Your Total Compensation Has Five Numbers. The Recruiter Read You One.

You get the call. The recruiter says a number. You write it down, nod along, and spend the rest of the day telling your friends your new salary. You've already mentally bought the furniture.

That number is your base salary. It's what you'd make if the stock went to zero, the bonus got canceled, every extra program quietly disappeared, and the company decided sign-on bonuses were for suckers. It's the floor. The absolute minimum.

For a mid-level engineer at a large tech company, base salary is typically 50 to 60 percent of what they actually make. At the senior level it can drop below half. The recruiter reads you the floor, and you negotiate from there. If you don't know what the ceiling looks like, you're negotiating blind while the other side holds the blueprints.

Only One Number Is Guaranteed

Every tech offer shares the same structure, even if the numbers vary by orders of magnitude.

Base salary is the only truly fixed component. It hits every paycheck regardless of company performance, stock price, or how your manager feels about your quarterly contributions to the Jira backlog. This is what you can actually plan around.

Annual performance bonus is a target percentage of base, usually 10 to 20 percent at most tech companies. The key word is "target." A strong performer might get 100 percent of target, a top performer 120 to 150 percent, a struggling performer somewhere between 0 and "please don't ask." When a recruiter says "fifteen percent bonus," that's the midpoint. Not a floor.

Equity is where the large numbers live. At a public company, this is restricted stock units (RSUs). At a startup, stock options. A grant of $400,000 doesn't mean $400,000 next year. It means you'll receive that value over your vesting schedule, assuming the stock price holds, which is a pretty big assumption to build furniture around.

The sign-on bonus is one-time cash to offset what you're leaving behind. It has a hidden string attached, covered below. (It's a good string. You should read it.)

Benefits are the line items most candidates handwave past: 401(k) matching, healthcare, employee stock purchase plans, commuter stipends. A 6 percent 401(k) match at a $200,000 base is $12,000 in additional compensation every year. It never appears in the recruiter's headline number. It also never appears in the conversation unless you ask.

RSUs Are Simple. Stock Options Are a Bet.

At a public company, RSUs are straightforward. You receive shares on a schedule. They vest, you own them, you can sell them. No exercise cost. You're taxed on the fair market value at each vesting event as ordinary income.

Most employers withhold taxes on RSU income at the IRS supplemental wage rate of 22 percent. This sounds fine until it isn't. If your total income puts you in the 32, 35, or 37 percent bracket, you're under-withheld on every single vest, and the gap becomes a tax bill you discover in April. The first big vest surprises a lot of engineers with a five-figure shortfall they were not tracking. Compute the gap and submit quarterly estimated payments each year you have meaningful equity income. Do not learn this lesson the way most people learn it.

Stock options at a startup work differently. You receive the right to purchase shares at a set price. Incentive stock options (ISOs) avoid ordinary income tax at exercise but can trigger the Alternative Minimum Tax on the spread. Non-qualified options are taxed as ordinary income at exercise on the full spread between market and strike price.

The right frame for startup equity: model your decision on base salary and treat the options as upside. Not because startups fail uniformly, but because the distribution is extremely skewed. Most startup equity never produces a dollar. Some does. You'll know which kind you have about four years from now.

The Vesting Schedule Changes Everything

The standard schedule is 25 percent per year over four years, with a one-year cliff. You get nothing until month 12, then 25 percent at that anniversary, then installments until month 48. Simple enough. Mostly standard. Except when it isn't.

"Standard" is not universal, and the differences compound.

Google uses approximately a 38/32/20/10 structure. Year one you vest 38 percent of your grant. Year four, 10 percent. The offer looks strong in year one. Year four looks lean. This is front-loaded vesting, designed to make the initial grant appear competitive while shifting real compensation weight toward annual refresher grants. By year three you're working hard for a refresher you haven't been promised.

Amazon goes the opposite direction: 5/15/40/40. Five percent in year one, 15 in year two, 40 in each of years three and four. If you leave after two years, you've received 20 percent of your grant, not 50. Amazon knows this, which is why their sign-on bonuses are structural, not additive. They compensate for lean early years. If you compare an Amazon offer to a Google offer by adding sign-on to year-one total compensation, you're doing the math wrong. The sign-on disappears in year two. See the Amazon interview guide for more on how this affects the hiring bar.

Build a four-year table for each offer. Write out what you'd actually receive, year by year, with sign-on as a one-time event and flat stock price assumed.

         Base   Bonus  Equity  Sign-On  Total
Year 1:  200k    20k    20k     50k     290k
Year 2:  200k    20k    60k      0k     280k
Year 3:  200k    20k   160k      0k     380k
Year 4:  200k    20k   160k      0k     380k
4-Year:  800k    80k   400k     50k    1330k

Two offers quoting the same recruiter total can have wildly different year-by-year cash flows. Build both tables before you compare anything. The offer that looks better on the phone might look worse at every dinner table for three years.

