I was promoted, but told I will be paid 17% less than the average for my new position. Instead they gave me a bunch of stock options, which I don’t care about. They said this was because of the current economic market and didn’t have the budget for it.
I am pissed. I am supposed to sit in meetings and lead projects with all these other dudes (I am a woman) and be paid less for it. On top of that my company is rubbing salt in the wound by making us all sigh a diversity and inclusion pledge. I am all for diversity and inclusion, but maybe … ACTUALLY DO IT instead of just pledging it.
I immediately sent out my resume and applied to several jobs because fuck this. But the more I think about it the more I think about how cushy this job is and how chill my manager and team is. I get unlimited PTO that is actually unlimited, we almost never get called when on call, I get to work on whatever I want and work whatever hours I feel like, plus it’s fully remote. My team has good rapport and I like working with them.
So here’s what I’m thinking, if I work for 83% of the pay I work 83% of the hours. So I am thinking of bringing this up with my manager and requesting that I am given 1 day off a week since that would be 80% of my current schedule. I value time off and getting to work on what I want over money, even if they are being sexist trash. I will accept their sexism at the rate of 3 day weekends every week lmao. I don’t want to fuck up things before I find another position though, so I’m not sure when to bring this up or if it’s even worth trying.
If you receive 100 options at a strike price of $10, and you exercise those options when the strike price is $20, you now have $2000 worth of stock. And such transactions are often handled all at once - exercise the options, and sell the acquired stock in the same trade. In the above example, those 100 options are then worth $1000 cash to you.
Of course, if the stock price declines below the strike price of the options, you wouldn’t exercise them. I believe you could sell the options themselves, maybe? But you would not get very much money for them in that case.