RSUs still need to vest, and while you are not under water if the price drops you are definitely looking at a much smaller payoff for sticking around another ye

RSUs still need to vest, and while you are not under water if the price drops you are definitely looking at a much smaller payoff for sticking around another year. The long tail of RSU payout over the vesting period also means that when things are going up you have an incentive to hang around because those early RSUs are paying off big, but if the price drops then there is really no incentive. The golden handcuffs are not a single RSU grant but the cumulative effects of several years of grants all slowly paying out -- a sagging price means that the big payoffs you were expecting from the tail end of early grants that have appreciated significantly are suddenly much smaller payoffs than you had been counting on. Yes, it is still a nice pile of money, but you had several years of watching it become a big pile of money and seeing it shrink makes you start to wonder if the grass is greener at places that are not as morally bankrupt...