[shaftway]

It's the stock, but only when the stock is publicly traded.

I have zero trust in the long term outlook of my current firm. My stock vests every 3 months and I sell it immediately. This makes up about half of my total compensation.

If the company shows signs of going down I'll cut my losses and go somewhere else, probably when the stock drops to about 50% of my sign-on value. If the company starts going up then I get a nice little bump.

I joined Meta last year (and then got laid off 6 months later) right after their huge drop and several people (including my manager) were extremely vocal about how it wasn't fair that I got so many shares of stock. They compute the number of shares you get based on a dollar amount and the share price over the last month.

By comparison I feel bad for my brethren at large tech companies that aren't publicly traded. Stripe comes to mind here. My friends there say they've been told "we want to go public, but now just isn't the right time" all the way up until the valuation was cut by a third. Those golden handcuffs must be heavy.

[dzikimarian]

>I have zero trust in the long term outlook of my current firm. My stock vests every 3 months and I sell it immediately. If the company shows signs of going down I'll cut my losses and go somewhere else.

That's funny - every business-related thread on HN contains complaining about companies focusing on the next quarter results, yet even when people are given stock on preferential terms and have information unavailable for retail investors, they'll still behave in a way that incentives company to do that. And then complain during next layoffs probably :-).

[mejutoco]

That is an interesting observation. On one side we could say when it is your own money one behaves more egotistically.

On the other side, if OP was satisfied in the current firm (they admit they are not) and could have an impact in the direction of the company (instead of short-term results) maybe he would hold on to the stock for longer.

[dzikimarian]

Well that's why I think in the end a lot of current generation of IT engineers isn't very thoughtful.

They have tons of options for work which will align with your views, yet they keep choosing ones that pay the most in short term and will not accept anything more than 9-to-5 work with zero responsibility for the company.

I did the complete opposite and I think it went way better for me, but of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And their own place in layoffs.

[dv_dt]

The business commands the resources to decide if their strategy is long or short term. An employee selling stock grants has no such decision authority, and selling the stock is diversifying their risk in the long term.

[dzikimarian]

You can pick company where you have decision authority and/or you see they are picking long term strategy.

[boring_twenties]

I think it's totally fair. This is what the stock is worth today, and this is what they need to offer you in total USD. Why on earth should you accept a lower offer just because their stock is lower? And what a thing to have your own manager openly gripe about, yikes.

[ipaddr]

Then he recommended that person be let go.

[shaftway]

To be fair, I don't think this person ended up being involved in that decision. I've been in contact with them since and there doesn't seem to be any animosity.

There are plenty of more obvious reasons I was let go:

- I was in the last cohort hired before the hiring freeze.

- I had a terrible fit with my first team (this manager was on that team, but it wasn't with them) and put in for a transfer after about 3 months.

- The VP for that area came down pretty hard on me directly because this represented a permanent loss in headcount and made it clear that they'd be extremely upset if I pushed for it.

- I put in my transfer request anyway (the day that they announced transfers would be frozen), and was actually transferred about 5 minutes before the freeze happened.

- In my new team my new manager gave their two week notice on my first day.

- I enjoyed the work, but the new manager and I never really got along.

- I was one of two people on the team, the other person was in the same time zone as the new manager, and I wasn't.

Frankly I'd have been shocked if I hadn't gotten laid off.

[throwaway4837]

Tech stocks have high volatility. If, for example, I joined Amazon at peak in 2021, and the stock crashed 50% over the next few months, it would still totally be worth it to stick around and vest. Even the case with smaller tech companies that achieved meme status like Palantir which suffered the usual post-IPO crash -- if I believe outlook will be positive in the long term. Could be 2 years or 10, doesn't matter to me. The stock being public REALLY helps. I would think about it very differently if it was private.

[sacnoradhq]

It's not just tech or publicly-traded tech companies, but a corporate culture of a few CEOs paid 500x the average worker. It's an owner-take-all gambit off the backs of workers who have to resort to relieving themselves in bottles for borderline wages.