6 ms·

Mid-level Nvidia employee gets $62M in stock options; another lost it all

49 points by Stratoscope 3y ago

fakedang 3y ago
> However, there seems to be a problem at Nvidia with reports of wealthy Nvidia employees operating in semi-retirement mode. Looks like Nvidia is in Google mode now.
spicyusername 3y ago
18 years is a pretty exceptional tenure for any employee of any company. Maxing out your ESPP and not selling a single share of any of the company stock you're given for 18 years is also pretty exceptional (and probably even bad financial planning). I'm sure most Nvidia employees who were hired before the recent stock run up have made good money, but I doubt most of them are multimillionaires. Most people I know sell most of their company stock when they get it, as they should. It's much more likely for you to make money with a diversified portfolio then holding a single stock.
- brutus1213 3y ago
  I have to say honestly, the whole episode with NVidia's recent rise has left me quite demotivated about capitalism and the value of hard work. NVidia used to be a second tier job from the perspective of software professionals. The folks that worked there worked hard but it was not harder than any other top or mid-tier software company. That these folks hit the jackpot is great for them but quite senseless from the perspective of "you get rewarded for your efforts" perspective. AI has been known to work and be important for many years. The reason NVidia is in the position it is, is more due to the work of OpenAI, which of course builds on the entire community's effort. I'm trying to rationalize so this is a genuine feeling and perhaps a question. How does one rationalize such wind-falls. I know about lottery tickets but the number of people that got a payoff on this one is vast. And yes, I'll admit I'm jealous.
  - ctvo 3y ago
    > That these folks hit the jackpot is great for them but quite senseless from the perspective of "you get rewarded for your efforts" perspective. How is that senseless? Their efforts, in whatever way, contributed to the massive increase in the sale of the GPUs, right? And they were awarded for it. If it wasn't Nvidia, but a start-up that was grinding for 10 years before they did well (eg Figma) would you feel the same way? Dig into that.
    - SilverBirch 3y ago
      The point is that the rewards are clear and enormous, but the actual responsibility is way more diffuse. There will be plenty of people working at Nvidia who were less competent and less hard working than the person doing an almost identical job at ARM or AMD or Intel. But their reward will likely be 2-10x what those other people get. The aggregate system seems to be efficient - capitalism has done a fairly good job at creating a successful innovative business environment, but the way it does that is just wild rewards predominantly for people who were in the right place at the right time. There are people who are at Nvidia who are genuinely responsible for the great stuff that Nvidia has done in the last few years. But they're going to be a minority of the people who get rewarded.
      - Jlagreen 3y ago
        [dead]
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > NVidia used to be a second tier job from the perspective of software professionals Since when? It was always a very popular choice for those truly interested in HPC and ML. I think the issue is there are a lot of people in the industry who actually don't care about the products they're building. If you're working on building something you like, it'll always be fun and worth it. > it was not harder than any other top or mid-tier software company What the hell is a "top" or "mid-tier" company. The kind of person who thinks like this is never going to make good money in this industry. If you are truly valuable, you