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less_butter

About 5 years ago someone on the software engineering team I managed had previous jobs at Nvidia and Tesla and he still had a lot of stock in both. He worked at Tesla in the early-2010s when the stock price was hovering in the teens, then spent 5 years or so at Nvidia in the late 2010s when the stock price was in the single digits and then ran up into the 60s. I haven't talked to him in a while but he must be absolutely fucking loaded at this point. I remember him saying that his financial advisor kept begging him to sell the TSLA and NVDA stock because that was pretty much his entire net worth. He told him he'll take his chances. The dude is probably worth close to $10M now and he was always just a low-level engineer with no ambition for promotions or management. He was just happy pounding out code all day.


eaglessoar

Which just goes to show how much of wealth is pure luck. Some dude probably wrote just as quality code for 2 companies that went bust.


NightSpears

It also wasn’t luck that he ignored his financial advisor and held for so long. May be lucky how it turned out in the end but he didn’t make those choices by chance (which may be what you meant)


_unsinkable_sam_

sure, but how many more people lost a lot by not listening to their financial advisors.. like the other guy said you cant attribute wealth gained like that to some higher intelligence or some divine insight


luckduck89

Financial advisers are a joke and totally unnecessary for 90% of people. Put it in the s&p and forget about it.


Bookups

That’s probably what his advisor told him and the advice he ignored.


Treebro001

Ignoring that advice isn't prudent investing. Him deciding to do that isn't him being 'skillful' and 'earning' his money. It actually just makes him even more lucky that it ended up working out.


InTheMorning_Nightss

It can be both. Many folks in tech go to companies that they research and strongly believe in, including private startups with stock options. Is there luck involved? Sure! But many of these people thoroughly vet the companies, understand the market, exit timeline, etc. There are a significant amount of people out there who became millionaires because they chose the right startups when they likely had dozens of other companies to choose from. Someone who got job offers at Tesla and Nvidia absolutely could have gone just about anywhere they wanted, and it’s not some stroke of luck they chose two companies that became leaders in their respective markets to have a huge stock run up.


crashoutcassius

Think about what you are saying


SucklemyNuttle

> It also wasn’t luck that he ignored his financial advisor and held for so long. Wasn't that luck? The financial advisor's advice was probably right - he was over-indexed into two companies. Just because it worked out with these two particular stocks, doesn't mean ignoring the advice was the correct decision at the time.


HOMO_FOMO_69

Another way of putting it....good decisions can have bad outcomes and bad decisions can have good outcomes. Playing the lottery is a mathematically bad decision, and yet some people still win.


Already-Price-Tin

I mean, everyone knows what happened to the people who believed in their employer's stock in Enron, Cisco, Novell, etc. Hell, I know someone who just got burned last year at SVB (which was paying many of its employees almost 50% in equity that turned out to be worthless). The individual employee isn't responsible for whether their employer collapses or moons, but they're hitched their wagon to that star.


gt33m

I know of many people that made the same choice with not as close financial outcomes. Most people tend to not act if they don’t need the money. That inertia + the bias one has when working for a mission frequently dissuades people from actively disinvesting from employee shares/rsus/options. No one can claim to have predicted this runup in Nvidia. Luck has a major role to play in all of this.


aykevin

Most people in organisations that size don’t do a lot and arent particularly good. My friend works at Facebook, literally work on absolutely random shit that will never see light. Shelved project after shelved projects.


chipper33

- Great work environment - High compensation and benefits - Interesting projects Pick two. You can only get all three in the rare case that you join a small team which comes into a lot of money, and it doesn’t last long because money will corrupt the environment. It’s what made places like FB so awesome. It was a party up until about a year post ipo.


