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Comment by rockbruno | Hacker News Reader

I have witnessed this working at FAANG where people usually have the choice to allocate their grants into either risky options or safe, straight cash. The amount of people I see going all-in into the riskiest option and then proceeding to not understand why they lost their "compensation" (?) when the stock drops frightens me.

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It's because in tech you are paid so fucking much that any ridiculous screw up you might do only affects you momentarily, you can still afford your bizzaro happy life, if you've fucked your savings money there's always more cash for rent, bills, enjoyment, on the horizon. Life become a fucking toy on some levels. There is no fear.

A lot of FANNG is non-software roles. A lot of FANNG are contractors. A lot of FANNG is over leveraged (house, random tax liabilities, supporting family members).

I’m utterly convinced FANNG comp is overvalued due to selection bias on Blind and direct PR efforts by those companies.

When someone talks about “people working for a FAANG”, realistically no one is referring to Amazon warehouse workers neither are people talking about Uber drivers. Mostly they are talking about software engineers and adjacent roles.

Thats not meant to throw shade on warehouse workers as “lesser”. My dad is retired factory worker.

It’s not just warehouse workers and drivers. Accounting, marketing, legal, HR, etc. all exist.

Yes, and at least at Amazon, they all pay much more than the $130K that it takes to be in the 90th percentile income level in the US if you are at least a mid level (L5) employee.

If you have ever been to any company 401K meeting, the 401K rep will always, always, encourage young people to make risky investments and encourage people closer to retirement to make conservative investments.

Because recruiters love to go on and on about how "if the stock goes to a billion, you'll make a zillion," and they never, ever, ever mention that the stock might become worthless. The other thing is that we've had absolutely stellar economic growth since the 2008 crash, and no one under the age of 32 was working before 2008, so they really have no notion that the economy won't always be growing. It's just not on their radar.

Do any faang still pay in options still? Google is mostly RSUs these days.

Options? Or RSUs?

Spotify has both RSUs and options, you can choose which one you want and I think they do a very good job of explaining the differences in risk. You can also choose to be paid in cash if you want zero risk (but also zero gain)

And zero loss as I watch my unvested FAANG RSUs drop by a third. I’m glad at least the first two years were mostly a signing bonus I could use to stabilize my finances - pay off debt and build a cash reserve. My RSUs vest heavily on the back end.

Yes I know, how do you tell someone where you work without telling them where you work.

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