financial-samurai-po_andre-and-sam_full-length-jun-1-2023-001_composer-cjom0nld8_clip

00:00:00.000 | Hello, everybody.

00:00:01.480 | It's Sam from the Financial Samurai Podcast.

00:00:04.400 | In this episode, I have a special guest with me, Andre Nader.

00:00:08.440 | He used to work at Facebook Meta for about nine years.

00:00:12.760 | He's based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

00:00:15.880 | I'd love to talk to him about his FIRE journey and what he is doing post-Meta.

00:00:22.080 | Say hello.

00:00:23.080 | Andre Nader Hey, Sam.

00:00:24.080 | Thanks for having me.

00:00:25.080 | I'm really excited to get to chat with you a little bit more about my journey and being

00:00:29.360 | at Meta for nine years and then the next steps that I'm still trying to figure out and talk

00:00:34.480 | through that with you.

00:00:35.480 | Sam: Yeah.

00:00:36.480 | Well, we first, I guess, connected over Twitter or I saw an article about you somewhere and

00:00:41.920 | I signed up for your newsletter, which I thought was really fascinating and really in-depth,

00:00:46.480 | particularly for those working in big tech and in tech in general in an expensive location.

00:00:51.920 | I really appreciate the detail you went through.

00:00:55.600 | During my book tour with Buy This, Not That, you were gracious to host me at Meta to talk

00:01:01.400 | to I think 500 to 600 people over the course of an hour.

00:01:07.200 | And then you've just been really graceful in helping me just spread the word.

00:01:10.920 | So I really appreciate what you're doing.

00:01:14.320 | In the beginning, tell me about your newsletter.

00:01:16.080 | When did you start it?

00:01:17.080 | How many subscribers do you have now and where can people sign up?

00:01:21.160 | Andre Nader Yeah.

00:01:22.160 | No, definitely.

00:01:23.160 | My newsletter, it's called Fang Fire, so F-A-N-G Fire.

00:01:27.960 | Right now it's hosted on Substack.

00:01:29.400 | So the link is my name, andrenader.substack.com.

00:01:34.000 | I also have a shortcut that you can get to if you type in avocadofire.com, it'll take

00:01:40.240 | you straight there.

00:01:42.480 | I'm slowly trying to make Avocado Fire a thing.

00:01:44.720 | If I keep saying it over and over enough, it will eventually start sticking and I'll

00:01:49.320 | get my own definition.

00:01:51.880 | But I started writing I think about two years back.

00:01:55.280 | And what I was finding was there's so much good fire content out there.

00:02:00.040 | I think among you and a dozen other people posting and just having such good in-depth

00:02:08.480 | information.

00:02:09.480 | But what I felt was kind of missing is this interesting perspective of being in a big

00:02:18.160 | tech company, working on the coasts in these expensive areas, and going into fine detail

00:02:25.920 | like what exactly should I be doing?

00:02:28.440 | Because I think there's a lot of the fire foundation isn't different regardless of whether

00:02:34.680 | you're making 50,000 or 250,000 or more.

00:02:39.080 | But there's a lot of nuance that comes particularly when you're in tech around just understanding

00:02:43.920 | compensation.

00:02:45.040 | If you talk to someone in tech and ask them, "How much do you get paid?"

00:02:48.360 | It's really surprising how often they understand how much they were offered when they first

00:02:53.440 | signed up or they have some rough idea of their base salary.

00:02:56.800 | But so much as you advance in your tech career ends up coming from RSUs and stock-based compensation

00:03:02.680 | and different employee stock plans.

00:03:05.480 | And it becomes a little bit confusing.

00:03:08.040 | And you have these incredibly intelligent people that are very good at specific things.

00:03:12.880 | And then it's not always like the financial piece just doesn't come for free and you need

00:03:16.720 | to understand and learn it a little bit more.

00:03:19.780 | So I was just wanting to go through and explain to people.

00:03:22.240 | One, I was just starting from a place of in my own personal journey of I'm planning myself

00:03:26.760 | for fire and I'm a data analyst by trade.

00:03:32.360 | So naturally that comes with a lot of spreadsheets and doing a lot of planning for myself and

00:03:36.560 | creating a lot of dashboards around just me even answering that question.

00:03:40.080 | How much do I make?

00:03:41.600 | What is my total comp?

00:03:42.600 | What is my total comp today?

00:03:44.040 | Facebook stock just dropped 20%.

00:03:45.800 | What is it now?

00:03:46.800 | And being able to quickly answer those questions.

00:03:49.240 | And it started with just building out these different tools and then writing about the

00:03:52.080 | tools.

00:03:53.400 | And then people started finding them valuable.

00:03:57.520 | And within Meta there's the fire community.

00:04:00.760 | I think when I left we had about 11,000 people that were part of it.

00:04:04.520 | So having that community of people that were going through similar circumstances I found

00:04:08.080 | like really, really valuable.

00:04:09.160 | So that's why I started writing was contributing both to the internal Meta fire community,

00:04:14.960 | but just as well as like the broader FANG community.

00:04:17.320 | The compensation is similar across a lot of big tech in how it works.

00:04:23.100 | So what I found was how my compensation was structured, how I was setting up my dashboards

00:04:28.520 | with a little bit of modification.

00:04:29.840 | It could work for pretty much anyone that is in tech and getting paid in RSUs.

00:04:34.840 | And just wanting to, again, start from that place of like, here's me and my journey talking

00:04:39.000 | from a point of someone who's physically going through it right now.

00:04:42.440 | Like I always write it into like, my goal is to be able to be fire in five years when

00:04:46.520 | I started writing a couple of years ago.

00:04:49.800 | And being able to talk in detail.

00:04:53.140 | And I love going into too much detail and going and breaking down all the numbers and

00:04:57.200 | going down and going through crazy scenarios around moving and going into a lower cost

00:05:02.160 | of living area.

00:05:04.440 | But just kind of going through.

00:05:05.440 | And it ended up resonating with a lot of people.

00:05:07.760 | They found that they could relate because they're going through the same thing.

00:05:11.280 | And that's where I was coming from and just sharing kind of my story is all I was trying

00:05:17.020 | to do with my writing on FANG Fire.

00:05:19.240 | Great.

00:05:20.240 | And let's talk about compensation because when I write about expensive coastal living,

00:05:25.240 | a lot of people can't believe the cost of housing and some of the budgets that I have

00:05:29.640 | on like $300,000 budget and so forth.

00:05:32.880 | So can you give the listeners an idea of what a first year engineer would make at Meta in

00:05:40.200 | terms of salary plus RSUs?

00:05:42.840 | What does that package look like and how does it vest?

00:05:45.040 | Yeah.

00:05:46.040 | I'm going to post on there real quick so I can speak specifically.

00:05:51.480 | I created a outline actually of following a new grad all the way through from their

00:05:57.340 | first year all the way to Fire.

00:05:59.680 | And let me pull it up real quick.

00:06:01.600 | Fire, for those who don't know, is financial independence, retire early.

00:06:06.240 | It's a movement that I helped pioneer or started back in 2009 and then a lot of people talked

00:06:13.520 | about it.

00:06:14.520 | And I think it's something that I think will continue to go, although it's interesting

00:06:18.720 | because now post pandemic, there's a lot more work flexibility.

00:06:23.360 | I see a lot of people playing pickleball during the middle of the day and just taking naps.

00:06:28.640 | I saw a CEO of a public company yesterday play tennis at 2.45 p.m. next to me.

00:06:34.440 | I always needle him and was like, "Hey, don't you have a company to run?"

00:06:38.480 | Anyway, so that's interesting that maybe Fire is not as necessary or interesting now given

00:06:46.480 | we can just work and play at the same time.

00:06:49.000 | Yeah.

00:06:50.000 | No, definitely.

00:06:51.000 | And I think the – and even what you're saying like on the remote work piece.

00:06:55.880 | One of my first posts, if we can go into the compensation on a new grad, but one of my

00:06:59.440 | first posts when I started writing was all around relocating and leaving San Francisco.

00:07:04.840 | Because San Francisco, the cost of living is so high and the budgets that go with it

00:07:10.160 | end up needing to be high to compensate.

00:07:12.160 | And the companies needing to – if they want people in their offices, need to compensate

00:07:16.840 | people enough to make it worth them leaving their homes in Texas to move to expensive

00:07:24.200 | coastal living like the headquarters for Meta down in Menlo Park, one of the most expensive

00:07:30.400 | areas in the country.

00:07:32.400 | Other headquarters in New York and Seattle, all very expensive areas.

00:07:35.520 | So you just need to be paying people enough to make it worth it.

00:07:39.400 | But with remote work, all of a sudden it opened up.

00:07:41.880 | But I think now we're seeing an interesting trend of like, is remote work the future?

00:07:46.840 | I think we're seeing a little bit of an interesting clawback and wanting to have more and more

00:07:51.080 | people in the office.

00:07:52.080 | I know there was a big revolt at Amazon, maybe even just yesterday, because they were

00:07:56.600 | being asked to come into the office three days a week.

00:07:59.720 | And that led to a worker strike there.

00:08:01.880 | So there's like an interesting tension going on right now on like the future of full remote

00:08:06.600 | work and flexibility versus wanting to get back into the office.

00:08:11.440 | I think that natural – workers had all the power early in the pandemic and then now the

00:08:16.640 | pendulum is swinging quickly back into the other side of things.

