What does a 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff mean?

It means you earn your equity gradually over four years, but nothing at all until you finish your first year. On your one-year anniversary, 25 percent vests all at once. After that, the rest usually vests in small monthly or quarterly slices until year four. If you leave before the cliff, you walk away with zero equity.

What happens to my unvested equity if I quit?

You lose it. Unvested shares or options go back to the company the day you leave. You keep only what has already vested, and if you hold options, you usually must exercise them within a set window (often 90 days) or lose those too. Always check your exercise window before you resign.

What is vesting acceleration?

Acceleration means some or all of your unvested equity vests early when a specific event happens. Single-trigger acceleration fires on one event, usually the company being acquired. Double-trigger acceleration requires two events, typically an acquisition plus you being let go without cause afterward. Double-trigger is the common protection worth asking about.

Should I time my resignation around a vest date?

Often yes, if a meaningful chunk vests soon. Leaving three weeks before your cliff or a large quarterly vest can cost you real money for very little waiting. Map your vest dates on a calendar before you commit to a start date elsewhere, and remember that a new employer can usually flex a start date by a few weeks.

How do I job hunt quietly while I wait for equity to vest?

Keep your search off your work devices and work accounts, and prepare your materials privately. The free Bounce resume scan at careerbounce.io runs entirely on your own device, so your resume is never uploaded anywhere while you get it market-ready. That lets you be prepared the moment your vest date passes without tipping anyone off.

What Is a Vesting Schedule? Cliffs, Timelines, and What Happens If You Leave

Someone hands you an offer letter that says "25 percent cliff vesting after 12 months, monthly thereafter," and everyone in the room acts like that sentence is self-explanatory. It is not. And because the difference between leaving in month 11 and month 13 can be tens of thousands of dollars, you deserve to understand exactly how this works before you sign anything or resign from anything. Here is the whole system, in plain language, with math you can redo on paper.

What vesting actually is

Vesting is the schedule on which you earn the equity in your offer. The company is not handing you shares on day one. It is promising to hand them over gradually, as you put in time. The logic is simple: equity is a reward for building the company, so you earn it as you build.

Until a share or option vests, it is not yours. If you leave, unvested equity evaporates. This is true whether you have stock options or RSUs; if you are not sure which you have, start with a plain-English explainer on RSUs vs stock options, because what happens at vest differs between them.

The standard timeline: 4 years, 1-year cliff

The most common schedule in tech and startups looks like this:

Months 0 to 12: nothing vests. This is the cliff.
Month 12, your one-year anniversary: 25 percent of your grant vests all at once.
Months 13 to 48: the remaining 75 percent vests in equal slices, usually monthly (1/48 of the total grant per month), sometimes quarterly.
Month 48: fully vested. Everything in the original grant is yours.

The cliff exists so that someone who quits or is let go after four months does not walk away owning a piece of the company. It protects the company, and it means your first year is all-or-nothing.

Some companies use variations: five-year schedules, back-weighted schedules where later years vest more than earlier ones, or no cliff for senior hires. Always read your actual grant paperwork rather than assuming the standard.

The leave-date walkthrough: redo this on paper

Here is the calculation, using an example you can swap your own numbers into.

Say your grant is 9,600 options, four years, one-year cliff, monthly vesting, and you started on March 1, 2028.

Total grant: 9,600 options over 48 months means 200 options per month of service.
Cliff date: March 1, 2029. Vested before that date: 0.
On March 1, 2029: 25 percent vests at once, so 2,400 options.
Each month after: 200 more options vest, on the monthly anniversary of your start date.

Now test some leave dates:

Leave February 10, 2029 (month 11): you vested nothing. You keep 0 options.
Leave March 5, 2029 (just past the cliff): you keep 2,400 options.
Leave September 1, 2030 (30 months in): 2,400 from the cliff plus 18 more months at 200 equals 6,000 options, or 62.5 percent of the grant.

Two people doing identical work can walk away with wildly different outcomes based on a three-week difference in resignation date. So before you set a start date with a new employer, map your vest dates on a real calendar. If a meaningful vest lands soon, it is entirely normal to negotiate your start date to fall after it. Companies do this quietly all the time.

One more deadline matters: if you hold options, check your post-termination exercise window. Many companies give you 90 days after leaving to pay the strike price and buy your vested shares, or they expire. Vested does not mean free, and it does not mean forever.

What is acceleration, and should you ask for it?

Acceleration clauses vest some of your equity early when specific events happen. In plain terms:

Single-trigger acceleration: one event, usually the company being acquired, vests some or all of your remaining equity immediately. Rare for regular employees.
Double-trigger acceleration: two events must both happen, typically the company is acquired and you are terminated without cause (or your role is substantially changed) within some window after. This is the protection that matters most, because acquirers often cut duplicate roles, and without it those people lose everything unvested.

You will not always get acceleration, and junior hires rarely have leverage for it. But it costs nothing to ask, especially at senior levels: "Does my grant include double-trigger acceleration? If not, is that something we can add?" Get the answer in writing, in the grant documents, not in a hallway conversation. The same goes for everything else in your offer; here is what to confirm in writing when you accept.

Questions to ask before you sign any grant

Send these by email so the answers are on record:

What is the exact vesting schedule, including the cliff and the vesting frequency after it?
What is my post-termination exercise window?
Is there any acceleration, single or double trigger?
What happens to unvested equity if the company is acquired?
Do refresh grants exist, and what typically earns one?

None of these questions is rude. They are the equity equivalent of reading the lease before renting the apartment. And if the answers reveal that the equity is unlikely to be worth much, that is useful too; here is how to evaluate whether startup equity is worth anything before you weight it heavily in your decision.

Timing a move around a vest date, quietly

If you are reading this because a vest date is approaching and you are thinking about leaving after it, you are not being sneaky. You are collecting compensation you already earned. The practical playbook:

Write down every upcoming vest date and what it is worth to you.
Do all job-search work on personal devices and personal accounts, never on company hardware.
Get your resume ready before you start applying, so you are not rushing when the right posting appears.

That last step is where Bounce fits. The free "Beat the Bots" scan at careerbounce.io shows you exactly what applicant tracking systems read from your resume, and it runs entirely on your device. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no account, no email trail, and no server anywhere holding your resume while you are still employed. It will not promise you interviews, and nobody honestly can. It will show you what the screening software sees, so that when your vest date passes, you are ready to move the same week.