When I graduated I could have worked at 3 generally similar companies, the lowest salary offer was £27k, the highest was £35k, all had significant RSU packages (nothing like crazy US numbers). In the 5 years following my graduation, 1 company got bought by Intel providing a 50% pop for the share price, 1 company got bought by Softbank providing a 50% pop for the share price, 1 got eviscerated by Apple and practically destroyed the share price. There was no meaningful way of knowing which way any of those would go. As a graduate I had no real chance of impacting the shareprice of those events. Yet for some reason between 0-30% of my renumeration was determined by it!
I can see where it comes off as gloating, though. Do you think I should modify this to focus more on the fork aspect? (genuine question)
So, I actually was not a genius here. It was total luck.
People rarely examine their non-decisions ("what would my life be like if I went left at that fork in the road?"), and I thought this was a particularly clear-cut example of that.
Personally I don't think there was any choice that would have made sense other than Facebook to net you the most guaranteed cash. Cambridge was never going to sink FB, at least not in any timeframe that would have impacted your vesting schedule. You got in at the perfect time. Timing is everything, and the takeaway is make decisions on the known, not a recruiter floating numbers they don't remotely understand and are incented to make sound amazing.
To my mind, in order to be a humblebrag, he'd have had to be posting about a much higher income than his target audience. E.g. posting this same thing to a general audience, not other Silicon Valley devs. Or posting to the same audience, but about a $500k+ income.
I've sold my stock as soon as it's vested. I'm already overexposed to Facebook.
On October 5th, I just moved down to Menlo Park next to FB. I'm in a 3BR 1BA which is $1850/month. It's much better here.
