sharing my offer data since I always appreciate when others do this.
Role: Software Engineer L4 (their internal leveling), San Francisco Base: $185k Bonus: 10% target Equity: $280k RSUs vesting over 4 years (1-year cliff, then quarterly) Signing: $25k
All-in year 1 with the signing: roughly $248k. Year 2+ without signing: around $223k at current strike.
negotiated up from initial offer of $178k base / $240k equity. they had room on base but less flex on signing. Levels.fyi had this range as roughly accurate for mid-2026.
if you're coming from a higher-TC role this might be a step down. Yelp isn't FAANG comp territory. but the role was interesting and the team seemed sane.
4 replies
contractor_kai
year 1 vs year 2+ math matters a lot. $248k Y1 looks nice but $223k normalized is the real number to benchmark. with a 1-year cliff on equity you're also not fully liquid until month 12. factor that in if you're evaluating against a role with quarterly vesting from day 1.
market_realist
the 'team seemed sane' qualifier at the end is doing a lot of heavy lifting and I respect it. sometimes that's worth the comp delta.
numbers_only
yeah, honestly. I'd take 10% less for a team that doesn't have a 2am on-call rotation every other week. price of sanity is real.
corp_refugee
for comparison: L4 at my last FAANG stop was $245k base plus equity that was actually worth something. so the delta is real. but Yelp has a calmer product surface area than most places I've been. less political overhead per code review.