The Sign-On Has a Clawback, and the Math Is Worse Than You Think

Sign-on bonuses come with clawback clauses. Leave before the specified date, you pay it back. This is standard. What is not always standard is what you're paying back.

Two things to read before you sign.

The repayment amount. Many clawback clauses require you to repay the gross pre-tax number. If your sign-on was $50,000 and your effective rate is 37 percent, you took home roughly $31,500. If you trigger the clawback in month six, you owe $50,000, not $31,500. You'll recover the tax difference when you file, but the immediate cash flow problem is yours, not the company's, and it will feel very personal. Ask whether the repayment is gross or net, and push for net if the clause says gross.

The trigger condition. Some clawbacks activate on any departure, including layoffs. If the company eliminates your role in month 10, you could still owe the full bonus back. Ask whether the clause applies if you're terminated without cause. A "terminated without cause" carve-out is standard and reasonable to request. A prorated structure, where repayment decreases monthly, is also strictly better than a cliff. Both are worth negotiating before you sign, not after you've already deposited the check and redecorated.

The Benefits Hiding in the Fine Print

An Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) lets you buy company stock at a discount, typically 15 percent off market price. At qualified plans with a lookback provision, that discount applies to the lower of the stock price at the start or end of the purchase period. If the stock rose from $10 to $12 during the offering period, you buy at $8.50 (15 percent off the lower price of $10) while the current market value is $12. That's a 41 percent gain before holding the shares a single day.

The IRS caps ESPP contributions at $25,000 per year. If your employer offers a qualified plan with a lookback, max it out. It's as close to a guaranteed return as employment compensation produces. The number of engineers who work at companies with this benefit and don't use it is genuinely upsetting.

The 401(k) match varies more than candidates expect. Google matches up to roughly $9,750 annually. Meta matches 50 percent of the first 7 percent of salary. Netflix matches dollar-for-dollar up to 4 percent of base. At a $200,000 base, the difference between a 3 percent match and a 6 percent match is $6,000 per year in real compensation that never shows up in the offer letter. Ask for the specific formula. Then ask again if the answer sounds vague.

What Happens After Year Four?

Your initial RSU grant is gone. Vested. Sold (hopefully). Done. You're now entirely dependent on refresher grants your employer has awarded during your tenure, which means you're dependent on your performance ratings for the last four years.

Refreshers are new equity grants given at annual reviews, scaled to performance rating. Engineers who've been at a company for several years often have multiple overlapping grants stacking in a single year. Steady-state compensation at year five can be substantially higher than what you extrapolated from the initial grant. It can also stagnate if you're rated average for two or three consecutive cycles, which is not a fun conversation to have with your mortgage.

Ask a recruiter: "What does a refresher grant typically look like for someone at this level after a strong first year?" They may not give a specific number, but they should give a range. If they deflect entirely, treat refresher grants as zero in your base case and adjust your expectations accordingly.

How to Actually Compare Two Software Engineer Total Compensation Offers

Build the four-year model for each offer:

Cash: base plus sign-on in year one only
Equity: the actual vesting percentage for that year, not grant divided by four
Benefits: 401(k) match and ESPP value, estimated conservatively
Taxes: factor in state income tax if the roles are in different locations

Location matters more than most people account for. A $200,000 base in California, where state income tax reaches 13.3 percent, nets several thousand dollars less per year than the same number in Texas or Washington. That gap compounds on large RSU vests, which are taxed as ordinary income at the state rate where you live when the shares vest.

Equity from two different companies also carries different risk. A mature public company's RSUs are liquid the day they vest. A pre-IPO startup grant might vest on paper and stay illiquid for years. Both can be quoted as $400,000 on a term sheet, but one is cash and one is a lottery ticket.

Once you've built the tables, SpaceComplexity handles the technical interview side. The negotiation mechanics, which order to ask for what, and how to use competing offers are in the offer negotiation guide.

The Short Version

Base salary is the only fixed number. Everything else varies by performance, stock price, or tenure.
Equity grants don't divide evenly by four. Build the actual vesting schedule table for each offer.
RSU withholding defaults to 22 percent. If your marginal rate is higher, you owe the gap at tax time.
Amazon's 5/15/40/40 schedule means sign-ons compensate for lean early years. They're structural, not additive.
Front-loaded vesting (Google at 38/32/20/10) front-weights year one. Model all four.
Sign-on clawbacks may require gross repayment. Ask for net terms and a "terminated without cause" carve-out.
ESPP with lookback can yield 30 to 40 percent returns on contributions. Max the $25,000 annual limit.
401(k) match differences at the same base can add $6,000 or more per year.
Year-five compensation depends on refresher grants, not the offer letter. Ask explicitly.