Does the stock grant someone can get on joining a company vary based on stock price?

Yes. However, the grant doesn't vary in dollars but in the # of shares.

For these big public companies, they have a target comp in mind for every employee. Let's say they have chosen $200k target comp for a Google L3 like yourself and your base salary is $150k. That means they want to give you $50k worth of Google stock every year:

• Current price: As of 3/22/25, Google is trading at ~$166/share, which means that they need to award 300 shares per year to get $50k. For an offer (let's just assume they use $166 for simplicity's sake), they will give a 4-year grant of 1,200 shares with 300 vesting each year.
• Surge: Now let's say Google has surged back to all-time high levels and returned to $200/share. This means they only need to award 250 shares per year or 1,000 shares across a 4-year grant to reach the target comp.

Tactically, this means you want to join the company when the stock is low so that it rises during your time at the company. Since the grant is locked to # of shares (it doesn't dynamically go up or down based on price), this scenario means you are getting a raise without having done anything.

On the flip side, if the company's stock drops while you're there, you have functionally gotten a pay cut due to your RSU grant losing value.

Many companies don't like this comp volatility, so they are shortening the grant duration from 4 years down to 2 or even 1 year. My former company Robinhood is on 1-year grants now. This caps both upside and downside so your floor and ceiling are closer to one another.

I recommend watching our comp masterclass as well: [Masterclass] Understanding And Optimizing Your Pay In Tech