00:08:21.280 | So tell me about the compensation.

00:08:23.960 | Yeah.

00:08:24.960 | So a new grad engineer, like the – you have to remember too, we're talking like meta,

00:08:30.720 | the compensation philosophy is always around trying to get the very best from the very

00:08:36.200 | best schools with the best experiences and paying them at top of salary bands, like in

00:08:41.160 | like the 99th, 95th percentile.

00:08:44.240 | So the salaries that we're going to be talking about, like these are not like salaries that

00:08:47.700 | everyone can roll out of bed and go and get.

00:08:50.520 | This is the people that get these have worked their asses off.

00:08:54.600 | They've had the best internships, multiple internships in many cases, coming from top

00:09:01.760 | schools.

00:09:02.760 | But these – there's still like the – like thousands and thousands of new grads that

00:09:06.800 | are getting these jobs.

00:09:09.000 | And there's a tremendous number of them and opportunities there.

00:09:12.480 | So a new grad, the way that it works when you're starting at Facebook and as an engineer,

00:09:18.000 | there's different levels.

00:09:19.000 | Each level has specific salary bands of how much they're going to make, both in terms

00:09:23.960 | of base comp as well as bonuses, as well as RSUs.

00:09:29.360 | On the base for a new grad engineer, the level is called E3, so engineer level three.

00:09:35.960 | And the base salary starts at $125,000 entirely base.

00:09:41.480 | And if you're thinking through like, okay, $125,000 base, then that doesn't include any

00:09:48.260 | of the stocks, doesn't include any of the bonus.

00:09:51.440 | And the way that it's structured broadly is the – at that initial level of E3, they're

00:09:58.000 | eligible for a 10% bonus per year.

00:10:01.380 | And that will happen after performance reviews.

00:10:04.280 | And it's all based on their salary that they've made times that 10%.

00:10:08.340 | And there's also individual multipliers depending on their individual performance.

00:10:11.520 | So if you do really well, you can actually get more than 10%.

00:10:15.080 | If the company does really well, there's also an additional multiplier there.

00:10:18.000 | Or if it does poorly, it can also come down a little bit more, bring it down to earth.

00:10:23.520 | So you have that base salary, $125,000.

00:10:26.160 | You have that 10% bonus piece.

00:10:30.000 | But then you also have equity.

00:10:31.920 | And equity is where, as a tech worker, initially starts as not the largest amount.

00:10:38.720 | But if you're staying at a company long enough or as you get more and more senior, it becomes

00:10:41.880 | a bigger and bigger piece of your overall compensation.

00:10:44.280 | So a new hire engineer can expect a new grant of around $180,000.

00:10:52.400 | So we have – just to recap that, $125,000 base, a 10% bonus, and then $180,000 in new

00:10:59.680 | stock grant.

00:11:01.320 | And the way that these stock grant work is they vest over a four-year period.

00:11:06.280 | Starting immediately, though.

00:11:07.760 | Back when I first started, there was at least a one-year vest, which meant you had to wait

00:11:11.400 | a year before any of your stock vests.

00:11:14.560 | More and more companies have kind of done away with that and started vesting immediately.

00:11:18.560 | So every single quarter, a portion of that $180,000 will vest.

00:11:25.080 | And that kind of brings up into the – I don't know.

00:11:28.560 | That puts you in the – already, right off the bat, in the $200,000 range of total comp

00:11:37.120 | kind of coming in.

00:11:38.120 | And that's like a crazy amount to me, thinking about a new grad coming in, never worked,

00:11:47.440 | potentially ever.

00:11:49.640 | First time on their own, and then making $200,000.

00:11:53.120 | And this is why I started writing, is just because there's so much opportunity.

00:11:59.480 | If I was starting out in my career making $200,000, I couldn't even think about it.

00:12:04.360 | As a new grad, I was an economics major, graduating into the Great Recession back in 2009, and

00:12:11.760 | dreaming of making six figures down the line, working in the New Yorks.

00:12:16.440 | So having now, thinking through, okay, now we're in 2023, these engineers being able

00:12:20.840 | to come in, go to San Francisco, and make upwards of $200,000 in year one, it's unbelievable.

00:12:27.460 | But they don't have the – sorry, go ahead.

00:12:30.200 | Is it $200,000, though?

00:12:31.200 | So it's $125,000.

00:12:32.200 | So $180,000 divided by four is like, I don't know, $45,000.

00:12:37.960 | So that's $170,000, and then there's a raise.

00:12:41.220 | So like almost $200,000, but not $200,000, right?

00:12:44.200 | Like maybe $180,000?

00:12:45.200 | Yeah.

00:12:46.200 | Here, I can –

00:12:47.200 | It's still pretty good.

00:12:50.200 | Yeah, still pretty damn good.

00:12:54.200 | It's not too bad.

00:12:56.280 | And it really increases really quickly, too.

00:12:58.640 | So the base starting at $125,000, that's at E3 level.

00:13:03.080 | There's like an expectation within the first two years of you being able to advance to

00:13:07.240 | E5.

00:13:08.240 | So that's two levels more.

00:13:10.520 | And if you don't get to E5 within those two years for the engineering side, there's

00:13:14.160 | the – essentially an up and out kind of thing around, like they're expecting some

00:13:19.640 | rapid progression, and you being able to level from E3 to E4.

00:13:24.120 | With E4, the base salary is already $150,000, and the bonus increases to around like 15%.

00:13:30.840 | And your equity grants are higher as well.

00:13:33.320 | Is it every four years you get topped up another $180,000 plus in equity?

00:13:37.480 | How does that work?

00:13:38.760 | Every single year at Facebook, you get a refresher.

00:13:42.680 | And the refresher, this is where it's important when you're going into DECK, understanding

00:13:46.760 | the compensation philosophy of the different companies, because they all approach it really

00:13:50.240 | differently.

00:13:51.240 | So you can't – like I'm talking about how Meta approaches it.

00:13:55.400 | But I can't – and it's important.

00:13:56.400 | Go to websites like levels.fyi and see how these packages kind of look like.

00:14:02.440 | But broadly speaking, like at Meta, it's very formulaic.

00:14:05.800 | It's very much based on like what is your level, what is your role, what country are

00:14:10.640 | you in, and that's how much stock you'll get, and like your performance, the performance

00:14:16.160 | rating that you get at during the annual review cycles.

00:14:19.760 | But it's formulaic.

00:14:20.760 | It doesn't look back and see how much stock they've given you in the past.

00:14:23.480 | It doesn't look at what your base salary is.

00:14:26.400 | It's just – it doesn't look at how the stock has performed over that period.

00:14:29.760 | It's very much, okay, this is how much stock you'll be getting.

00:14:32.320 | You're at this level.

00:14:34.040 | And this is – you're in the United States, so you're going to be getting this top up.

00:14:38.840 | And every level has different bands.

00:14:43.920 | Every position has different bands.

00:14:45.400 | So you have like engineer – we're talking about software engineer.

00:14:48.560 | It's typically going to be the highest compensated role within a tech company.

00:14:56.880 | The second one being the product managers, and then everyone kind of going through from

00:15:01.520 | there on.

00:15:02.520 | So you have like the engineer, top tier, getting – they are the ones that set the bands of

00:15:09.200 | everything.

00:15:10.200 | Then you have the product managers, which are probably getting paid on like the – I don't

00:15:14.360 | know, 70% to 80% of the RSU package of an engineer.

00:15:20.720 | And then it kind of goes down from there.

00:15:22.280 | >> In terms – product managers, interesting.

00:15:25.680 | I've seen a lot of jokes about product managers online where they just kind of – they do

00:15:30.280 | their day in the life of meta and then they go and eat their – drink their kombucha.

00:15:36.400 | Then they have like a nice buffet spread and then they just sit back in a lounge chair

00:15:40.680 | and then they just say, "Hey, what are you guys working?"

00:15:42.800 | And the engineer is like, "Hey, this is what we're going to do."

00:15:45.600 | And then they go have drinks later.

00:15:47.080 | Now, how much of that is like real and fake?

00:15:50.040 | What does a product manager do?

00:15:51.800 | Is the product manager the person who stereotypically just doesn't know how to code so they just

00:15:57.240 | are just pushing pencils around?

00:16:00.040 | What do they do?

00:16:01.040 | >> It's definitely a role that's evolved over time.

00:16:03.560 | I think especially within tech, oftentimes in the early days, most of the product managers

00:16:08.600 | were former engineers and that's how it started.

00:16:12.320 | And certain companies have very strong engineering-driven product management philosophies.

00:16:17.120 | If Google particularly up until recently, the vast, vast majority of product managers

00:16:22.400 | at Google were ex-engineers because that was how they valued the role showing up.

00:16:30.560 | But I'll tell you, you see the day in the life pieces.

00:16:33.840 | I think the product managers earn every – I'm not a product manager.

00:16:37.020 | My role is product growth, so it's more on the closer to a product manager meets a data

00:16:43.280 | scientist and the comp closer to data scientist as opposed to a product manager.

00:16:50.140 | But the product managers, I think they – in my experience working at Meta, among some

00:16:57.060 | of the best product managers that I've worked with, they earn every single penny.

00:17:01.300 | It's a tremendous amount of work in order to wrangle, set the vision for an entire team.

00:17:08.380 | And then when you're working at a place like Meta, you're not just working in your own

00:17:11.460 | silo where it's like, "Okay, I'm working on how businesses advertise.

