary - understood
- RSU
- bonus

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zuhayeerFounder at Levels.fyi
We think of submissions as snapshots in time. There are two main categories of submissions:
- New Offers
- Existing Employees
For new offers, we take your base salary, average annualized RSU value, and annualized bonuses. For bonuses, we annualize the sign on bonus across a typical 4 year vesting period and sum it with your target bonus.
For existing employees making a submission, we ask for base salary, value of the stock vesting that year (as you would report on your W2), and your annual bonuses for that year. These submissions would also specify the number of years the submitter has spent at this company (which you can filter by on the site).
Each submission can also be expanded individually on the site to see the breakdown of the components. We also have a lot of work in progress. We're working on allowing users to toggle between first year total compensation as well as annualized total compensation calculations so you can make the choice. We're also working on tracking ongoing pay changes for users under their profiles part of their compensation progressions. This would include salary bumps, stock grant refreshers, and bonuses so that you can track adjustments and promotions better. Hope that helps, and I also like to point folks to our form so you can see the fields / inputs yourself: https://levels.fyi/salaries/add
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19g6xktuhutm8Business Development
Thanks zuhayeer. Would it be possible to write a blog post that explains the calculations with some formulas? Let
a = base salary
b = sign on RSU
c = sign on bonus
d = ongoing RSU
e = ongoing bonus
based on your response when a user submits their comp you either get (a, b, c) (New Offer) or (a, d, e) (Existing Employees). How does this translate to the 3 numbers you show. Base salary is understood. how are the other two items calculated? I think it would be really helpful to provide two views - the comp someone can expect as part of new offer (this is mostly what users are interested in and should come from new offers) and the ongoing comp for existing employees.
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