right. what was the moral lesson of this story? that I should flip coins for profit or that the FAANGs are prone to hiring millennials who don't share the same shame as my generation in discussing their financials so openly?

When I chose Facebook, I believed that Uber was a better offer. A $100B+ valuation for them seemed plausible to me. I thought I was going to be making $35-55k less.

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.

The reality was it wasn't even a coin flip. They based things on pie in the sky estimates - treating them as factual evidence. If you're going to believe a recruiter on futures of stock options (not even RSUs) you're mad. Beyond that Facebook, at the time of consideration, was still a massive behemoth financially compared to Uber who had yet to publicly show an earnings report. I wrote this up right before Uber went public, but it was clear this stock was going to sink vs swim. They have nothing but debt, very little R&D that has long term viability any of the FAANGs couldn't just buy up as collateral, and have been throwing darts at how to monetize into the black since becoming commonplace. Had Uber had a few shreds of conservative approach to what they're doing I'd be far more behind them. But I was out at one of their research facilities on the east coast a couple of years ago and I couldn't believe the sheer amount of unknown and money (they didn't have) being dumped into autonomous at the time. Fast forward years and they still have no operational product. They're not Apple or Google with wads of cash to burn. The goal with going IPO was to accelerate the end product that makes them profitable, which they have yet to deliver.

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.

How so? It seems to be a pretty standard compensation package for a software developer in California, and his post is clearly targeted at that audience.

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 think there's some real value in people openly actually laying out what their compensation package is, how it worked out and the risks involved is actually really valuable. Obviously we shouldn't be making too many decision from anecdotes, but more awareness of peoples' compensation in the industry is a good thing.

No problem! I appreciate your support.

I've sold my stock as soon as it's vested. I'm already overexposed to Facebook.

Facebook vests quarterly - there actually isn't a one year cliff. In the last picture, salary + signing bonus + (4 * Quarterly RSU) + expected year end bonus gives you the total pay for the first year.

From February until October 5th, I lived at [NEMA](https://www.rentnema.com/) downtown in SF. I was in a 450 sqft. apartment, and it was $3270/month. I absolutely hated it. NEMA was fine, but SF is not for me.

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.

Those are for four years - I'll edit the text to explain that.

I just checked Wealthfront and it says my rate is 44%. I'm working on increasing it to ~60%.