If you've built up a 1.2M a year lifestyle, then going back to 250k a year lifestyle might feel like a "death sentence", at which point you will hear the world's smallest violin playing for you.

Hance why you shouldn't keep extending your lifestyle proportionally with your paycheck growth, and learn to stay humble and frugal and not spend to 'keep up with the Joneses'.

Unless you're in the same league with John Carmack or Andrej Karpathy where top companies are begging at your feet, you should treat jobs with very large TCs more like short therm lottery wins rather than cashflows guaranteed to last, since there's a high chance you're not that special as you think, and that there's probably others out there who can and are willing to do your work better and for cheaper when the crunch comes and the layoff axe starts to swing towards those non-exec workers responsible for company's biggest paycheck expenses. Those who've lived thorugh the 2008 days will know and remeber what I'm talking about.

If you're actually making $1.2 million a year, invest at least $500k/yr.

Then if you need to take a pay cut later, hopefully the dividends from your investment accounts brings your total income close to where it once was.

Also if you're reading this wondering if people actually make this amount of money coding... the answer is no, with the exception of an incredibly small percentage of people. Expecting $800k comp is not realistic for 98% of people.

So, mumble mumble, something about diversifying.

I'm sure the layoffs are likely to lead to a short-term bump because the markets will interpret it as Google adulting. But if they're signalling that they're afraid of AI eating their market share, then you probably want to be proactive about that.

I always chose option 1. This is like personal finance 101.

And for the company the purpose of RSUs instead of cash is to not deplete cash reserves.

You'd be surprised by people's poor spending habbits. Aquitances of mine when they got their first SV job out of college at Facebook, they immediately bought brand new Porsche 911's.

I think a token of "I've made it!" is fine. Maybe we all need that once in our life.

The problem is if it persists. (Worst, if somehow gambling, etc. becomes involved.)

You get a signing bonus for the US militrary? Damn that's pretty sweet.

If you're living this way, feel free to reach out. I have loads of advice you don't want to but need to hear.

Ideally, your standard of living should cost you a fraction of what your income is.

I got a job at Amazon and was making $x+$100K

I was Amazoned last year from a remote position. By then, I had paid off debt, downsized from my big house in the burbs to a condo one third the size in state tax free Florida and could easily live off of $x- $30K even though I’m making around $50K more than I was making 3 years ago.

Guess how much I stressed when Amazon started Amazoning?