Half my pay is in AMZN stock and the Restricted Stock Units are granted two years into the future. The share count is guaranteed and they cost you $0 (not like options), but the stock price on the day you're eligible to sell obviously is not. One tweet from Trump this year erased $12,000 of my annual income, so it takes some guts to live in the model. That said, my % comp from stock/equity has been 48.3% - 51.5% the last four years, so those big swings generally come out in the wash. Amazon has benefited from this model because of the massive growth in AMZN. It won't always be like that.
I'm moving to Google next month and my % comp will be closer to 30%. That and they vest RSU on a monthly basis vs. the bi-annual at Amazon. I'm looking forward to it.
When i leave Amazon, all my unvested shares will be lost. I just had a pretty big vest last Thursday (delayed from Nov due to paternity two years ago) and I gave notice that same day. That phenomenon doesn't hold up when looking at larger populations, though, because there are way more people who don't sell shares and hold an ungodly amount of money in a single stock... so the vest days don't really matter to them. I am the sole earner and we have a kid/mortgage, so I'm an always Sell All and reinvest guy. It's cost me money over the years, but I like diversification and we're doing okay.
I'm moving to Google next month and my % comp will be closer to 30%. That and they vest RSU on a monthly basis vs. the bi-annual at Amazon. I'm looking forward to it.
When i leave Amazon, all my unvested shares will be lost. I just had a pretty big vest last Thursday (delayed from Nov due to paternity two years ago) and I gave notice that same day. That phenomenon doesn't hold up when looking at larger populations, though, because there are way more people who don't sell shares and hold an ungodly amount of money in a single stock... so the vest days don't really matter to them. I am the sole earner and we have a kid/mortgage, so I'm an always Sell All and reinvest guy. It's cost me money over the years, but I like diversification and we're doing okay.
'76 911S | '14 328xi | '17 GTI | In memoriam: '08 848, '85 944
"Here, at last, is the cure for texting while driving. The millions of deaths which occur every year due to the iPhone’s ability to stream the Kim K/Ray-J video in 4G could all be avoided, every last one of them, if the government issued everyone a Seventies 911 and made sure they always left the house five minutes later than they’d wanted to. It would help if it could be made to rain as well. Full attention on the road. Guaranteed." -Jack Baruth
"Here, at last, is the cure for texting while driving. The millions of deaths which occur every year due to the iPhone’s ability to stream the Kim K/Ray-J video in 4G could all be avoided, every last one of them, if the government issued everyone a Seventies 911 and made sure they always left the house five minutes later than they’d wanted to. It would help if it could be made to rain as well. Full attention on the road. Guaranteed." -Jack Baruth