Employment Offer FAQ

First of all, congratulations on your offer! 🎉 Our hiring process is as short as we can make it, but as a mission-oriented, venture-backed startup, we’re very keen to vet your alignment with that of the company, so the offer letter you have in hand is a real vote of confidence. We hope you feel the same and will be joining us shortly.

Here are some questions you may have right now:

Compensation

Am I expected to negotiate my base salary?

In short, no. We don’t make low offers assuming that you will negotiate it up. The offer you received is the best offer we can make to you, considering our budget and internal pay equity.

What are the equity compensation details?

If your offer letter includes equity compensation, what you will be receiving is options to purchase common stock in the company at some future date at today’s valuation. Your options will be granted once you’ve completed the 90-day probationary period.

If your offer includes a grant of stock (rather than or in addition to options), your stock grant may also be subject to a vesting period.

In the offer letter, the equity comp is summarized as something like “0000 shares, 4-year vest, 00-month cliff.” Here’s what the means:

Number of Shares: This is the number of shares you will receive in employee stock options.
4-year vest: The purpose of the vesting period, which is standard in VC-backed startups, is incentive alignment: we are collectively betting on a bright future, and we want to make sure you make a substantive, future long-term contribution toward that win. Your options will be granted to you in equal monthly tranches over 4 years of employment. For example, if you’ve worked for 2 years at the company, you will have received half of your options. Your vesting start date may be prior to the start of your permanent employment if you converted from an internship or freelance (within reason, considering the purpose of the vesting period).
Cliff: A cliff means that you must be employed the specified period before you actually receive your vested options. Your cliff provision is calculated to be 1 year from the start date of your permanent employment.

For example, if you were an intern who got hired at the end of your internship such that your vesting started 2 months prior to your permanent employment start date, then on the 1 year anniversary of the start of your permanent employment, you would get access to 14 months of vested options.

What’s missing in the letter is your strike price. The price is determined by a valuation that the company is required to do every year, and it will be on your stock option award document. Because you are an early employee (when the company’s valuation is low), as we grow into a more valuable company, you will be able to purchase shares in the company at a cost lower than the cost at the time you exercise your options.

This is just the very basic explanation of the concepts and language you may see in your equity comp offer. The equity offer you actually receive will be specific to you and the option award document itself will have many more details!

Is there a location-based adjustment to salary?

As of 2026, we are adopting locale-based compensation adjustments. Salaries are posted in the Geo 1 range.

It’s not that we value staff in high-cost cities more, but rather that it costs more to live there. Please use the appropriate factor (below) to derive the compensation range for where you live, and if in doubt, please ask.

Geo 1: High-cost, global cities - 100% of listed salary (e.g. New York, San Francisco, London)
Geo 2: 95% of listed salary (e.g. Paris, Denver, Boston, Austin)
Geo 3: 85% of listed salary (e.g. Atlanta, Philadelphia, Dublin, Cambridge UK)
Geo 4: 60% of listed salary (e.g. Kyiv, Cluj-Napoca)
Geo 5: 50% of listed salary (e.g. Manila, CDMX, Bogota)

Benefits for US Employees

Please see the Benefits section of our handbook for a list of all our benefits as well as links to the health plan documents for the current year.

What health plans are available to me?

The specific health plans available to you depend on your state of residence. We get our benefits through Justworks, which has insurance provider-specific FAQs.

When does the health plan start?

It starts the month following the month of your start date. If you start March 30, coverage starts April 1. If you start April 1, coverage starts May 1. We don’t have a waiting period.

Benefits for Non-US Employees

Employees outside the US are hired by a local Employer of Record (EOR), a third-party organization that takes on the legal responsibilities of employing staff on our behalf. Benefits for outside the US vary by country and by local EOR, and generally will be market-competitive.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve accepted your offer, here’s what to expect:

Background Check: This typically takes 3-5 business days.
Onboarding Preparation: You’ll receive documents and your start date.
Your First Week: You’ll draft your work plan—what success looks like for you and how you’ll contribute. Developers will start pairing and doing code reviews.
Your First 90 Days: This is a mutual evaluation period with regular check-ins. See our New Hire Guide for details. We know “probationary period” can sound intimidating, but it’s a partnership—we’re invested in your success.