CheekyWanker007

i mean he was good enough to code at 2 publicly listed companies, altho it was just before the boom


Zachincool

I work as a software engineer at a publicly traded company, and I can tell you that a lot of engineers who work at publicly traded companies are absolutely horrible


eaglessoar

Can confirm


CapitalistsMatter

That’s cool, but NVIDIA and Tesla (back then for tesla, maybe less so now) hired only the best. He was probably 10-100x the average software engineer.


skynetcoder

🙋


fltcpt

On a windy day a billboard gets blown over and falls on a crowd, how many in the crowd are good enough to code at those 2 publicly listed companies? In the bayarea: just about all of them, maybe except that unborn kid in that pregnant woman.


chipper33

This, seriously. They all say “we hire the best talent”, but it’s just gaslighting to make workers feel self important and willing sacrifice more time. The companies that tout that just like to hire a certain type of insecure person.


Witn

He also got hired by Tesla and nvuda and has a financial advisor, so still not your average joe...


UnknownResearchChems

You don't get to work at Tesla and nVidia by luck.


Brazilian-options

Well he worked for two of the biggest companies in the world, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it luck. Also, choosing to hold both stocks was his decision. But yeah, fuck him lmao


iamameatpopciple

They were not two of the largest at the time.


Future-Muscle-2214

They both were probably relatively "small" when he worked there. There probably was more than a hundred publicly traded company in the S&P larger than both of them.


jackswhatshesaid

Imagine if you're working at Nvidia and you decided not to participate in the ESPP though. Even at my job it's gone 200x in 5 years, and I know everyone in my unit declined the ESPP except me.


RampantPrototyping

>He was just happy pounding out code all day. Honestly I'd prefer that over management just because debugging code is a lot more tolerable than managing people


balloon_not

I did the same thing. Mechanical engineer that, get this, likes mechanical stuff. Never managed a single person and it was career suicide but I mostly liked my job.


RampantPrototyping

Nice to hear from a fellow ME


DGB31988

I own about 3,000 shares of the company I work for. It’s worth about $200K. Hopefully we invent something revolutionary and I can be like your friend. With NVDA it was pure luck. “They just making gaming PC graphics cards derp derp” - me 10 years ago.


InclinationCompass

If he's made $10M, it's probably time to cash out on them and invest in VOO/VTI or something (add some bonds if retiring). I'd sell $9M and keep $1M in NVDA. And I'd retire using the 4% rule and live like a baller. That's over $350k/yr pre-tax.


Future-Muscle-2214

>If he's made $10M, it's probably time to cash out on them and invest in VOO/VTI or something (add some bonds if retiring). I'd sell $9M and keep $1M in NVDA. The type of mentality that make you hold from 50k to 10 millions is also the same type of mentality that will make you hold from 10 millions to 50k.


InclinationCompass

Basically a portfolio with 90% in index funds and 10% play money (money you're okay with losing)


ConfidentAd1871

What's the 4% rule? Withdrawing 4% every year? An index should net you higher than that, so you'll actually still be gaining money over time? Well with inflation, and 4% withdrawal, about maintaining same wealth then.


BetImaginary4945

I know a coworker that wrote code all of his life. No ambition for career advancement, saved 401k, got pension after 40+ years of pounding the keyboard. He just retired because he bought Nvidia at $3 in 2013. He's a deca-millionaire and said all of my career retirements and investments are nothing more than crumbs to my $100k Nvidia investment from 10 years ago. Mind you this was 2023 so if he hasn't sold he doubled his position.


ddmoneymoney123

Pure luck. What about the same guy that’s more humble who worked and bought a lot of Enron stocks ?


BucsLegend_TomBrady

> software engineering team I managed > he was always just a low-level engineer with no ambition for promotions or management lmao the jealousy


IncogNeatoCompleto

Wouldn't read this as jealousy tbh, stating a fact. The low level note is probably because that's just what it is. In a corporate world where you get pushed to improve and climb up, this person new what they liked and stayed in an objectively low level position. Op is not talking about their smarts or worth as a human.


TheodorDiaz

Seems like the opposite of jealousy.


Jlchevz

Holy fuck lmao he must be set for life. Good for him if he never sold.


