[hinkley]

You can always tell the people blowing smoke about stock options because they are speaking in the hypothetical instead of the past tense :)

As I used to tell people about why I was selling my options at [some other name brand company] as fast as they vested, choosing to work for the company is an investment. A huge one. And since I was far more likely to be laid off if the stock tanks, owning shares and working there was not diversifying my assets.

It’s the only time I made money on stock options and most of what I earned I earned by... profit taking on shares of a different company that enjoyed two stock splits before our stock started to crater.

[jhall1468]

Here's past tense: My grants have tripled in value since I started, and as a result my total comp over that period of time has been considerably higher than the offer I received at Google, which was in Mountain View. The higher COL of the Mountain View offer PLUS the outperforming stock put my comp way above what Google would have paid.

When that behavior ends, if Amazon doesn't adjust my comp, I can go to some other tech company, while still having one of the best names you can have on a resume (although, Google would have been arguably better in that case). Furthermore, if we consider my stock gains as part of my annual comp, it gives me a vastly better bargaining position.

Still blowing smoke?

[hueving]

>Still blowing smoke?

Yes, you're not correctly understanding that you depended on a gamble to outperform the Google offer. That same gamble you could have explicitly made in the stock market while taking the Google offer and capturing the upside of the Amazon stock.