00:17:16.980 | I have this control over this one piece."

00:17:19.700 | And you can't just in isolation focus on building that one item.

00:17:24.860 | Everything is so interconnected.

00:17:26.020 | It requires a tremendous amount of coordination across teams.

00:17:29.540 | So you have the product manager setting the vision for the team, but also needing to do

00:17:33.100 | a tremendous amount of work around building consensus across partner teams.

00:17:37.980 | Because if you have a team working on advertising that's trying to do something to increase

00:17:43.300 | the amount of ads that are being shown, that will have a tremendous amount of impact on

00:17:48.300 | the user experience.

00:17:49.300 | And then you have teams working on the user side of how newsfeed works or teams working

00:17:53.380 | on reels or teams working on all of the latest and greatest different features that are being

00:17:58.220 | added.

00:17:59.220 | And all of these different features and all of these product changes have foundational

00:18:02.620 | implications on the rest of the ecosystem.

00:18:05.420 | So a lot of coordination.

00:18:06.940 | And then we're going into 2023, what is top of...

00:18:11.100 | It's like front and center.

00:18:12.100 | We're in an entirely different world than when I first started at Meta nine years ago,

00:18:17.140 | where it's a much more privacy conscious, a much more sensitive environment.

00:18:23.740 | So there's a lot of policy reviews, legal reviews.

00:18:27.060 | And the product managers play a huge role in making sure all of the roadmaps that the

00:18:32.540 | teams are working on are fully compliant and meeting all of our obligations that the teams

00:18:39.020 | have set.

00:18:40.700 | And really just setting the vision.

00:18:42.340 | And then they're entirely liable on the execution.

00:18:46.100 | At Meta, it's very much a, what is your impact?

00:18:49.460 | What are you having?

00:18:50.460 | It's not around setting the vision, it's around what did you actually deliver?

00:18:54.500 | And among roles, I think product managers are the most on the hook for actually delivering

00:18:58.940 | on the vision that they set for.

00:18:59.940 | It's not just setting the vision, it's actually being able to deliver and execute on that.

00:19:03.940 | And again, doing that from a point of, they're not the ones actually coding.

00:19:08.540 | So having to motivate the team, set the vision, coordinate with all the cross-functional partners,

00:19:15.340 | get the engineers bought in, excited, and just being able to execute on that.

00:19:20.180 | And the world also changes on a dime, especially at a Meta where the pandemic happens, all

00:19:27.220 | of a sudden your roadmap changes entirely and needing to quickly at the drop of a hat

00:19:30.900 | change it.

00:19:31.900 | Or there's a year of efficiency, which Mark announced, and there's a reduction in workforce.

00:19:38.180 | And all of a sudden the roadmap that you had built out that anticipated your team growing

00:19:43.520 | by 50% is now seeing a reduction in team and needing to at the drop of the hat change the

00:19:49.420 | entire roadmap.

00:19:51.700 | But people don't like to change goals either.

00:19:53.200 | So how do you make the same level of impact with fewer people, fewer resources on top

00:19:58.500 | of being distracted by other changes that are happening around you?

00:20:02.980 | So it's definitely the day in the life pieces.

00:20:07.560 | They take care of us at these places like Meta and we are spoiled.

00:20:11.500 | And I will not deny that the food is there.

00:20:14.220 | You're getting chauffeured around in buses, taking you from San Francisco down to Menlo

00:20:18.620 | Park every day.

00:20:21.300 | But you work for that too.

00:20:22.580 | It doesn't come for free.

00:20:23.580 | Speaking of work, the other dilemma I think a lot of people have is big tech or startups.

00:20:31.500 | And I've written about in the past how if you join a startup, you'll probably end up

00:20:34.820 | poorer than richer because the success rate is low.

00:20:39.140 | And all you hear about are the huge successes in the media.

00:20:43.020 | But the reality is, think about it as a venture capitalist, nine out of ten of your investments

00:20:49.380 | fail or they're zombie companies.

00:20:51.320 | So how are you going to make that money?

00:20:53.300 | So is there a, I guess, "risk" of being too comfortable at big tech and getting lulled

00:21:00.980 | into just doing the same thing over and over again?

00:21:04.260 | Because I have met many people from big tech who have left big tech to try to do something

00:21:10.780 | a little bit more impactful on a smaller scale at a startup.

00:21:14.300 | What are your thoughts on that?

00:21:15.300 | Yeah, no, it's really interesting.

00:21:17.100 | And it's something that I've been at.

00:21:19.460 | I was at Meta for nine years.

00:21:22.940 | I've over that time continuously talked to other companies, most of them startups, to

00:21:27.380 | learn more about what they're doing.

00:21:28.940 | And I'm of the philosophy that you should constantly be thinking about what's next and

00:21:33.380 | learning what's out there because life is all around opportunity, cost, and understanding.

00:21:37.540 | What's out there helps you make those decisions around whether you want to make those tradeoffs.

00:21:42.220 | And I do think it is easy to get comfortable once you finally make it in to one of these

00:21:49.100 | large companies and you're continuously getting these new stock grants every year.

00:21:55.220 | They call the stock grants "golden handcuffs" for a reason.

00:21:57.500 | They're investing over four years and you're getting more of them every four years.

00:22:01.140 | I think it's easy to get comfortable.

00:22:04.860 | And it's, in a certain level, fairly predictable around how much you're going to make.

00:22:09.980 | The past couple of years has been a little different because of the volatility of the

00:22:13.300 | tech stocks themselves.

00:22:15.300 | But I think the FOMO that you see, even among people at the largest tech companies of startups

00:22:23.060 | that are doing well, is very, very real.

00:22:25.540 | I think you see you can make a lot of money in big tech within the FANG company.

00:22:33.780 | The FANG, by the way, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google is where the acronym came

00:22:38.580 | from.

00:22:39.580 | And you can make a tremendous amount of money there, but it's like the...

00:22:44.300 | And the risk is generally lower if you're at those companies.

00:22:47.000 | But if you're wanting to...

00:22:51.060 | The startups has the potential for significantly more, but that risk is super high.

00:22:58.300 | Like you said, the vast majority of them will fail.

00:23:01.320 | The vast majority of them won't be the next Facebook.

00:23:04.940 | It won't be the next...

00:23:06.260 | I don't know.

00:23:07.260 | I was almost going to say Twitter.

00:23:09.420 | That's probably not the best outcome that you want.

00:23:11.780 | But there's the higher likelihood of it not working out.

00:23:14.260 | And it is challenging because when you're joining a startup, your base salary is going

00:23:18.560 | to take a hit and the equity is entirely liquid.

00:23:21.860 | You're going to be getting an imaginary amount of equity that could 10X, 100X.

00:23:29.460 | And that's kind of what you would be banking on in order to get that upside versus just

00:23:35.080 | taking a job at a public company and having that there.

00:23:40.420 | But I think it was...

00:23:41.420 | I think a few years ago, it was all around all the crypto companies earning tremendous

00:23:48.440 | amounts of venture capital and seeing valuations increase like year over year at incredible

00:23:55.320 | rates.

00:23:56.320 | And then you're seeing the same thing on a lot of the AI startups where the valuations...

00:24:01.120 | So your paper money all of a sudden seeing ridiculously large increases.

00:24:06.440 | And at the same time, I'm talking about the RSUs being golden handcuffs.

00:24:10.700 | It's just as easy, I think, at a startup if you're in early and it starts doing medium

00:24:15.220 | well to kind of get stuck because you get in this dangerous place where all of a sudden

00:24:21.280 | your paper money is worth a lot, but it's not super liquid.

00:24:23.720 | There's some opportunities to sell in the secondary market, but it's still incredibly

00:24:27.480 | challenging to cash out in a predictable way.

00:24:31.680 | So that's my high level view.

00:24:34.520 | It's worth doing the math, understanding the potential that could be there, but also going

00:24:42.080 | in being like, "Hey, it could probably fail."

00:24:44.960 | Assume your startup grants are going to be worthless and go in with the opportunities

00:24:52.320 | that you have.

00:24:53.440 | You're going to get a lot of different opportunities at a startup.

00:24:55.480 | You're going to be able to do so many different roles.

00:24:57.840 | You're wearing all of the hats.

00:25:00.200 | At big tech, you end up getting very specialized and becoming very good at being a good employee

00:25:05.520 | at big tech, working on a very specific type of problem.

00:25:09.320 | And within a startup, you don't have that luxury of specializing as much.

00:25:12.320 | You need to be a generalist and need to be a jack of all trades to get anything done

00:25:17.360 | because you can't lean on another team of engineers to go build something.

00:25:22.920 | You need to – if you're not going to be working on it and getting your team to work

00:25:25.560 | on it, it's just not going to happen.

00:25:26.560 | So it's an entirely different dynamic.

00:25:29.120 | >> Yeah.

00:25:30.120 | I know a friend who I started playing softball with back in 2017, 2018.

00:25:35.680 | And in 2020, he joined Figma as the VP of something something.

00:25:40.520 | So he probably had like $185,000, $200,000 base salary.

00:25:43.880 | He was at Uber grinding it out pre-IPO.

00:25:45.680 | I mean, Uber didn't do that great, right?

00:25:48.600 | But then Figma got acquired three years later by Adobe.

00:25:52.040 | I think he went from maybe like $2 million total to like $50 million in just three years.