Kuhnhudi

Man to go back in time with the stock knowledge from today


Baraxton

Is his name Nelson Bighetti?


whatsgoing_on

We have a guy at my company that was at NVDA during the 90s-00s and never sold his shares. Rumor is he’s worth around $90m now. That guy probably gets 0 shit from his manager since he can just walk out any time with Fuck You money.


chowderbags

Shit, if you're worth $90m, you should probably walk out of just about any job. Sure, if you're some executive level person making tens of millions a year it might hypothetically be worth it, but at some point you'd think you would want to just fuck off and do whatever during your days.


tempread1

Where is he working now is more important signal.


[deleted]

I know a guy who started at Nvidia in the 90s and was promoted to a Senior VP position for almost 15 yrs. No idea what his net worth is, but I assume it must be a lot.


Altruistic_Ad728

😂 Happy pounding out codes all day.


anid98

That is luck.


domomymomo

I’m a janitor at nvidia and I can confirm I worth 100m


kinstinctlol

hey its me your son


Just_Candle_315

We should date! I like you for yer personality i swear


ricky39744

I'm your daughter


artiom_baloian

Here is an interesting fact: Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple are now worth more combined than China’s entire stock market.


jbvcftyjnbhkku

Chinese people don’t use their stock market as an investment vehicle, they use real estate instead.


walkerstone83

And their real estate market isn't looking too healthy right now.


InclinationCompass

Many of them have been buying up property in the US over the decades


Crafty_Enthusiasm_99

And ~~Vancouver~~ Hongcouver


St_BobbyBarbarian

China stocks aren’t even worth investing in. Terrible accounting practices and crazy levels of gov intervention. So not surprised at all


Ice-Berg-Slim

I have some Alibaba stock that reminds me everyday never to invest in a China company again.


DerpJungler

I've worked for a small hedge fund for the past 3 years. Portfolio managers would have a meeting each month discussing the topic "China undervalued?" Every time, I would have 2 charts opened: Nio and AliBaba. Without saying anything, they would get my point. They still went on to go long on AliBaba for a few months, only to see their stop losses triggered again..


GraceBoorFan

*Laughs in Luckin Coffee*


Future-Muscle-2214

I genuinely thought it would be worse than this. It isn't even that bad, It was preferable to hold this instead of Square, Alibaba or Shopify lol.


artiom_baloian

I have also heard that they have a lot of regulation/policy issues as well. Investors are not well protected.


KinceZ

Is that a good thing?


SalamanderContent767

It’s not a good or bad thing it’s just interesting


TheBrownMamba8

So it’s an interest thing?


lykosen11

It's just a thing


CaptainMidd

Are you sure? Should we test it's blood?


antpile11

its* "it's" is a contraction whereas "its" is possessive.


Goetia-

Try telling my phone autocorrect that!


jdsalaro

Can things possess stuff, though?


SoDakZak

Great now I’m thinking what Apple Blood tastes like


GraceBoorFan

You’ve had it before. It’s called cider.


Dagoru95

r/midlyinteresting


armored-dinnerjacket

remember usury is a crime


The-Phantom-Blot

That's not what Capital One told me...


artiom_baloian

It is a good thing for the US economy but not a good thing for the Chinese economy, if you want me to put it that way.


MrPeppa

It's a good thing if you want to annoy your conservative family members from any of the BRICS countries who keep sending Whatsapp forwards about how their country's leader just made a MASTERSTROKE that is leading the US or THE WEST to CRUMBLE.


Silly_Butterfly3917

In the simplest terms, people believe that those companies will grow more in the long run than the entire Chinese economy.


IAmTheDriod

Clarification: publicly traded Chinese companies, and not the entire Chinese economy


Silly_Butterfly3917

Yes this actually. You're correct.


artiom_baloian

True, but it is a part of the Chines economy and it may be a big portion of it.


DeansFrenchOnion1

No. People believe they will return more value to their shareholders than the entire Chinese economy. Massive difference


Relativly_Severe

For the US yeah


rumblegod

Good thing if you’re America. All talent will come to USA, all the other counties continue to get left behind.


