If I decide to leave Cisco, and give them a last date, do all the RSUs that vest until then still remain mine or are they taken away ?
Also, is there a chance of any accelerated vesting for RSUs that would vest in a few months after ? I suppose not but thought I would ask.
RSUs granted this year (starting normal vesting in Nov 2024) have retirement vesting built into the agreement. In previous years, they didn't.
I lost my RSUs when I was laid off! This should be illegal. It encourages Cisco to continue LRs! Cisco values profit over employees!
It makes me sick when I was once thinking it was a great place to work. I fell for it!!! I was so gullible. Don't let Cisco leadership fool you too.
I chose my exit date to coincide with RSU vesting to ensure that I qualified for my P&LI payout.
That should read “I chose my exit date to coincide with RSU vesting AND to ensure that I qualified for my P&LI payout.”
When I left Cisco voluntarily my unvested RSUs disappeared from my Schwab account at 5pm on my final day.
I chose my exit date to coincide with RSU vesting to ensure that I qualified for my P&LI payout.
What is NOT logical and Cisco is doing all the time, is taking the RSUs back from employees that get laid off.
The logical point of the golden handcuffs is to keep you there, and if you aren't there that doesn't leave any incentive for a company to pay you. It doesn't matter whether management is objectively right, they've made a subjective analysis and decided you weren't worth keeping as they have at least annually and sometimes even quarterly for 23 years. You got your salary, your bonus and whatever stock vested plus a nice package if you've been there for a while. It's no secret that these have been the rules for decades.
A quick Google for "average tenure top ten tech companies" shows a list of companies where the left of the decimal point is the number 1. Cisco engineers can spend far more than that fixing bugs on a single project. Cisco is competing against far more aggressive companies where people are not collecting a full two years of vesting, and in the case of companies like Amazon the vesting schedule is highly biased towards years three and four where you will be PIPed before you can come close to that. To further encourage people to leave many of these companies don't make more stock available beyond the initial grants. Don't be surprised if other companies start seeing this as the modern path to "success."
RSUs are meant to help you stay at Cisco, so of course you will loose most of them. That's logical and makes total sense.
What is NOT logical and Cisco is doing all the time, is taking the RSUs back from employees that get laid off. Everyone one of those laid off employees once had a leader telling them how they appreciated the employee and gave them options, sometimes in lieu of any salary or a higher increase. Then Cisco takes the RSUs back!!! The employee did their part and stayed as Cisco, and Cisco totally abused the reason for the RSUs. This is legal, but just morally wrong!!! Cisco needs to be held accountable!!!
If you can retire from csco - do that so any recent options vest. Otherwise, try to negotiate a signing bonus or stock allocation from any new company you go with. Anything you have vested is yours, it should be in you MS or other account. You pay tax on it the day they vest.
You can sometimes negotiate some RSU matching as part of signing with new co, if you’re leaving some on the table. Particularly if you are meeting a joining timeframe that works for the new co.
Most companies offer retirement vesting if you meet the requirements.
If you’re leaving voluntarily, there is normally no accelerated vesting. The RSUs that are vested at the time of your separation are yours, any non-vested are not.