00:26:00.240 | I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:26:01.240 | And I had never heard of – I was like, "What is this Figma?"

00:26:03.760 | I was like, "What is this?

00:26:06.080 | Design something on the fly, whatever, whatever."

00:26:08.360 | And it's like, "What?

00:26:09.360 | $20 billion acquisition by Adobe?"

00:26:12.120 | So I think it's these type of stories that really create a lot of FOMO for people.

00:26:17.280 | Where like, "Wow, I could go from $1 or $2 million net worth to $50 plus million."

00:26:22.600 | I mean, it's just unbelievable.

00:26:24.800 | >> And I think that you're seeing all the IPOs a couple years ago, and all the stocks

00:26:29.360 | are popping at the IPO.

00:26:31.840 | So there was a big trend of like, "Oh, I want to get into the next pre-IPO company.

00:26:36.480 | I'm going to go join all these different places that are about to go IPO."

00:26:40.400 | I think we ran into a harsh reality over the last couple of years.

00:26:43.400 | We had a lot of people going to companies like Instacart, Stripe, all these companies

00:26:48.520 | that were the golden child, about to IPO, having evaluations increase and double on

00:26:56.240 | a regular basis.

00:26:57.240 | But then the market soured, and all of a sudden, their plans to IPO were like, "Oh, we're

00:27:00.640 | going to put it on hold and wait a little bit and bump it out a little bit, bump it

00:27:05.680 | out a couple years."

00:27:07.200 | So it's not always guaranteed, and the upside's not locked in.

00:27:13.800 | And even those safe, like, "Oh, I'm going to go at a very established company that's

00:27:17.600 | almost about to IPO, and I still get some of that upside, and it might not materialize."

00:27:21.520 | But like you said, it doesn't always go well.

00:27:23.680 | We've seen more and more IPOs recently not do well.

00:27:26.360 | You mentioned Uber.

00:27:27.360 | So my wife's actually at Uber.

00:27:28.360 | She's been there five years.

00:27:29.460 | So we've gone through the full pre-IPO to IPO, and the stock is still not back to the

00:27:34.080 | IPO price or within the relative range.

00:27:38.800 | So it's not always a home run, even getting in pre-IPO and working through the IPO and

00:27:47.320 | years after.

00:27:48.320 | It's good salary.

00:27:49.320 | Don't get me wrong.

00:27:50.320 | It's just not the all of a sudden, I'm flying private and going to my condo in Jackson Hole

00:27:59.680 | on the weekends kind of thing.

00:28:01.000 | But the CEO is doing that.

00:28:02.480 | The CEO's, yeah.

00:28:03.480 | The CEO's are a different thing.

00:28:04.480 | Once you get to the executive level and the comp packages become – I mean, it's all

00:28:13.080 | public information being able to see what the top executives are making.

00:28:17.400 | It's a different world entirely once you make it to that upper echelon.

00:28:21.240 | Yeah.

00:28:22.240 | It's not bad.

00:28:23.240 | It's interesting how much they get paid for a lot of times how little they do.

00:28:28.360 | I don't know how much they can affect the company's share price.

00:28:32.120 | But even if it's flat, they still get paid huge amounts or if it underperforms.

00:28:36.120 | It's just amazing how great it is to be a CEO of a large public company.

00:28:40.320 | I mean, if they were like the founder and CEO, okay, I can respect that.

00:28:44.000 | But if you're like just a guy, a hired gun to try to like move some chess pieces, that's

00:28:49.560 | pretty impressive.

00:28:50.560 | I want to move some chess pieces for $100 million a year.

00:28:53.400 | It's such an interesting dynamic going from like the different companies that are like

00:28:58.280 | under-led still, which Meta being one of them, Mark still being the founder and still being

00:29:03.640 | CEO and still holding the majority of voting shares and having like full autonomy to decide

00:29:09.800 | the course of what's going on.

00:29:11.480 | Not full, like obviously still at the duty of the shareholders, but having much more

00:29:17.560 | control than say like Dara, who's the CEO at Uber after Travis was forced to step down.

00:29:26.560 | They have a lot of equity, but it's not coming in as the founder with like 50% equity range.

00:29:32.480 | It's an entirely different dynamic.

00:29:35.480 | How do regular people like me and maybe a lot of listeners here get into big tech?

00:29:41.000 | Because I tried getting into tech in 2012 because I've been in San Francisco since 2001.

00:29:48.880 | After I engineered my layoff in 2012, I was like, "Okay, let me just try to get into big

00:29:53.320 | tech or tech."

00:29:54.320 | I applied to Airbnb when it was a $3 billion company.

00:29:57.440 | I was like, "Oh, this is obviously a no-brainer."

00:29:59.760 | But I couldn't get in at all.

00:30:01.840 | I came from finance, so I didn't have a tech background.

00:30:04.880 | But I felt like I had an MBA.

00:30:07.480 | I went to undergrad.

00:30:08.840 | I spoke normally.

00:30:11.480 | But I guess I didn't have any connections.

00:30:13.440 | How do normal people who didn't go to great schools or have connections get in?

00:30:18.960 | What's like a path?

00:30:20.960 | I would like to say, I perfectly planned my career to get into big tech and it was executed

00:30:26.360 | flawlessly.

00:30:27.360 | I never imagined that I would be at big tech.

00:30:29.880 | My plans were never to do it.

00:30:32.680 | I can tell you my journey and I can tell you how I would think about it and the advice

00:30:35.960 | that I would give to people trying to pursue it.

00:30:38.920 | For me personally, like I was saying before, I graduated with an economics degree, University

00:30:43.160 | of Texas in Austin back in 2009.

00:30:48.920 | I wanted to do finance.

00:30:49.920 | I wanted to do banking.

00:30:52.480 | That was the prestigious job at the time.

00:30:54.280 | It was like, "Oh, I want to be an investment banker and work 100 hours per week and be

00:30:58.680 | in New York."

00:30:59.680 | That's just the dream.

00:31:04.200 | That was the pinnacle of every econ business grad at the time of what they were wanting.

00:31:14.360 | Going into internship season 2007, people were getting all of their offers started to

00:31:20.200 | get rescinded from all the investment banks.

00:31:25.160 | Being in Austin already, all the job fairs dried up.

00:31:29.440 | There was nothing available.

00:31:31.120 | All there was was a handful of anything finance related was like selling insurance.

00:31:37.480 | For some reason, they're always able to hire.

00:31:39.880 | What I ended up doing was I was like, "I want this econ degree."

00:31:43.640 | I don't even know what that means at the time.

00:31:45.040 | I'm just kind of like, I don't know.

00:31:46.240 | I wanted to do business.

00:31:47.680 | I found a random role at a startup in Austin.

00:31:52.240 | The company is called Build the Sign.

00:31:54.680 | It's an e-commerce company that works and makes custom signage.

00:31:57.760 | I'm just like completely very random.

00:32:00.120 | What ended up being is a handful of software engineers out of the University of Texas found

00:32:05.080 | this interesting niche where the online sign industry was run by these mom and pop shops

00:32:11.440 | that are just operating in person.

00:32:14.440 | It was super expensive to deal with.

00:32:18.520 | In the classic, let's go in and disrupt this industry, they set up this entirely custom

00:32:25.400 | online sign design software.

00:32:29.320 | At the time, it was kind of revolutionary for the industry.

00:32:32.080 | They just had a fine detailed understanding of all of their costs were so able to quickly

00:32:36.240 | undercut everyone.

00:32:37.240 | I kind of came in over there and was working on what's called SEO, so search engine optimization,

00:32:43.880 | which is something I never even heard of.

00:32:45.280 | It's not something that they taught at schools at the time, but it was all around how do

00:32:48.720 | you help a website rank highly in Google.

00:32:54.120 | It involves some analysis.

00:32:55.560 | It involved a lot of just learning the ins and outs of how search engines works and how

00:33:02.800 | different pages can rank in Google and Yahoo and depending on what you're doing, all these

00:33:07.920 | different places.

00:33:08.920 | It was just like this, not what I planned, not what I went to school for.

00:33:12.840 | I just had to be opportunistic because that was what was available.

00:33:18.040 | It almost had business analyst in the title, I think was one of the reasons why I was initially

00:33:22.120 | went down that path, but it had nothing to do with getting big tech in the beginning.

00:33:27.400 | It had nothing to do with banking.

00:33:30.680 | It was just what was available.

00:33:32.400 | I was going into a tough job market and that was kind of what was there, but what I quickly

00:33:36.240 | found is this is a big niche.

00:33:39.280 | There's not a lot of people now after being an intern there for the summer and staying

00:33:43.460 | on during my junior year working there.

00:33:46.760 | Not very many people have this SEO skill set back in 2008, 2009 and being able to leverage

00:33:53.160 | that into another internship at a different company that was then paying me $15 an hour

00:33:57.640 | instead of $10 an hour and that being a big jump up and then learning the ins and outs

00:34:03.160 | of the next company.

00:34:04.160 | The next company was offers.com, which was doing basically like RetailMeNot, doing a

00:34:10.160 | coupon website where they would earn an affiliate commission off of every signup.

00:34:14.760 | Just very random companies that I wouldn't have thought about or knew about until I was

00:34:20.560 | in the job hunt.

00:34:23.840 | The consistent thing was slowly getting these more and more niche skills and what was required

00:34:30.060 | to be able to be effective at these jobs was getting more technical.