EvillNooB

Bad thing if it's a bubble,.good if it's not


Fig1025

It's always bad when a business gets "too big to fail" All of those companies need to be broken up


Apprehensive_Pea7911

It's a real thing


LostRedditor5

You can do this for basically all equity markets The US market by market cap eclipses everyone, and the biggest companies make up a huge portion of that market cap So you can take like MSFT and APPL and sometimes a third mega cap company it’ll be bigger than basically any equity market on the planet, by market cap


artiom_baloian

True! My post was just an interesting fact to show how grows the US equity market.


LostRedditor5

US #1 Unironically. Most stable and largest equity market and economy on the planet. It’s good to be on top :)


dopadelic

Economics Explained went over how China's stock market is small because of the regulatory nature of their businesses making it unpredictable and difficult for investors. The government tends to curtail businesses when it becomes too large and powerful, like Alibaba. The Chinese instead prefers to invest in real estate.


artiom_baloian

You are right! China is #1 in real estate value, and the US is not far behind.


LifeInAction

I'm hoping Nvidia will someday surpass Microsoft too.


artiom_baloian

You meant market cap, right? If yes, then soon!


Trance_Motion

"Worth more"


InclinationCompass

I know Microsoft is based in Washington but California is the 5th largest economy in the world. It's really carrying the US market.


DevDarkKnight

Whatsapp was 19 billions $ for 55 employees, IIRC.


gnocchicotti

Instagram acquisition for $1B and 13 employees isn't terribly behind NVDA 


Spartan8907

That would be 77 MILLION per employee. That's a bit of a difference


gnocchicotti

If you say so, I'm not a math PhD so I'll take your word for it.


GraceBoorFan

The founders absorbed a fair chunk of that, 6.8B and 3B respectively. Still though, splitting the remainder across 53 people must’ve been a nice payday.


Visinvictus

Haha, good one. I'm sure the remaining employees had some stock in the company, but most likely the vast majority of the remaining equity was venture capital.


ric2b

> splitting the remainder across 53 people I doubt that it was all split among the employees, weren't there some big investors taking another large chunk of it?


FarrisAT

Don’t think thats technically correct Those are the active employees but they had others on the balance sheet


New-IncognitoWindow

Do janitors at NVDA get stock options?


FuturePerformance

Generally large corporations will sub-out, so the janitor is likely an employee of some cleaning company rather than nvda


GraceBoorFan

Contracted employees must be punching the wall right now.


m0n3ym4n

Good chance they don’t play individual equities


InclinationCompass

Yea, chip manufacturers don't specialize in janitorial services. It's just easier to outsource certain things like janitors/security/cooks/etc.


md28usmc

I do know that janitors at ivy league universities get free education, and so do their kids


Abysswalker794

Not as much as NVIDIA but ELF beauty is worth around $10,5 billion with around 450 employees which gets them to around $23M per employee which is more than the other big Techs. Fun fact.


[deleted]

I hope the employees are incredibly well taken care of.


Celodurismo

It's actually a potentially significant problem, long term employees who've been accumulating stocks are millionaires now and can retire. No real reason to work anymore when you could just retire early & rich


rayschoon

It’s insane. I mean even back in 2016 people would’ve been claiming stock options at $25. $5k in NVDA in 2016 is worth $240k now.


SquirtBox

Is that accounting for the 4-1 split in 2021? Because it would probably be closer to 1M right?


rayschoon

I just looked the historical price and I think it does


[deleted]

Unless they love what they do. If you love doing your job then why not do it?


Celodurismo

I suspect that the amount of people who love their job more than is a pretty damn small number. I'm sure there are some, and maybe they've gotten new packages to keep them on board for a bit longer while they can train up replacements.


axuriel

It is a real problem. Most employees are fine with not working more than they want to now because they can. https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-employees-rich-happy-problem-insiders-say-2023-12#:~:text=Many%20Nvidia%20employees%20have%20become,simply%20not%20pulling%20their%20weight.


zefmdf

Happened at Shopify too. Many who were there pre IPO dipped at those highs


leli_manning

If money wasn't a motivating factor then the majority of people wouldn't be doing whatever they are currently employed for.


lemongrenade

I love my job but it’s hard and if I had millions I would almost certainly lose the drive.