will get a Google level salary anywhere. > The reason NVidia is in the position it is, is more due to the work of OpenAI, which of course builds on the entire community's effort They've been working on this problem for decades. Back when NLP was almost dead and Precision Medicine was a pipe dream, it was Nvidia that was helping maintain the ecosystem. > And yes, I'll admit I'm jealous You definetly are, but you also don't seem to have the right mentality for this industry. Being a generalist is useless. Being a domain expert the right application of technology in a specific industry is what gets you the big bucks. I don't need a sklearn script kiddie - I need an sklearn script kiddie who also knows how to apply ML to my specific business domain.
- gadders 3y ago
  Yeah. Normally the stock goes to zero just as the company crashes and you lose your job - ask people from Lehmans. It isn't always that extreme - you might just find you're part of a layoff round in a recession and your stock has only gone down 40%.
TMWNN 3y ago
>However, there seems to be a problem at Nvidia with reports of wealthy Nvidia employees operating in semi-retirement mode. Highly relevant: >TIL what "FYIFV" means at Microsoft. "Fuck You, I'm Fully Vested" means that a person is so rich from Microsoft stock that he can be completely honest to coworkers and can leave anytime. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ax59rb/til_what_fyifv_means_at_microsoft_fuck_you_im/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ax59rb/til_w...>
whiplash451 3y ago
Handing your hard-earned options to a random financial manager for margin trading is a major wtf and such a bad idea even in the foresight.
mattgrice 3y ago
Last I knew, my intern mentor at MS claims to have never sold a share since he started in the mid-90s. I haven't talked to him in a while but if he really did keep stacking up MSFT for 30 years he'd be easily worth $62M. I don't think this is a sound investment strategy but glad it worked out for him.
- htrp 3y ago
  literal survivorship bias The same person who did that with Yahoo, or Cisco systems is definitely not in the same place.
sebstefan 3y ago
> However, there seems to be a problem at Nvidia with reports of wealthy Nvidia employees operating in semi-retirement mode. These employees made the company what it is.
phendrenad2 3y ago
Related: Noam Bardin: Why I Left Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165809 And John Carmack's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052
cghornemann 3y ago
[dead]
xiphias2 3y ago
,,Sadly, this employee had to sell up his green gold to pay for losses when his broker “margined his account with another stock that fell 90%'' It wasn't just pure luck for the person who didn't use margin trading, like the other. For any stock where the log price is moving in one direction with Brown motion, margin trading is just stupid, as it moves the log value of the asset held to minus infinity.
- zaik 3y ago
  > log price is moving in one direction with Brown motion Isn't the point of Brownian motion to move in both directions with equal probability? Why would it move to minus infinity?
  - penteract 3y ago
    I'd read "moving in one direction with Brown motion" to mean Brownian motion plus a linear term. If margin trading causes you to lose the asset, its value goes to zero, hence log of that could be said to be negative infinity. (I'm not endorsing or disputing the conclusion of the comment).
- junar 3y ago
  It also often violates a company's insider trading policy to hold company stock in a margin account. "We don't hold NVIDIA securities in a margin account or pledge NVIDIA securities." https://images.nvidia.com/aem-dam/en-zz/Solutions/about-us/NVIDIA-Code-of-Conduct-External.pdf https://images.nvidia.com/aem-dam/en-zz/Solutions/about-us/N...

