[jmyeet]

NVidia has had an incredibly rise in stock price. That means for anyone who joined 1.5+ years ago, they are sitting on a life-changing but unrealized gain. That means two things:

1. They're afraid of getting fired before they can cash in;

2. The company knows this so can get more "free" work out of those employees without any really direct threat. All it takes is minor tweaks to how performance reviews work and having a quota for subpar ratings; and

3. In 2 years when those gains are all paid out, a ton of people will leave and those that stay will have absolutely no fear and no motivation to do extra unpaid work because they're independently wealthy.

This pattern has played out in many tech companies. Some companies (eg Zynga) went so far as to go to employees and tell them "I'm going to fire you if you don't agree to reduce your stock compensation" [1]. In addition to being scummy, it's kinda funny considering where Zynga has ended up.

[1]: https://archive.is/5Py2R

[throwaway19423]

This is the thing. I don't understand how the company is going to function once all those folks become multi-millionaires. It is a really odd situation .. I don't know if something quite like it occurred. Even G, M and F had slower slopes I think in terms of stock price. Nvidia wasn't known to have the best engineers (not disrespectful but don't think it was as hard to get in as the other tech companies 4-5 years back). I heard a story that at Microsoft back in the old days, people would wear a badge saying FUIV (FU I'm vested).