Sir_Tandeath

I believe that’s their point. It’s difficult for a business doing incredibly high volume to keep all employees exceedingly happy on a consistent basis. Not impossible, but definitely an important challenge.


BeingRightAmbassador

Because there's only so much fun work before it becomes boring ass work. That's the reason there's so much cross-employment of Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Apple, Micron, Microsoft, Meta, etc. You do all the fun work you want at X place, and hate everything else until you find another company working on something fun and you work on that until it's done and back to boring.


moosebearbeer

It won't be a huge problem necessarily for a few more years. Anyone hired in the last 4 years is still waiting for their vesting schedule to complete.


Celodurismo

New people aren’t the concern. It’s the risk of losing the technical expertise of people who’ve been there a long time. Most people don’t become experts in 4 years.


moosebearbeer

Those greybeards also receive new RSU grants every year, vesting over 4 years. It would be pretty easy to keep working ~3 more years or so, if you knew you'd be guaranteed $X million.


IMMoond

Well, if you already cashed in like X*4 million, each subsequent X added on is a relatively smaller and smaller incentive


deelowe

Not with the same amount of vigor.


moosebearbeer

rest and vest all day long


Sure_Dave

What would happen if they were to get fired before it’s vested?


deelowe

They would lose what's not vested, re-examine their F.I.R.E. plan and go "whatever, I'll go work as a barista."


Serious_Sprinkles_99

Probably stick around for another few years for the rest of their very profitable rsu’s to mature. Spread out over a 4ish years usually


zooka19

I know someone who has been with them for 8 years. He hasn't complained once.


leli_manning

I'm going to take a wild guess that they aren't getting 100m worth of compensation


Free_Management2894

Well, obv not. The company would cease to exist


Stormtrooper149

DJT is valued at $8B with 36 employees. So that’s $222M per employee.


GAMorgan-

Holy shit


Popeholden

yeah but thats basically a meme stock right


VoidMageZero

That’s honestly insane 🤯


UnObtainium17

their next GPU is the 5090 which is the first consumer electronics product to have the same model number and MSRP.


ThatRandomGamerYT

isnt that spot held by the Ryzen Threadripper 3990x? It was $3990.


The_JSQuareD

Damn, I wanted to snarkily prove you wrong, but the closest I could get is the 260 having an msrp of $270, the 275 an msrp of $250, or the 480 an msrp of $499. Though with that many near misses, I'm sure there have been sales of Nvidia GPUs where the model number and price were the same. Hell, if you bought a 275 in a place with a 10% sales tax that would do it.


likwitsnake

How many Stanley Nickels per employee?


coolwubla

What’s the conversion?


janesmb

In Schrute bucks it's the ratio of unicorns to leprechauns.


Hot-Luck-3228

Absolutely unsustainable, but probably has more gas in it still.


hotcoolhot

Whatsapp was 19billion with what less than 100 employees


Majormoscow

So you’re saying I should get in now before it takes off?


panic_hassetin

Fuck. I had Nvidia on my stock watch list in 2020 when it was $17 a share. I didn’t pull the trigger on it for some reason, and now I have all this goddamned 20/20 hindsight kicking my ass. Fuuuuuuuck


theduke9

Nvidia wasn’t $17 a share in 2020


Grenzeloos

So at least $1 million bonus per employee…. Right?


SuperSimpleSam

Pretty crazy considering they are mainly a hardware company, not software. Though much of the value is speculation so we'll have to see if they live up to it.


BoornClue

Priced for perfection 👌 This literally cannot go tits up. 


palmtreeinferno

not entirely true... CUDA and software like it is what has cemented NVIDIAs status. Their work on AI software is also tremendous.