00:34:32.780 | At the time, it started with being really proficient in Excel.

00:34:36.700 | Over time, it became needing to know how to use SQL because the data sets ended up getting

00:34:41.520 | bigger.

00:34:42.520 | All it was, if you're coming from finance, you know your Excel, you know doing pivot

00:34:46.320 | tables.

00:34:47.320 | It was just translating how to do all of that into SQL.

00:34:50.400 | It's just like reconstructing all of your pivot tables into SQL ends up being the same.

00:34:54.200 | If you're coming from an Excel-heavy background, starting to get more technical in SQL, once

00:34:58.800 | you understand how the connections are working and how you're trying to manipulate the data

00:35:04.240 | in the same way, the connections start happening there.

00:35:06.840 | There's this overall trend of being more technical over time.

00:35:11.720 | Then I had another break where I joined Indeed.com, which is the job search site.

00:35:17.920 | Again, just being opportunistic, constantly looking at new opportunities.

00:35:21.640 | I think these first couple of jobs I was there, a year and a half, two years max, and continuously

00:35:28.720 | looking for bigger roles, bigger opportunities, and the opportunity to learn more.

00:35:33.600 | Early on, again, I was earning $30,000 out of school, no equity.

00:35:39.640 | I was getting some private company stock, but it was imaginary stock that just went

00:35:43.960 | away after I left the company.

00:35:45.360 | It wasn't even the pre-IPO things that we're talking about in Silicon Valley now.

00:35:51.280 | Just starting from very small beginnings, not imagining that I would be working at big

00:35:55.760 | tech, but getting more technical.

00:35:57.400 | Indeed, it changed the game for me because the data sets ended up getting much larger.

00:36:02.360 | I had a manager that pushed me to be more technical.

00:36:05.720 | It was like, "Hey, if you're going to do this and be successful, you need to really

00:36:10.360 | double down on your technical acumen.

00:36:12.280 | It's not good enough being a marketer that knows Excel.

00:36:16.240 | You need to be proficient in SQL.

00:36:17.240 | You need to be proficient in Python because that's what we need you to be.

00:36:21.880 | If you're going to be successful here, you need to learn these things.

00:36:24.880 | We'll equip you with the training and the classes to get there, but you need to put

00:36:30.440 | in the work."

00:36:31.560 | It was that big unlock and getting even more technical with every single role, getting

00:36:38.080 | even more niched down where I had this specialty that I could always fall back on, where I

00:36:43.800 | felt like I could get these niche jobs at any place.

00:36:47.600 | Indeed, I had the benefit of them growing incredibly quickly.

00:36:51.160 | When I started, I think there was a couple hundred.

00:36:53.560 | When I left, there was a couple thousand over three years.

00:36:56.560 | When you're at a company that's small and growing quickly, you also quickly gain ownership

00:37:02.080 | over different things.

00:37:03.080 | I went from being an analyst to a senior analyst to a manager to a director within a span of

00:37:08.280 | three years.

00:37:09.800 | There's a lot of title inflation that goes on in smaller companies, but as an early career

00:37:16.560 | person, you're getting more responsibility faster than you would get anywhere else.

00:37:21.520 | Now, we're talking.

00:37:23.440 | We're talking the five years out of school, still in Austin, never thought I was going

00:37:28.760 | to be leaving Texas, bought a home, got married, had chickens in the backyard, the classic

00:37:35.240 | American dream in my head.

00:37:36.840 | It was like the white picket fence, house with the red door kind of thing.

00:37:42.480 | Then get this random message on LinkedIn from a recruiter at Facebook and saying, "Hey,

00:37:50.320 | we have this opening on this role called growth marketing and we think that you would be a

00:37:56.280 | good fit."

00:37:57.900 | Little did I know, they reached out to every single person on my team.

00:38:00.880 | They found a little pot of people with the skill sets that they wanted.

00:38:04.960 | Every single person in my team, probably around ten people, little did I find out afterwards,

00:38:09.440 | we had all interviewed.

00:38:10.440 | They got in contact with all of us.

00:38:13.320 | Half of us ended up flying out to San Francisco or Menlo Park to do interviews in person.

00:38:20.480 | And ended up just doing well in that interview and getting that job in there.

00:38:27.240 | That was kind of my in.

00:38:28.240 | It was never planned.

00:38:29.480 | It was just like I was getting more technical.

00:38:32.460 | I was learning SQL.

00:38:33.600 | I was learning these skills that it turns out these big companies are really in demand

00:38:39.320 | for.

00:38:41.480 | That was kind of my story and how to get there.

00:38:44.880 | If I was trying to master plan my way there now in retrospect, if my goal is to be in

00:38:49.860 | big tech, you don't have to go through and do exactly what I did and meander through

00:38:55.400 | opportunistically.

00:38:56.400 | I do think you should approach your career opportunistically because the roles and jobs

00:39:00.200 | that I'm in now didn't exist when I was first graduating.

00:39:05.000 | My title now was product growth manager.

00:39:08.200 | That's not a title that existed.

00:39:09.200 | Or even when I joined Facebook originally, it was like growth marketing.

00:39:12.640 | That's not a title that existed.

00:39:14.280 | So going in and getting tunnel vision too much on some of these roles isn't what's important.

00:39:20.880 | It's more around the broad general skills that these companies are looking for.

00:39:26.880 | And so I think LinkedIn is a great resource of looking through and seeing who are these

00:39:30.960 | different people in these companies.

00:39:32.680 | And what you'll find is actually there's more than just product managers and engineers at

00:39:36.120 | these companies.

00:39:37.120 | There are hundreds of different roles across the spectrum, again, from doing traditional

00:39:44.280 | finance, especially at these public companies, the teams and teams of finance, HR, recruiting,

00:39:51.680 | design, content on the business side, ops, research, customer support.

00:39:57.880 | There's all of these different roles.

00:40:02.440 | And if you look through the people that have these titles, go through and see, okay, did

00:40:05.720 | they start at this company?

00:40:07.200 | In many cases, most roles, the person probably didn't start at Meta.

00:40:10.880 | They started somewhere else, but they gained certain skills that Meta found valuable for

00:40:15.400 | these roles.

00:40:17.000 | One example that I can kind of give you for the team that I was on, on product growth,

00:40:23.520 | some roles hire new grads, other ones don't.

00:40:27.200 | Like engineering oftentimes will hire new grads and kind of like train them up.

00:40:31.280 | Ops roles, customer support roles will hire new grads because they can start them from

00:40:34.960 | zero and build them up.

00:40:36.280 | But other roles, they have the luxury of being like, "Hey, we want other companies to do

00:40:39.920 | the hard work and getting people with the skills, and we'll just go and poach them later

00:40:42.600 | on and offer them 99% salary packages."

00:40:46.680 | And the team that I was on, you would see pockets of people from these companies.

00:40:53.320 | Like I said, everyone on my team indeed was recruited because we had these certain sets

00:40:57.840 | of skills.

00:40:58.880 | You would have dozens of people on the team from Capital One, dozens of people from companies

00:41:02.480 | like Vistaprint or DraftKings, because these companies are actually really, really good

00:41:07.120 | at hiring really smart new grads and training them from scratch and getting them the skills

00:41:12.700 | that then these big companies really value.

00:41:15.640 | So you end up having like these unofficial feeder companies.

00:41:19.200 | These companies wouldn't like to hear that, and I'm sure they hate seeing it, but they

00:41:24.600 | do a really good job of training new grads with the skills that larger companies value.

00:41:30.040 | So I think if you're being an analyst, like a data scientist or any type of analyst, like

00:41:33.880 | "Ah, man, Capital One, I think more data scientists and analysts come from Capital

00:41:38.680 | One than nearly any other company that I was to pick from within Meta especially," just

00:41:44.680 | because I think they have such a good reputation and program of getting new grads in and learning

00:41:50.440 | those experiences.

00:41:51.440 | So I think it's like, look at the roles that you're excited about.

00:41:57.040 | See what skills the people that have those roles have and what companies they worked

00:42:00.040 | at before they joined Meta.

00:42:02.360 | Then there's also the other path around like what roles do these companies like Meta hire

00:42:06.880 | new grads for?

00:42:07.880 | And then kind of like once you're in, like sometimes there's a lot more mobility on internal

00:42:12.880 | transfer.

00:42:13.880 | If you asked me like five years ago, I would say it was even easier.

00:42:16.080 | Now I think it becomes a little bit more challenging depending on the...

00:42:20.220 | Everything is impacted by the macro environment of like how fast teams are growing and the

00:42:24.640 | need for people in different roles.

00:42:27.120 | When teams are growing really quickly, it's much easier to be able to get in without like

00:42:33.000 | all of the skill requirements.

00:42:34.400 | As things tighten up, it becomes a little bit more competitive because again, you're

00:42:37.560 | competing with people externally that might already have these skills.

00:42:40.840 | So needing to really set yourself apart and prove that you can kind of drive value from

00:42:44.820 | day one because they're not paying top of band 99% salary bands for someone that they

00:42:50.560 | need to train up.

00:42:51.560 | So there's a reason why they're offering those bands because they're wanting the people that

00:42:55.520 | already can hit the ground running and execute from day one.

00:42:58.560 | >> Okay.

00:42:59.560 | Well, thanks for that.

00:43:00.840 | So you've been there for nine years and you talked about first year guys starting out

00:43:06.560 | at $185,000, maybe $200,000 depending on the RSU value.

