bigtechcalc

Multi-offer projection engine

Big Tech Total Compensation Calculator

Project up to ten years of gross compensation across multiple offers. Models base salary, annual bonus, sign-on, an initial RSU grant and recurring annual refreshers with overlapping vesting tranches — under conservative, medium and aggressive share-price scenarios. Free PDF and Excel download, no signup.

Projection settings

Use calendar alignment only if the offers start in different years.
Crossover is measured against this offer.
Edit scenario assumptions

These are seeded assumptions, not forecasts. The medium 7%/yr share-price figure is a long-run broad-market nominal assumption and is not a projection for any specific company. Every value below is editable.

Lever Conservative Medium Aggressive
%/yr — the uncapped figure stays visible

Cumulative gross compensation

Medium scenario

Range under each card is conservative → aggressive. All figures are gross, before tax.

Cumulative gross by year

Annual composition

All offers shown side by side, up to 5 at a time.

Year-by-year detail

Equity tranche ledger

One row per vest event. Overlapping refreshers appear as separate concurrent grants, not as a rolling-window sum — this is what makes the projection auditable.

Crossover analysis

Unvested equity at horizon

Shares granted inside the horizon whose vest date falls after it. Excluded from the income totals above, but a real factor when comparing offers — leaving early forfeits them.

Download your projection

Both formats are free and ungated. The Excel file contains the complete tranche ledger and every input, so you can keep modelling offline.

How big tech compensation actually works

A total compensation package at a large technology employer usually has four moving parts: base salary, an annual cash bonus expressed as a percentage of base, a one-time sign-on bonus paid over the first year or two, and equity in the form of restricted stock units. For senior roles the equity is frequently the largest single component, and it is also the component that simple offer comparisons get wrong most often.

Why the fourth year matters more than the first

Your initial RSU grant vests over a fixed schedule — commonly four years. Separately, most large employers issue an annual refresher grant on top of whatever is still vesting. By the fourth year you typically have four grants vesting at once: the tail of the initial grant plus three refreshers. Equity income ramps steeply through years two to four and then plateaus.

This is why comparing offers on year-one total compensation is misleading. A front-loaded initial grant looks enormous in year one and contributes almost nothing by year five. A smaller grant paired with a generous refresher policy looks weaker on day one and wins decisively over a ten-year horizon. The crossover analysis in this calculator is built specifically to find the year where that reversal happens.

Grant size growth is not share price appreciation

These are two genuinely different things and conflating them is the most common modelling error we see. Grant size growth is the year-over-year increase in the dollar value of each new refresher grant — a compensation policy decision. Share price appreciation is what the stock itself does, which changes the value of shares you were already granted.

A model that only grows the grant size will report that a $400,000 grant pays out exactly $400,000 no matter what the stock does. That is wrong. RSUs are granted as a dollar value, immediately converted to a share count at the grant-date price, and then paid out in shares valued at whatever the price happens to be on each vest date. This calculator does that conversion explicitly, and keeps the two growth rates as separate inputs.

Vesting schedules, cliffs and first-vest timing

There is no single industry-standard vesting schedule, and published schedules change. The calculator ships with editable templates — even four-year, front-loaded, back-loaded, five-year, and quarterly with a one-year cliff — but you should enter what your own offer letter says rather than trusting a template. See how each shape actually pays out for a worked comparison.

First-vest timing deserves particular attention because it is often unstated and it moves the numbers materially. A grant whose first tranche vests in the grant year itself produces a very different year-one total from one whose first tranche vests twelve months later. The calculator makes this an explicit input rather than an assumption buried in a formula.

What this calculator does not do

  • No tax calculation. Every figure is gross. RSUs are ordinary income at vest, valued at the vest-date price. Statutory supplemental withholding is frequently below the marginal rate on large vests, which is a common source of unpleasant April surprises.
  • No cost-of-living or relocation adjustment. A number in Austin and the same number in the Bay Area are not the same number.
  • No 401(k) match, ESPP, or benefits valuation. These can be worth five figures a year and are not modelled here.
  • No volatility. The price path is a constant compound rate. Real share prices are not smooth, and the sequence of returns matters when tranches vest on fixed dates.

Glossary

RSU
Restricted stock unit. A promise to deliver shares on a future vest date, conditional on continued employment. Taxed as ordinary income at vest, at the vest-date price.
Initial grant
The one-time equity award attached to a new-hire offer, typically vesting over three to five years.
Refresher
An additional equity grant issued annually on top of unvested grants from prior years. Also called a top-up or annual equity refresh.
Cliff
A period at the start of a vesting schedule during which nothing vests. A one-year cliff means leaving at month eleven forfeits the entire grant.
Tranche
A single vest event within a grant — one row in the ledger. A four-year annual schedule produces four tranches per grant.
Vest date price
The share price on the day a tranche vests. This, not the grant-date price, determines what the tranche is worth and what you are taxed on.
Crossover year
The first year in which one offer's cumulative gross compensation overtakes another's.
Steady state
The point at which the number of grants vesting concurrently stops increasing — year four on a four-year schedule with annual refreshers.

Frequently asked questions

How do overlapping RSU refreshers work?
Most large technology employers grant a new RSU refresher each year on top of the grants still vesting from prior years. On a four-year schedule with annual refreshers, four separate grants are vesting simultaneously once you reach steady state, usually in year four. Total equity income ramps for the first three or four years and then plateaus. This calculator builds an explicit tranche ledger with one row per grant, so you can see each concurrent grant separately rather than relying on a rolling-window formula that is easy to get wrong.
Does the calculator account for share price growth?
Yes. Grant dollars are converted to a share count at the grant-date price, then each vesting tranche is valued at the projected price for its vest year. Grant-size growth and share-price appreciation are separate inputs because they are separate things.
What are the conservative, medium and aggressive scenarios?
Three sets of assumptions covering share-price appreciation, merit increase, bonus payout multiplier, refresher grant growth, and how long refreshers continue. Every value is editable. The seeded medium share-price figure of 7%/yr is a long-run broad-market nominal assumption, not a forecast for any specific company.
Are the numbers before or after tax?
Gross, before any tax. RSUs are ordinary income at vest at the vest-date price, and are typically subject to statutory supplemental withholding that may sit below your marginal rate. Your take-home will be materially lower than the totals shown.
Is the calculator free and does it require an account?
Free, with no account, email address or signup. PDF and Excel exports are also free and ungated. All calculation happens in your browser — your offer details are never sent to a server.
Can I use trailing stock performance to set the growth rate?
You can look up a ticker's trailing one-year and five-year performance and see it displayed next to the appreciation input as context. It is deliberately not applied automatically. Past performance does not indicate future results, and a hot ticker's trailing CAGR compounded over ten years produces a meaningless number. A configurable 20%/yr ceiling is applied by default, and the uncapped figure stays visible so the cap is never silent.
How many offers can I compare?
Up to five, including one flagged as your current compensation baseline. The baseline runs through the same engine — it simply usually has no initial grant.
Can I model a private company with no public share price?
Yes. Flag the offer as private, which disables market data lookup and requires you to enter a price per share yourself. Bear in mind that a 409A valuation is not a market price and that private-company equity carries liquidity risk this model does not capture.