Skip to content

WorkWingman — Equity Compensation Valuation (Plain Language)

Informational only — not financial or investment advice. The current price is not a promise of what you'll actually get when shares vest or sell; how a stock moved in the past doesn't tell you how it will move next. If you're weighing a real decision, talk to a licensed financial advisor. You'll see this same note everywhere this feature shows you a number.

A lot of job offers include stock — RSUs (restricted stock units) or options. This feature helps you see three plain facts about that stock, and stops there:

  1. What it's worth right now, at today's price.
  2. When it actually becomes yours (the vesting timeline).
  3. How bumpy that stock's price has been in the past (historical volatility).

That's it. WorkWingman never tells you an offer is "good" or "bad," never tells you to take or skip a job because of its equity, and never guesses what the stock will do next. It just shows you the numbers, clearly labeled, so you can think it through yourself — ideally with a real financial advisor if it's a big decision.

Where the stock price comes from

Stooq — a free, no-signup stock-data site — is the main source. It's been used by hobbyist and open-source finance tools for years. One honest caveat: at the time this was built, Stooq started putting a "prove you're a real browser" challenge in front of its data, which a background app like WorkWingman can't solve on its own. So right now, Stooq calls may come back empty — and when that happens, WorkWingman just quietly tries the next source instead of showing an error.

Alpha Vantage is the backup. It's also free, but you have to sign up for your own key (it takes under a minute) and it only allows a small number of lookups per day, so it's a fallback, not the main plan.

Barchart is a third option, but it's a paid service — WorkWingman ships without a Barchart subscription, so this one is just wired up and ready in case you (or a future version of the app) ever add a paid key. By default, WorkWingman never touches it.

Why not Robinhood?

Short answer: there's no legal way to do it. Robinhood doesn't offer any official way for an app like this to look up a stock price — no public API for that at all. The only tools that claim to do it work by pretending to be your Robinhood app using your actual login, which breaks Robinhood's rules and could get your account flagged or suspended. That's a real risk for a feature that's just supposed to show you a current stock price — a price Stooq and Alpha Vantage already give you for free, with no login required. So WorkWingman just doesn't go there.

What you can tell WorkWingman about your grant

Everything here is optional — fill in what your offer letter told you, skip anything you don't know:

  • The stock ticker (if the company is public) — or, if it's a private company, the last price someone else paid for a share (a "409A valuation" or last funding round price), if you know it.
  • Whether it's RSUs, or options (ISOs/NSOs) with a strike price.
  • How many shares, and when the grant started.
  • The standard 4-year vest with a 1-year cliff, or your own numbers if your offer is different.

What you'll see

  • Current value — shares (or, for options, the price-minus-strike difference) times today's price.
  • Vested vs. unvested — how much of that value is already "yours" today, versus still waiting on the vesting clock.
  • A year-by-year vesting timeline — how much unlocks at each anniversary.
  • Historical volatility — how much the stock's price has bounced around in the past year or so, as a percentage. This is always labeled as looking backward, never as a hint about what's coming.

If the company is private and you haven't given a share price, or if no current price can be found for a public ticker, WorkWingman just says so plainly — "unpriceable" — rather than making up a number.

Options are valued conservatively

If your grant is stock options rather than RSUs, WorkWingman only counts the part that's already "in the money" — current price minus your strike price, times your shares. It deliberately ignores the extra value options can theoretically carry from time left before they expire (what finance people call "time value"). That's a simpler, more conservative number, and every screen that shows it says so.

Privacy

Just like the rest of your profile, none of this leaves your computer. The only thing that goes out over the network is a plain, anonymous "what's the current price of ticker XYZ" question to Stooq or Alpha Vantage — nothing about your specific grant, your shares, or you personally is ever sent anywhere.