I needed to take a break… because summer. Now that school started back up this week, I am back at my irregularly scheduled twice per month posting schedule.
If you ever find yourself wanting to hear even more from me, I have been posting more frequently over on LinkedIn.
I use LinkedIn/Threads to quickly post my more raw off the cuff thoughts. Those frequently turn into longer form articles here on Substack. Here are the most popular posts from the past month.
1. Meta Offering Some IC6+ Engineers Retention Grants + RSU Cliff
235,500 LinkedIn Impressions, 46,500 Threads Views and an Impressive 174 Threads Shares
Meta offering some IC6+ eng retention grants right now is fascinating. This is a trend I have been keeping an eye on and Gergely Oroszhas the latest. There is another layer here though that he didn't hint at...
All these IC6+ engineers who have been around since 2022 or earlier are going to be hitting potentially huge RSU cliffs after the February 2027 RSU vest.
They may have been getting refreshers each year on top of additional discretionary equity offerings, but the appreciation of the 2022 refresher is hard to smooth out.
The fact that Meta is already pushing harder on retention offers might signal how they plan to approach things... at least for the specific people they really want to keep.
Going to be very very interesting!
I am currently working on an article focused on the February 2027 equity cliff, stay tuned!
2. San Francisco Rich or Vallejo Rich?
220,200 LinkedIn Impressions
If you earn $500k per year you are Vallejo rich… but not yet Santa Rosa rich.
I personally think income is the wrong “rich” metric, but is definitely highly correlated
165,000 LinkedIn Impressions, 50 Comments (mostly about Avocados)
Reality check. My income today is less than 1/6th of what it was at Meta. Tech influencers love selling the side hustle lifestyle. Telling you that you can earn multiples of your W2 salary with your own projects.
I can not emphasise how exceptionally rare that is if you are currently in a senior + level at a place like Meta.
Could I get my income back to my Meta levels? Probably. But if my goal was to earn money, I would just go back to another W2.
Luckily I earned enough during my W2 time where my optimization function doesn't revolve around $$.
I already won the $$ game via my FAANG job. Now I can optimize around other things, like frequency of getting recognized while buying avocados at Costco.
4. Just Because You Have $5 million…
Friendly reminder that just because you have $5 million dollars doesn't mean you need to buy a house, invest in your friends start up, join that real estate syndicate, invest in oil and gas, buy airbnbs, buy rental property, invest in opportunity zones, invest in private equity..... You can still keep it boring.
As the numbers get larger there is this pull to start making things more complicated.
Things I hear: "I am a qualified investor now, I have access to XYZ"
Just because you have access to something doesn't mean you need to invest in it.
"But my friend's friend has an allocation of this sweet AI fund"
That allocation looks like it is an allocation of an allocation with 5 layers of fees.....
"If I do a cost segregation analysis I can offset my income...."
Do you actually want to be a landlord, much less an airbnb landlord? What about next year? You planning on buying another airbnb in perpetuity? Guess what happens when you go to sell...
It is perfectly fine just keeping it simple. Sometimes it is about optimizing the return on hassle component more than the "projected" roi.
A Few More Things I Am Thinking About
It has been a wild year where the tail of the S&P 500 has out performed the Mag 7.
All the FAANG and the broader tech stocks are no longer moving in unison. It is a bit all over the place YTD.
If you have a diversified portfolio you are probably sitting near your all time high net worth.
