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> it takes huge balls to do something like this. > The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth > Very few people would have the

> it takes huge balls to do something like this. > The economic loss has to be somewhat taken in relation to your total wealth > Very few people would have the courage to walk away from big sums of money purely on principle. A good number of engineers refuse to even interview with FAANGs and other nasty companies on principle and they don't get any public praise.

paulintrognon 6y ago
It's one thing to refuse interviews, and another thing to quit a job you love and invested 5 years of your life and that paysvery well.
- ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
  The latter it's much easier: the stocks are vested after 5 years, the unspent disposable income is saved somewhere and now and you are ready to leave. Also the turnover of engineers in Amazon is among the highest in the industry and only a few stay beyond 5 years. In comparison, refusing to work for some FAANG takes 10 times more courage for someone out of college and without saving.
  - otterley 6y ago
    Tim himself acknowledged in his message that he’s leaving over a million dollars in unvested RSUs on the table by leaving.
    - esoterica 6y ago
      It's a little silly to talk about unvested RSUs as "leaving money on the table" when they are analogous to future unearned salary, which everyone by definition gives up when they quit a job. If you don't have any RSUs but you make $100k a year, and an actuarial table says you can expect to live for 50 more years, then you're theoretically "leaving $5 million on the table" when you quit your job, but no one describes it that way.
      - cbsmith 6y ago
        They aren't analogous to unearned salary in this context. The RSUs are essentially going to show up as long as you stay employed. The same is not true of your salary (as a lot of people are learning first hand during this economic downturn). The value of RSUs changes with the value of the company, which is also not true with salary. While you could argue that RSUs granted at hiring might just be part of your comp, refreshers are generally seen as having been earned based on past performance, with income deferred to encourage retention. As a consequence, when you leave a job and go work somewhere else, it's far more likely that you will find a commensurate salary somewhere else than something commensurate with unvested RSUs; even if you get something to match the RSUs, it's likely not going to "vest" on the schedule you once had.
        esoterica 6y ago
        >The RSUs are essentially going to show up as long as you stay employed. The same is not true of your salary. Huh? I'm pretty sure they have to pay you a salary to keep you employed. > refreshers are generally seen as having been earned based on past performance, with income deferred to encourage retention. If they won't pay you money until you do X, then the money is payment for X, not payment for previous work, even if they try to market it as "deferred" payment for previous work. Gotta be clever enough to see through the doublespeak. Future salary: you will get this only if you keep working, if you quit you will not get it. Unvested RSUs: you will get this only if you keep working, if you quit you will not get it. See the similarity? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck etc. The whole concept of unvested RSUs is basically a clever psychological trick to exploit the endowment effect to make quitting seem more punitive than it actually is. People react more negatively to losing money that is "already theirs" than losing future income. If you trick people into thinking their $1 million of unvested RSUs is "already theirs" then they are more averse to quitting and losing that $1 million then they would be to quitting and losing the same $1 million in future salary. > As a consequence, when you leave a job and go work somewhere else, it's far more likely that you will find a commensurate salary somewhere else than something commensurate with unvested RSUs; even if you get something to match the RSUs, it's likely not going to "vest" on the schedule you once had. That's obviously not true, since people in RSU-ville switch jobs all the time, which they wouldn't do if the new job weren't at least matching their old RSUs.
  - ljhsiung 6y ago
    Stock refreshes are relatively common at FAANGs, the quantity of which depends on your performance. Tim, being a distinguished engineer, likely got a lot of RSUs. So while true his initial sign-on RSUs likely vested already, a sizable chunk did not fully vest yet. So yeah I'd wager he still walked from ~1 million.
    - jldugger 6y ago
      Indeed, at a steady state of annual refreshers, only something like 25 percent of your grant vests annually. My preferred approach here is to ignore the gross grant total and focus on the annual vesting portion. On that front you're not really walking away from 1 million only 250k? Still a lot for most folks but no different than engineers considering retirement. Presumably at age 64, as a distinguished engineer, Tim has enough cash to skip out on work in perpetuity if he so desires.
  - munificent 6y ago
    I think you dramatically underestimate how hard change is for people. Sure, rationally it's easier to quit. But humans are not perfectly rational spherical volumes. Quitting means not having a place to go every day, not seeing the tribe you're used to spending most of your day with, not knowing what "normal" will look like tomorrow, and signing yourself up for making a series of very difficult, stressful executive decisions around what to do next.
    - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
      > I think you dramatically underestimate how hard change is for people. That's a bit patronizing. I quit Amazon myself.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  Erm... yeah it is a different thing, it takes a much stronger conviction to refuse the interviews in the first place. To follow your morals when you haven't first spent years looking the other way while saving up likely millions of dollars that allow you the option to never work again.
koheripbal 6y ago
...and that's why those companies become bastions for people who don't value (and indeed despise) socialist ideals.
- augustt 6y ago
  As long as the top is rotten, there will never be some sort of successful moral coup d'etat.

paulintrognon 6y ago

It's one thing to refuse interviews, and another thing to quit a job you love and invested 5 years of your life and that paysvery well.

ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
The latter it's much easier: the stocks are vested after 5 years, the unspent disposable income is saved somewhere and now and you are ready to leave. Also the turnover of engineers in Amazon is among the highest in the industry and only a few stay beyond 5 years. In comparison, refusing to work for some FAANG takes 10 times more courage for someone out of college and without saving.
- otterley 6y ago
  Tim himself acknowledged in his message that he’s leaving over a million dollars in unvested RSUs on the table by leaving.
  - esoterica 6y ago
    It's a little silly to talk about unvested RSUs as "leaving money on the table" when they are analogous to future unearned salary, which everyone by definition gives up when they quit a job. If you don't have any RSUs but you make $100k a year, and an actuarial table says you can expect to live for 50 more years, then you're theoretically "leaving $5 million on the table" when you quit your job, but no one describes it that way.
    - cbsmith 6y ago
      They aren't analogous to unearned salary in this context. The RSUs are essentially going to show up as long as you stay employed. The same is not true of your salary (as a lot of people are learning first hand during this economic downturn). The value of RSUs changes with the value of the company, which is also not true with salary. While you could argue that RSUs granted at hiring might just be part of your comp, refreshers are generally seen as having been earned based on past performance, with income deferred to encourage retention. As a consequence, when you leave a job and go work somewhere else, it's far more likely that you will find a commensurate salary somewhere else than something commensurate with unvested RSUs; even if you get something to match the RSUs, it's likely not going to "vest" on the schedule you once had.
      - esoterica 6y ago
        >The RSUs are essentially going to show up as long as you stay employed. The same is not true of your salary. Huh? I'm pretty sure they have to pay you a salary to keep you employed. > refreshers are generally seen as having been earned based on past performance, with income deferred to encourage retention. If they won't pay you money until you do X, then the money is payment for X, not payment for previous work, even if they try to market it as "deferred" payment for previous work. Gotta be clever enough to see through the doublespeak. Future salary: you will get this only if you keep working, if you quit you will not get it. Unvested RSUs: you will get this only if you keep working, if you quit you will not get it. See the similarity? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck etc. The whole concept of unvested RSUs is basically a clever psychological trick to exploit the endowment effect to make quitting seem more punitive than it actually is. People react more negatively to losing money that is "already theirs" than losing future income. If you trick people into thinking their $1 million of unvested RSUs is "already theirs" then they are more averse to quitting and losing that $1 million then they would be to quitting and losing the same $1 million in future salary. > As a consequence, when you leave a job and go work somewhere else, it's far more likely that you will find a commensurate salary somewhere else than something commensurate with unvested RSUs; even if you get something to match the RSUs, it's likely not going to "vest" on the schedule you once had. That's obviously not true, since people in RSU-ville switch jobs all the time, which they wouldn't do if the new job weren't at least matching their old RSUs.
- ljhsiung 6y ago
  Stock refreshes are relatively common at FAANGs, the quantity of which depends on your performance. Tim, being a distinguished engineer, likely got a lot of RSUs. So while true his initial sign-on RSUs likely vested already, a sizable chunk did not fully vest yet. So yeah I'd wager he still walked from ~1 million.
  - jldugger 6y ago
    Indeed, at a steady state of annual refreshers, only something like 25 percent of your grant vests annually. My preferred approach here is to ignore the gross grant total and focus on the annual vesting portion. On that front you're not really walking away from 1 million only 250k? Still a lot for most folks but no different than engineers considering retirement. Presumably at age 64, as a distinguished engineer, Tim has enough cash to skip out on work in perpetuity if he so desires.
- munificent 6y ago
  I think you dramatically underestimate how hard change is for people. Sure, rationally it's easier to quit. But humans are not perfectly rational spherical volumes. Quitting means not having a place to go every day, not seeing the tribe you're used to spending most of your day with, not knowing what "normal" will look like tomorrow, and signing yourself up for making a series of very difficult, stressful executive decisions around what to do next.
  - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    > I think you dramatically underestimate how hard change is for people. That's a bit patronizing. I quit Amazon myself.
cactus2093 6y ago
Erm... yeah it is a different thing, it takes a much stronger conviction to refuse the interviews in the first place. To follow your morals when you haven't first spent years looking the other way while saving up likely millions of dollars that allow you the option to never work again.

koheripbal 6y ago

...and that's why those companies become bastions for people who don't value (and indeed despise) socialist ideals.

augustt 6y ago
As long as the top is rotten, there will never be some sort of successful moral coup d'etat.