00:43:11.560 | You joined sounds like at what, 28, 29?

00:43:14.880 | >> Yeah, right around there.

00:43:17.320 | So I joined Meta in 2014 and now I'm 36.

00:43:23.640 | I have to do the math backwards, so around there.

00:43:26.080 | >> Okay.

00:43:27.080 | So joining then, obviously the stock price was much lower.

00:43:31.000 | You had all that base salary growth and you got promoted.

00:43:34.880 | So can you give an idea of how much wealth you were able to build over a nine-year bull

00:43:39.600 | run?

00:43:40.600 | Because I think a lot of listeners including myself will think, "God, he surely must have

00:43:43.920 | made a heck of a lot of money in those nine years."

00:43:46.920 | >> Yeah.

00:43:47.920 | Early on again, so I joined Meta.

00:43:53.040 | I was talking about the different levels that I had and I remember that.

00:43:55.080 | So I was coming, I was at Indeed before my role was director of something or another.

00:44:01.240 | I think I was making like $80,000 and Meta, I joined and that was in Austin, Texas too.

00:44:08.080 | And then I joined Meta coming in and the offer that I ended up signing was I think in like

00:44:13.040 | $135,000 plus like $100,000 in stock.

00:44:19.840 | So already like around how much a new grad software engineer would make.

00:44:25.240 | So that kind of gives you kind of the delta that a engineer has to a lot of these other

00:44:31.040 | functions kind of coming in.

00:44:33.520 | So having that, what sounds like a big salary increase, but what I actually penciled in

00:44:39.760 | was that it was like compared to the cost of living and the increase that I would need

00:44:43.600 | to have in relative to Texas.

00:44:46.600 | I was doing it like, okay, it's probably like a little bit higher, but almost a wash.

00:44:51.320 | But I was approaching it very much of the mindset of proving that I could do it at a

00:44:56.040 | place like Meta would let me go back to Texas in three years and start running things and

00:45:00.800 | getting all the C-level jobs at all of these tech companies in Austin.

00:45:06.880 | That was kind of like my vision at the time.

00:45:10.480 | So it was never around like I want to go in Meta to just earn a shitload of money and

00:45:15.160 | advance really quickly.

00:45:17.200 | But every year I was kind of like, okay, do I stay at Meta or not?

00:45:21.160 | And I would always say like, I have three more years in me.

00:45:22.960 | I have three more years in me.

00:45:23.960 | And the reason was because the salaries continued to increase.

00:45:27.160 | The amount of equity that I was getting continued to increase.

00:45:30.760 | Again, so you have that initial 100,000 rent.

00:45:36.680 | Then a couple of years, the next year, getting another 100,000.

00:45:40.880 | And again, like you were saying before, the stock when I joined was $60.

00:45:45.800 | So that $100,000 is static.

00:45:47.880 | That $100,000 was based on Meta stock at, or Facebook stock at $60.

00:45:53.760 | So you benefit tremendously from when the stock is doing really well.

00:45:57.000 | All of a sudden your salaries can go from like an expectation of getting like under

00:46:02.160 | $200,000 to $300,000.

00:46:06.080 | And then after a couple of years, the salaries like continue to grow because you're building

00:46:12.200 | up every single year, additional vests, additional equity amounts that are being granted over

00:46:17.480 | different amounts.

00:46:18.480 | So over my span of nine years, like my total comp was anywhere from like $200,000 some

00:46:22.960 | years all the way to like $600,000 at like the peak.

00:46:26.480 | So in a single year all in, and that's like liquid amount that I could sell every single

00:46:32.240 | year.

00:46:33.240 | So we have talked about like nine years in that range, you're able to quickly, very quickly

00:46:37.040 | accumulate significant amounts of capital.

00:46:39.880 | And also my household is double tech.

00:46:42.880 | My wife's at Uber five years, other companies before that.

00:46:47.000 | And we'd always been able to maintain a stable or like keep our spending in check.

00:46:53.040 | We went eight years without having a car in San Francisco, shared a one bedroom place

00:46:56.840 | in the middle of the mission and able to take advantage of the economies of scale that come

00:47:01.940 | from the dual income, no kids lifestyle early on.

00:47:07.120 | And I think we were saving more than like $300,000 per year in like relatively quickly

00:47:14.560 | and able to just like quickly accumulate assets.

00:47:16.520 | And like I was always of the mindset of as soon as I get any stock, I'm selling it immediately

00:47:20.800 | and buying like a diversified index funds and just maxing out every single retirement

00:47:26.200 | account, every single mega backdoor Roth account that I could take advantage of.

00:47:31.480 | And it's just like pumping money into these accounts.

00:47:36.000 | And like in my head, I was like, okay, this is like what started as like, okay, I'm going

00:47:40.160 | to be able to fire in 10 years.

00:47:42.760 | I'm like, okay, this is like, it can happen much more quickly than I thought.

00:47:47.920 | What also happened is like I was there nine years.

00:47:50.320 | My fire number, when I thought I could live off of also drastically changed.

00:47:53.840 | And when I first started, I was like, all I need is $60,000 per year to live off of.

00:47:59.360 | So I was starting from Austin, like $60,000 was a ton.

00:48:01.920 | I could support two people, no problem.

00:48:04.320 | I was earning $30,000 or around there.

00:48:07.800 | So then my, what I needed to sustain myself, my, so I kept moving the goalposts as the

00:48:12.440 | salaries were increasing, but I also kept enjoying the job too.

00:48:15.740 | So there's, I was getting a lot of fulfillment from the job.

00:48:18.220 | So there wasn't this rush of wanting to cut out and disconnect.

00:48:22.640 | But when you're saving like 300,000 plus per year, which again, coming from a kid that

00:48:27.920 | started graduated making $30,000, like I never imagined that I would earn $300,000, let alone

00:48:33.000 | be able to save that amount.

00:48:35.600 | So just, it adds up quickly, like the compound interest on top of just being able to pound

00:48:40.920 | money away and save it, the assets build up.

00:48:45.440 | So I'm going to do the simple math for everybody.

00:48:48.760 | Nine years times 300,000 is 2.7 million.

00:48:52.520 | You add, I don't know, 5% compound growth, even 8%, we're at $3 million.

00:48:58.240 | And that's before you were saving any money when you joined Metta at 28.

00:49:04.240 | So I'm going to guess y'all's net worth is three plus million.

00:49:08.920 | Yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're, yes.

00:49:13.960 | Okay.

00:49:14.960 | And what is enough for a family of three?

00:49:19.200 | What is your fire?

00:49:20.200 | How do you calculate it?

00:49:21.200 | My fire, I feel like I'm conservative, but I'm not as conservative as you.

00:49:27.240 | Where I like to keep it simple around, like I like the 3% rule as opposed to the 4% rule.

00:49:32.200 | So I kind of just take how much I need to spend and multiply that by the nice and easy

00:49:37.760 | 33.33, which I think will get me to that 3% number.

00:49:42.560 | So I think I put in all in my fire number being like a bit more than 4 million.

00:49:49.240 | I do have, I have a five-year-old right now.

00:49:51.020 | So my fire number includes certain amounts of spending.

00:49:53.920 | So I think I'm wanting to spend like 120 grand a year, not including housing and being able

00:49:59.780 | to have my daughter's college.

00:50:03.000 | Not including housing.

00:50:04.000 | Why is that?

00:50:05.000 | Because I think the housing is the biggest, I don't know where I'm going to retire.

00:50:13.240 | And the, I struggle with being able to put a number down on my enough number without

00:50:20.040 | knowing where.

00:50:21.200 | So what I did was actually, I deconstructed my enough number into different components.

00:50:26.040 | One was to cover the amount of space spend that I want, excluding housing, because housing

00:50:30.680 | is so variable.

00:50:31.680 | And right now my rent in San Francisco is $5,000.

00:50:34.880 | If I were to buy a house, it would, my mortgage would be north of $10,000.

00:50:40.280 | And if I moved somewhere else, it would be maybe half of that or something like that.

00:50:44.800 | So that variable was always a little bit complicated.

00:50:47.640 | So what I did was enough to get me $120,000 per year to spend, excluding housing.

00:50:55.040 | And I had this like ballpark number of like, okay, let's like say I'm going to leave and

00:50:59.040 | go to North Carolina and buy like an $800,000 house.

00:51:02.320 | So that's kind of where I backed into the 4 million.

00:51:05.680 | It was like this assumption that I leave San Francisco, but I haven't left San Francisco.

00:51:10.200 | I stayed in San Francisco.

00:51:11.400 | So that's where my enough number for North Carolina, isn't it my enough number for San

00:51:16.200 | Francisco.

00:51:17.200 | And that requires kind of like potentially staying, keeping working or figuring out what

00:51:21.760 | that is.

00:51:22.760 | And it's kind of been shifting and doing it.

00:51:25.360 | But at the same time, I think like life is too short to not live somewhere that you want.

00:51:31.080 | And that's where I've continuously kind of reevaluated like is, I feel like it's moving

00:51:37.680 | the goalposts, but at the same time, like I don't want to make a sacrifice that I like,

00:51:42.800 | I'm still young.

00:51:43.800 | I'm like in my 30s, 36.

00:51:44.800 | I live somewhere.

00:51:45.800 | I was like, there you go.

00:51:46.800 | So the following in your footsteps.

00:51:47.800 | And yeah, I think that like, I like San Francisco still like for all its ups and downs.

