Sales new hire grants reach historic lows

Sales professionals at big tech companies get RSUs with their offers just like engineers — align with shareholder interests and incentivize long-term goals, right?

Especially for more senior roles, and especially in tech hubs like SF.

…right?

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In February 2025, prevalence of new hire grants for Sales & Customer roles reached an all-time low of only 56% of offers.

This is filtered to US offers by public companies for senior IC levels (P4-P6) in SF, New York, and Seattle from 2022 to ending last month, comparing Technical (blue), Corporate Functions (pink), and Sales & Customer (green) domains.

GTM new hire grant prevalence has always lagged more technical roles, but beginning in early 2024, it dropped way lower.

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What is changing with sales comp?

I have a decent guess that I can back up with some data.

But what do you think?

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What's the top reason fewer salespeople get new hire grants?

We can look at the offer trend data a couple different ways to learn more:

Over the same period with the same filters applied, median sales target total cash (i.e., OTE) value is up 35%. By comparison, corporate function roles are up 14% and technical roles are up 12%.

And then if we go back to new hire grant prevalence and focus on sales roles comparing Tier 1 (SF, NYC, Seattle) with the rest of US metros:

We see that new hire grant prevalence between tech hubs and other US cities has converged.

My guess what’s happening:

1. Tech companies are reducing stock comp participation, among several levers they must pull to meet new SBC expense targets
2. Comp teams are trading GTM stock comp for increased cash OTE — this reduces stock comp spend in exchange for short-term cash spend
3. Critically, the increase in OTE is focused on commissions/OTI — that is, companies are growing their cash expenses only if they hit sales targets (which I suspect are rising, too)

Meanwhile, sales OTE rises dramatically

On point #3, fascinatingly, you can actually see it in the trend data, focused here on P4 to minimize noise:

Median base salary up 10%, target total cash / OTE up 36%.

Comp teams, this looks like a smart move to make, especially because offer accept rates haven’t dropped at all over the last year.

Go talk to your sales comp friends to see if you can Indiana Jones some stock comp for OTI. 🤠

And you may find that your best salespeople are happy to get bigger quarterly checks when they close big deals.