3 ms·

I'm an SVB employee who lost more than $1M

• gnicholas 4y ago
  > Many employees get more than 50% of their salaries in equity — SVB stock — every year. My equity in the few years I've been here used to be worth more than $1 million. Now it's gone to zero. I understand the appeal of holding onto stock so that you can get LTCG, but it seems pretty risky to hold quite so much stock in one company. It's possible that $1M is not very much of this person's net worth, but even still it seems unwise to have so much stock in the company that employs you (because of the correlation and possibility of getting doubly wiped out). The complete erasure of SVB's equity was obviously not very foreseeable, but there's always a substantial chance that a sector (like banking) could get whacked, which would cause job instability and stock losses.
• stathibus 4y ago
  He didn't lose $1M because he never had it. What he had was SVB stock, that he could have sold but didn't. Cry me a river.
  • tcbawo 4y ago
    It’s unfortunate for anyone to lose such a sum of money. It’s a precautionary tale. Hearing these types of stories, if I were in a situation where I held a lot of equity in one stock, I might purchase put options to hedge my risk.