I don't know about you, but in my 10-year career so far, the amount of cash compensation I've earned is orders of magnitude higher than the actual liquid compensation I've received from equity actually becoming worth something. tl;dr I got lucky and won the startup lottery, but it didn't pay out nearly as much as the cash compensation I've earned.
Yes, I would much rather get more cash than a bunch of annoying FSA, life insurance, pet insurance, disability insurance, gym expense, home-office benefits.... all benefits I have to manually keep track of and optimize.
This clown car of "perks" only exist because of a dumb tax regime that makes those benefits pre-tax, and that regime should end.
> Yes, I would much rather get more cash than a bunch of... benefits I have to manually keep track of and optimize.
I've worked at a few large financial institutions that pay technical employees significantly below market rate, but aggressively and publicly boast about how competitive they are because of "total compensation".
It's absurd, and often results in large dysfunctional teams where they have to hire 10+ junior people, for ~60k each, because they're unwilling to hire 1-2 experienced people, for ~150k each.
Have you actually asked your employer if they can do away with that 'clown car of "perks"' in exchange for more salary? I would think that would be something you could negotiate as part of any job offer. Accepting a company's employer healthcare and benefits is certainly not mandatory either.