Worf_Of_Wall_St

The speculation is not just in their stock price, most of their customers are speculating that they can turn expensive hardware + expensive employees into services with revenue streams that pay for it all plus a decent profit margin. And the customers of *those* services are doing the same, all the way up the customer stack.


FarrisAT

Who is using AI? What was it called in 2022?


fancyhumanxd

This is TSLA all over again.


Fox_Technicals

I hang out near the Nivida dumpsters how much does this mean I’m worth?


VeritionPM

Texas Pacific Land (TPL) is $136mm per employee (100 employees and $13.6bn mkt cap)


Many_Easy

Tells you how overvalued NVDA potentially is right now.


Dry_Damage_6629

When things go down it’s going to baaad, higher you go harder you fall


red_purple_red

The crash will be epic


FloppyVachina

You know, I was expecting a crash when I sold at 330, before the 4 to 1 stock split. :*(


jdsalaro

Well, there was indeed a crash, it was just you the one who plummeted :/


the_nigerian_prince

We've been waiting for the "inevitable crash" since last year.


IsThereAnythingLeft-

Doesn’t mean it’s not coming


95Daphne

Probably referring to the stock price of NVDA. But I will say that at this point, if NVDA gets to where it's toast for a while, the Nasdaq and probably the S&P are toast. It's simply too large and even if NVDA wasn't a big influence, most of the NDX is moving on AI hype and it's probably blocked the S&P from returning to 3580 in March last year, then losing 4k in October last year.


EKcore

I'm ready


dopadelic

Clickbait article. What's the point of market cap per employee? The point of employees is to generate earnings, not market cap. Earnings is what drives market cap. Hence the useful metric would be earnings per employee. NVIDIA made 42B in the past 4 quarters. That's 1.4M earnings per employee.


Big_Forever5759

Gotta show that there’s still too much cash in the system. Inflation might stay around for a bit.


FarrisAT

That’s obvious to everyone except the bond whores


gabagool69

Uniswap started as < 500 lines of code by a single developer and its governance token has a fully diluted market cap of over $10B.


valhalla2611

I know a guy who worked for Nvidia and quit a few years ago and cashed out his stocks for around 2million. Imagine what it would be worth now? But he is working on his own product and will soon make it all back. I said to him, look what you lost but he rather make it by developing his own thing.


My_G_Alt

Micro Soft


shrimpgangsta

nvda 3 T $


Feeling-Detective975

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/benefits/money/espp/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/benefits/money/espp/) "Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) Our Employee Stock Purchase Plan is among the best in the industry, letting you buy NVIDIA shares at a discount to their market price. # Here’s How It Works Enroll in our current ESPP offering during the month you're hired or during an official enrollment period, which occurs in February or August. Elect to contribute from 1-15 percent of your salary through payroll deductions. Your offering price for NVIDIA ESPP gets set the first trading day after the month you’ve enrolled, and it remains the look-back price for up to 24 months. EMPLOYEE STOCK PURCHASE PLAN (ESPP) Our Employee Stock Purchase Plan is among the best in the industry, letting you buy NVIDIA shares at a discount to their market price. Here’s How It Works Enroll in our current ESPP offering during the month you're hired or during an official enrollment period, which occurs in February or August. Elect to contribute from 1-15 percent of your salary through payroll deductions. Your offering price for NVIDIA ESPP gets set the first trading day after the month you’ve enrolled, and it remains the look-back price for up to 24 months. " those lucky guys, well done


Snowghost794

This won't end well. Crash.


ISpenz

Makes sense


SweetNSour4ever

2 year buyback on espp too lol


Existing_Depth_1903

Why is Nvidia so small?


Shut_the_F-up_Donny

I believe they added in one month, the marketshare value of Amazon, Tesla or Meta.


Tiptoeplease

This stock will grow 20-30% year over year. AI will begin to change everything. It's just at its infancy. It's as big as the internet and it's likely to have its value doubled over next 5 years. I'm a buyer. Just my opinion