00:51:59.360 | It's still like a great place to live.

00:52:00.840 | And I think there's like so much opportunity here that but it does, it changes your fire

00:52:05.720 | number for sure.

00:52:06.720 | But I'm going to tell you your fire number right now.

00:52:08.880 | So you spend 10,000 a month, 120,000 a year.

00:52:12.440 | And if you rent at 5,000 a month, so that's another 60,000 years, that's 180,000 times

00:52:17.040 | 33.3.

00:52:18.040 | So that's 6 million.

00:52:19.520 | There you go.

00:52:20.520 | 6 million.

00:52:22.480 | But obviously, if you move to a lower cost area, you're probably good at 4 to 5 million.

00:52:27.360 | Yeah.

00:52:28.360 | So 4 million was my non-San Francisco number.

00:52:31.440 | And then San Francisco has the extra wrench.

00:52:34.280 | Right.

00:52:35.280 | So it sounds like you're kind of close to it, to your non-San Francisco number.

00:52:42.600 | I guess my question is do you really feel close to it even though it says you're close

00:52:48.040 | to it on paper because there's an emotional aspect to it of walking away and then there's

00:52:52.880 | actually walking away.

00:52:55.160 | It's hard to do.

00:52:56.360 | It took me – it didn't take me actually that long to do because I had the severance

00:53:00.200 | package and I was strategic in planning.

00:53:03.440 | But it is still hard to do.

00:53:05.060 | So how far away do you emotionally feel from that fire number?

00:53:10.440 | Yeah.

00:53:11.440 | I think the – so I think we were dancing around it and I can kind of go more specifically.

00:53:16.440 | So I was laid off from Meta last week on Wednesday.

00:53:21.680 | And it wasn't like a huge surprise.

00:53:24.960 | The mark had announced a year of efficiency back in February.

00:53:29.960 | And then back in November, we had the first round of layoffs.

00:53:33.160 | So we knew that there was layoffs coming for different teams.

00:53:37.160 | And I knew that my team would potentially be impacted in May.

00:53:43.320 | But it was very interesting to me because in my head when I was thinking about it in

00:53:46.200 | January, I was thinking it was like awesome.

00:53:48.920 | I'm pretty close.

00:53:49.920 | I'm a two-income household.

00:53:52.080 | We could get by with just like me retiring like my wife wanted to still work being able

00:53:57.000 | to do that.

00:53:58.000 | Or we could fire and leave and go to the North Carolinas of the world and fire immediately

00:54:03.320 | if we wanted to.

00:54:06.600 | But what I found interesting was when reality happened and the announcements of the year

00:54:11.320 | of efficiency and more specifically of your role being at Jeopardy in May, my first reaction

00:54:16.760 | was immediately start applying for new jobs.

00:54:19.000 | So I found that interesting where I was like on paper, I'm writing about enough.

00:54:22.680 | I'm writing about like this is what I need to do to be able to do whatever I want and

00:54:27.440 | not have money be the primary motivator.

00:54:29.600 | And in my head, it was always like if money was not an option, I don't know if I would

00:54:34.240 | spend my day working.

00:54:37.200 | Like in my head, I wouldn't do nothing.

00:54:39.720 | But on paper, when I was thinking about it, I don't think I would be spending 40, 50 hours

00:54:43.880 | a week in a tech job even if it was paying $500,000 plus per year.

00:54:50.360 | That was not what I said.

00:54:51.480 | But I think that's different when all of a sudden reality comes and punches you in the

00:54:54.760 | face and being like, "Hey, your job actually might go away."

00:54:58.600 | And immediately start applying at every single thing company and like getting out there.

00:55:02.960 | So like the fight or flight response in me was let me quickly fill this salary gap immediately

00:55:11.600 | as quickly as I can.

00:55:13.080 | And now I'm on the officially still employed because I'm on severance or during the war

00:55:21.360 | period and officially will be off in the end of July.

00:55:25.240 | But I also have a severance coming in that they've been fairly generous on.

00:55:28.840 | So I do have the luxury of not being in a hurry to do something new.

00:55:34.880 | But I feel less able to unplug even if I'm at my number than I thought I would be.

00:55:47.200 | And I think that the struggle of like, "Hey, you just got reality.

00:55:51.120 | You got knocked out.

00:55:52.120 | You got a severance package on your way out."

00:55:56.240 | If you're going into fire, like you said, you're always the king of engineering your

00:56:02.960 | exit and getting that severance on the way out.

00:56:05.080 | I can't think of a better way to go into fire than getting a severance package as you leave.

00:56:11.080 | Absolutely.

00:56:12.080 | But actually, I'm one week in of having-

00:56:17.560 | Caught you raw.

00:56:18.560 | Of the seven series.

00:56:19.560 | So you're coming in raw and having the like, "I don't know."

00:56:23.080 | I think the part of me is wanting to taste the freedom that can come with fire.

00:56:31.720 | But at the same time, the uncertainty is still there.

00:56:40.240 | The reality changes when the big paychecks kind of stop, especially I think when after

00:56:45.480 | severance ends.

00:56:46.480 | It hasn't stopped yet.

00:56:47.480 | It hasn't stopped.

00:56:48.480 | I'm still getting paid like normal through July.

00:56:49.480 | And then the severance check lands in August.

00:56:51.480 | It's like a race against time.

00:56:54.040 | You basically, you're like, "Okay, let me see if I can set something up before those

00:56:58.000 | normal paychecks end."

00:56:59.640 | But here's one strategic thing that I suggest you do.

00:57:02.400 | Have you started applying for unemployment yet?

00:57:07.840 | Last week on Monday, I was doing my projections.

00:57:10.840 | And then this week on Monday, I was filling out my unemployment.

00:57:15.040 | And very interesting for California folks, while you're on your warrant period, you're

00:57:20.360 | eligible for unemployment.

00:57:21.360 | And that's up to $450 per week.

00:57:25.160 | And you could be sure that I immediately signed up for unemployment and got the ball, started

00:57:29.480 | to be rolling there.

00:57:31.800 | And if the unemployment office is listening, I'm also actively looking and willing to work

00:57:38.280 | as one of the many requirements of doing that.

00:57:41.120 | Exactly.

00:57:42.120 | Yeah.

00:57:43.120 | So for the folks out there who've gotten laid off and you have your warrant act pay of one

00:57:46.880 | or two months, maybe longer, you deserve to apply for unemployment.

00:57:52.320 | You're part of your salary.

00:57:53.320 | Your company paid for unemployment insurance.

00:57:55.600 | It's yours.

00:57:56.600 | You get usually up to 26 weeks for most states.

00:57:59.720 | Go apply for that ASAP because you're not going to get denied because the company laid

00:58:04.040 | you off and therefore they'll say, "Yes, you are eligible for unemployment."

00:58:08.520 | The other thing mentally for you, Andre, I think is you have a wife who sounds like similar

00:58:15.280 | age to you who is making a similar amount of money to you.

00:58:19.680 | Yeah, correct.

00:58:21.280 | And what's interesting in the FIRE community is that I've noticed many, many men out there

00:58:26.080 | who say, "I'm retired or I'm financially independent," but then they have working wives making a lot

00:58:31.120 | of money.

00:58:32.320 | And because I think men have more fragile egos, they aren't willing to say they are stay-at-home

00:58:37.680 | dads.

00:58:39.120 | They want to say, "I'm retired.

00:58:40.640 | I conquered the financial mountain."

00:58:43.240 | And I'm trying to encourage more men out there to just say, "You know what?

00:58:46.240 | I support my loving wife who is bringing home the bacon and I'm here to take care of my

00:58:50.520 | child full-time."

00:58:52.080 | Absolutely.

00:58:53.080 | And so having a wife who works at Uber surely has to be comforting, no?

00:59:00.000 | Yeah, definitely.

00:59:01.000 | And you can live off that income if you want.

00:59:02.720 | You can completely live off that and still save.

00:59:05.640 | And it's funny that you say that.

00:59:06.720 | I actually posted on Twitter, I was like, "What is the difference between a stay-at-home

00:59:13.960 | dad and a dad who's early retired?"

00:59:16.720 | And I was like, "The hubris."

00:59:19.400 | I can't think of anything else other than that.

00:59:21.600 | There's no material difference.

00:59:24.400 | And just the ego of man to not be able to say, "I'm just a stay-at-home dad."

00:59:31.200 | I was like, "But I don't know.

00:59:33.240 | What is the difference, practically speaking, if your partner's still working?"

00:59:37.160 | That's what I think.

00:59:40.400 | I don't think I've run into many women, even if they're in the ability to not need to work

00:59:44.760 | because their husbands are paying, that would say that they're retired.

00:59:47.600 | I think there would be a backlash if they were to say that.

00:59:49.520 | But men have no issue of being able to say, "Oh, I'm retired.

00:59:53.480 | I worked and I'm done."

00:59:54.480 | I was like, "Yes, but I have this five-year-old that I also am now having more time to hang

01:00:01.160 | out with.

01:00:02.160 | But I'm retired."

01:00:05.000 | It's a funny cultural dynamic that exists that's a real thing of just the gender norms

01:00:10.700 | of being able to accept that.

01:00:11.700 | So I'm right there with you on making being a stay-at-home dad an acceptable outcome and

01:00:19.000 | to be proud of it.

01:00:21.000 | I don't think any parent will ever regret spending more time with their children.

