They are not dependent on stock appreciation (unlike most startup offers, who during the negotiation stage try to sell you their stock options at an implied valuation 10-100X from the current one), the RSUs are granted at the price of your joining date.
If/when the stock later crashes, typically the company is going to issue generous refreshers to good performers to bring them in line with their original grant amount (source: several friends who worked at FB during the stock crash of last year), whereas when the stock skyrockets your compensation skyrockets as well because your RSU grant price is locked in at your offer/refresher date, like a reverse mortgage (source: myself).
In a general tech recession sure, but I can almost certainly guarantee that my total compensation at Google will still be much higher than the compensation at any startup or other second tier company.
People have been saying "this won't last, good luck keeping this going!" for a decade now, and rather than reciting the same motto like a broken record in an attempt to justify my lower compensation, I decided a few years ago to join the bandwagon and milk the good times as long as they last. I'm saving like crazy while doing so, and there's no apparent sign of stopping.
Take me at face value: I was just saying that RSU/option refreshes will be less frequent given a general recession, particularly a tech-heavy one (where so much capital has been deployed recently and there is probably a bit of overbuild).
I think there are a lot of advantages to a big company employer, and comp can definitely be one of them.
I would watch out for signs. Yield curve inversion and Duke CFO Global Business Outlook are bearish. The fact that those are happening with high levels of stimulative policy should get more attention. The run on ipos can definitely be read as a change in posture that this is a local high point for equity markets. Anecdata, but there are more stories like https://seekingalpha.com/news/3465880-pioneer-natural-resour... and https://seekingalpha.com/news/3465885-toll-brothers-minus-3_... which I would interpret as leading indicators of a slowdown.
If/when the stock later crashes, typically the company is going to issue generous refreshers to good performers to bring them in line with their original grant amount (source: several friends who worked at FB during the stock crash of last year), whereas when the stock skyrockets your compensation skyrockets as well because your RSU grant price is locked in at your offer/refresher date, like a reverse mortgage (source: myself).