49 points by Stratoscope 3y ago

> However, there seems to be a problem at Nvidia with reports of wealthy Nvidia employees operating in semi-retirement mode. Looks like Nvidia is in Google mode now.

spicyusername 3y ago

18 years is a pretty exceptional tenure for any employee of any company. Maxing out your ESPP and not selling a single share of any of the company stock you're given for 18 years is also pretty exceptional (and probably even bad financial planning). I'm sure most Nvidia employees who were hired before the recent stock run up have made good money, but I doubt most of them are multimillionaires. Most people I know sell most of their company stock when they get it, as they should. It's much more likely for you to make money with a diversified portfolio then holding a single stock.

brutus1213 3y ago
I have to say honestly, the whole episode with NVidia's recent rise has left me quite demotivated about capitalism and the value of hard work. NVidia used to be a second tier job from the perspective of software professionals. The folks that worked there worked hard but it was not harder than any other top or mid-tier software company. That these folks hit the jackpot is great for them but quite senseless from the perspective of "you get rewarded for your efforts" perspective. AI has been known to work and be important for many years. The reason NVidia is in the position it is, is more due to the work of OpenAI, which of course builds on the entire community's effort. I'm trying to rationalize so this is a genuine feeling and perhaps a question. How does one rationalize such wind-falls. I know about lottery tickets but the number of people that got a payoff on this one is vast. And yes, I'll admit I'm jealous.
- ctvo 3y ago
  > That these folks hit the jackpot is great for them but quite senseless from the perspective of "you get rewarded for your efforts" perspective. How is that senseless? Their efforts, in whatever way, contributed to the massive increase in the sale of the GPUs, right? And they were awarded for it. If it wasn't Nvidia, but a start-up that was grinding for 10 years before they did well (eg Figma) would you feel the same way? Dig into that.
  - SilverBirch 3y ago
    The point is that the rewards are clear and enormous, but the actual responsibility is way more diffuse. There will be plenty of people working at Nvidia who were less competent and less hard working than the person doing an almost identical job at ARM or AMD or Intel. But their reward will likely be 2-10x what those other people get. The aggregate system seems to be efficient - capitalism has done a fairly good job at creating a successful innovative business environment, but the way it does that is just wild rewards predominantly for people who were in the right place at the right time. There are people who are at Nvidia who are genuinely responsible for the great stuff that Nvidia has done in the last few years. But they're going to be a minority of the people who get rewarded.
    - Jlagreen 3y ago
      [dead]
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > NVidia used to be a second tier job from the perspective of software professionals Since when? It was always a very popular choice for those truly interested in HPC and ML. I think the issue is there are a lot of people in the industry who actually don't care about the products they're building. If you're working on building something you like, it'll always be fun and worth it. > it was not harder than any other top or mid-tier software company What the hell is a "top" or "mid-tier" company. The kind of person who thinks like this is never going to make good money in this industry. If you are truly valuable, you will get a Google level salary anywhere. > The reason NVidia is in the position it is, is more due to the work of OpenAI, which of course builds on the entire community's effort They've been working on this problem for decades. Back when NLP was almost dead and Precision Medicine was a pipe dream, it was Nvidia that was helping maintain the ecosystem. > And yes, I'll admit I'm jealous You definetly are, but you also don't seem to have the right mentality for this industry. Being a generalist is useless. Being a domain expert the right application of technology in a specific industry is what gets you the big bucks. I don't need a sklearn script kiddie - I need an sklearn script kiddie who also knows how to apply ML to my specific business domain.
gadders 3y ago
Yeah. Normally the stock goes to zero just as the company crashes and you lose your job - ask people from Lehmans. It isn't always that extreme - you might just find you're part of a layoff round in a recession and your stock has only gone down 40%.

TMWNN 3y ago

>However, there seems to be a problem at Nvidia with reports of wealthy Nvidia employees operating in semi-retirement mode. Highly relevant: >TIL what "FYIFV" means at Microsoft. "Fuck You, I'm Fully Vested" means that a person is so rich from Microsoft stock that he can be completely honest to coworkers and can leave anytime. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ax59rb/til_what_fyifv_means_at_microsoft_fuck_you_im/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ax59rb/til_w...>

whiplash451 3y ago

Handing your hard-earned options to a random financial manager for margin trading is a major wtf and such a bad idea even in the foresight.

mattgrice 3y ago

Last I knew, my intern mentor at MS claims to have never sold a share since he started in the mid-90s. I haven't talked to him in a while but if he really did keep stacking up MSFT for 30 years he'd be easily worth $62M. I don't think this is a sound investment strategy but glad it worked out for him.

htrp 3y ago
literal survivorship bias The same person who did that with Yahoo, or Cisco systems is definitely not in the same place.

sebstefan 3y ago

> However, there seems to be a problem at Nvidia with reports of wealthy Nvidia employees operating in semi-retirement mode. These employees made the company what it is.

phendrenad2 3y ago

Related: Noam Bardin: Why I Left Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26165809 And John Carmack's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052

cghornemann 3y ago

[dead]

xiphias2 3y ago

,,Sadly, this employee had to sell up his green gold to pay for losses when his broker “margined his account with another stock that fell 90%'' It wasn't just pure luck for the person who didn't use margin trading, like the other. For any stock where the log price is moving in one direction with Brown motion, margin trading is just stupid, as it moves the log value of the asset held to minus infinity.

zaik 3y ago
> log price is moving in one direction with Brown motion Isn't the point of Brownian motion to move in both directions with equal probability? Why would it move to minus infinity?
- penteract 3y ago
  I'd read "moving in one direction with Brown motion" to mean Brownian motion plus a linear term. If margin trading causes you to lose the asset, its value goes to zero, hence log of that could be said to be negative infinity. (I'm not endorsing or disputing the conclusion of the comment).
junar 3y ago
It also often violates a company's insider trading policy to hold company stock in a margin account. "We don't hold NVIDIA securities in a margin account or pledge NVIDIA securities." https://images.nvidia.com/aem-dam/en-zz/Solutions/about-us/NVIDIA-Code-of-Conduct-External.pdf https://images.nvidia.com/aem-dam/en-zz/Solutions/about-us/N...