01:00:27.080 | The data is like 80%, 90% of the time you spend with your child is over after they leave

01:00:31.880 | the house at 18 or 19 years old.

01:00:34.380 | So I'm pretty certain that you're not going to regret spending two, three hours at the

01:00:39.400 | San Francisco Zoo on a weekday when there's no class that day versus going to work to

01:00:44.740 | try to make six figures a year.

01:00:49.360 | I guess how does your wife feel about the whole situation?

01:00:52.280 | Is she nervous, scared?

01:00:54.640 | Is she more motivated to work and work longer?

01:00:59.120 | How does that dynamic work?

01:01:00.320 | Yeah.

01:01:01.320 | She's been incredibly supportive.

01:01:02.760 | I also want to be very aware of this new dynamic.

01:01:08.600 | We've been married, I don't know, we've been together 15 years and had a kid for the last

01:01:14.000 | five years but lived together for almost that whole 11, 12 years.

01:01:18.600 | But it's always been one of equality and both of us earning similar amounts and both of

01:01:24.560 | us having incomes and never needing to rely on...

01:01:29.040 | We're a partnership for sure.

01:01:31.720 | I always said for someone in FIRE, the best decision that they can make is having a supportive

01:01:37.560 | partner that views finances in a similar way.

01:01:41.440 | It's a double bonus for me because he also is compensated at a high level in tech as

01:01:46.920 | well.

01:01:48.200 | But now I think it does change the dynamic a little bit.

01:01:50.440 | I'm conscious of now I don't want to put stress on her.

01:01:53.600 | I'm like, "Hey, you're the only one earning a living."

01:01:59.360 | I've always been the one that is passionate about finances and dealing with the spreadsheets

01:02:05.200 | and tracking everything.

01:02:06.600 | So what I've been doing more of in the last week as I've been laid off is opening up the

01:02:12.680 | things a little bit, explaining things a little bit more and being like, "Hey, we're good."

01:02:16.600 | I know that I don't want her to have this added pressure and stress of being the sole

01:02:23.280 | income earner of the house and we're all reliant on her.

01:02:27.520 | And if we don't do that, we won't be able to eat.

01:02:29.160 | I'm like, "That's not the case.

01:02:30.160 | We're good."

01:02:31.160 | I'm still in this severance for the next six months and we have health insurance paid for

01:02:37.200 | by Meta.

01:02:38.200 | Thank you, Mark, for the next six months.

01:02:41.800 | And we're in a good spot and I can get another job if needed.

01:02:45.960 | We're set.

01:02:47.640 | The whole reason for FIRE and focusing on these things is so we didn't have to have

01:02:51.640 | these stresses.

01:02:52.640 | And that's the thing why I'm also coming in a week after being laid off and having generally

01:02:57.200 | good spirits.

01:02:58.200 | I'm not like super, it's not super fun, but it's still like, "Hey, I'm good.

01:03:01.480 | I was preparing for this.

01:03:02.880 | I'm ready for it.

01:03:03.880 | I have that huge emergency fund buffer.

01:03:05.520 | I have plenty of equity to live off of and a heavy working spouse that's still earning

01:03:11.760 | her side of things."

01:03:13.960 | So we're in a good spot.

01:03:15.200 | And I think she's getting more comfortable with it, but I'm being extra conscious of

01:03:22.320 | making sure that she's not feeling extra pressure on it.

01:03:23.920 | And also I have more time.

01:03:26.000 | I need to step up and do more in the household side of things and not be a productive member

01:03:35.600 | of the household just because I'm not working.

01:03:38.240 | Because I can be in a cave downstairs and play video games all day and not continue

01:03:44.120 | to contribute.

01:03:45.120 | >> I forgot to ask, with your net worth, roughly what is the percentage breakdown in how you

01:03:50.760 | invested since you're renting your place?

01:03:53.160 | >> Yeah.

01:03:54.160 | That's a good question.

01:03:55.160 | So when I was in Texas, we actually bought a house when we first got married.

01:04:00.800 | And I was like, because my plan was originally to go back to Texas in three years.

01:04:05.160 | So we kept the house and we were renting it out.

01:04:07.880 | I hated being a landlord.

01:04:08.880 | It was like, actually for the first year and a half, two years, it was fine because I didn't

01:04:12.560 | have to deal with anything.

01:04:13.560 | But as soon as I had turnover and went back and saw that they destroyed the place, they

01:04:16.800 | had like four dogs that I didn't know about and the carpet was ruined.

01:04:20.960 | I was like, "Oh, I'm going to manage it myself and remotely from California and not worry

01:04:27.040 | about paying a property manager."

01:04:28.840 | And just like, I was looking at my tech salary and how much I was saving.

01:04:32.960 | I was looking at how much I was gaining in rental income.

01:04:35.840 | I was like, "This is not worth the stress."

01:04:37.760 | I'm like, "I'm going to dump this and put it all in index funds."

01:04:42.000 | So all of my net worth is all like super boring index funds split across.

01:04:49.200 | Most of it now is in taxable, but I'm filling out every single square inch of tax advantage

01:04:56.720 | accounts that I can.

01:04:58.960 | Both Facebook and Uber offer the ability to contribute to what's colloquially called the

01:05:07.240 | mega backdoor.

01:05:08.240 | So I'm able to contribute like $66,000 for each of us between traditional and Roth money

01:05:16.640 | and then beyond that, so that already there is like what, 60, 66, like 100, 120 plus thousand

01:05:24.000 | tax advantage per year.

01:05:25.720 | And then the rest is just going into taxable, just buying stuff like VTI, VTSAX, VOO.

01:05:31.600 | I'm boring.

01:05:32.600 | I like being boring.

01:05:33.600 | I viewed it very much as I have a high salary.

01:05:37.960 | I'm earning a lot of money.

01:05:40.200 | I don't need to be going and chasing high returns in the market.

01:05:43.880 | I'm fine with being as good as the market.

01:05:46.640 | I don't need to hit home runs.

01:05:47.800 | I just want the easy singles without having the downside risk or as much as the downside

01:05:53.240 | risk.

01:05:54.240 | That's smart.

01:05:55.240 | It's definitely smart, especially if you are at big tech, which is more volatile than the

01:05:58.640 | S&P 500 index.

01:05:59.960 | What you might find as you gain more wealth is that even investing in the S&P 500 starts

01:06:06.400 | feeling a little volatile as well.

01:06:11.000 | Last year, for example, 2022 is down almost 20%.

01:06:14.240 | That doesn't feel good.

01:06:15.240 | I'm sure a lot of people are like, "Oh, I should have sold everything in 2021."

01:06:20.840 | You will see that I think your perspective will change as the absolute net worth figure

01:06:25.400 | does increase.

01:06:26.400 | I hope it does increase.

01:06:27.400 | Yeah, that's the hope.

01:06:28.400 | And then the real estate too is also one that they got.

01:06:31.720 | The reason I've never done real estate both on my personal residence, mostly from my personal

01:06:35.920 | residence standpoint is I've never been confident that I'd be somewhere for more than five years.

01:06:41.280 | And to me, penciling it in, the rent was fine.

01:06:44.640 | If you know that it's going to be the seven years and you're not banking on appreciation

01:06:48.080 | too much, it starts making sense.

01:06:50.360 | San Francisco is a tough one where the housing is so expensive.

01:06:57.220 | I think the housing that we would look at would be in the one and a half to two million

01:07:00.560 | range.

01:07:01.560 | And it's a lot.

01:07:05.920 | That changes the math very, very quickly.

01:07:12.040 | So I think that's the other portion.

01:07:14.680 | I don't know if it'll wreck forever, but until I'm super confident that we have like seven

01:07:20.600 | plus years in a place, I think the hanging tight in that.

01:07:24.160 | I'm going to guess with a 75% probability, you're still going to be in San Francisco

01:07:28.440 | within the next 10 years.

01:07:29.440 | I don't think you're wrong as someone who's consistently written about leaving San Francisco,

01:07:34.640 | but still stays in San Francisco over and over.

01:07:36.680 | And my daughter just got into a great public kindergarten in the city.

01:07:41.360 | And I think this is the first time ever that I've been able to like, "Hey, if we like this

01:07:44.560 | kindergarten, I could see that's like six years."

01:07:48.680 | And now I'm no longer having to pay private preschool tuition.

01:07:52.800 | That's gives me almost $40,000 a year, which is going to be pretty awesome.

01:07:55.520 | Yeah.

01:07:56.520 | I see your future.

01:07:57.520 | The Oracle in here.

01:07:58.520 | We can go play pickleball sometime during the week.

01:08:01.640 | Yeah.

01:08:02.640 | Well, this has been a great conversation, Andre.

01:08:05.720 | And I wish you the best of luck in your job hunt or whatever is next.

01:08:11.020 | Can you remind the listeners again where we can find you, especially your newsletter?

01:08:16.040 | Yeah, absolutely.

01:08:17.200 | You can find my newsletter.

01:08:18.200 | Go to avocadofire.com or search Andre Nader and you'll find my sub stack newsletter.

01:08:25.360 | Subscribe there.

01:08:26.360 | I've been writing twice a month, but now I have a little bit more time on my hands.

01:08:29.480 | Maybe I'll be writing a little bit more often and testing the waters on more frequent posting

01:08:35.480 | schedules.

01:08:36.480 | You should because I publish three times a week.

01:08:39.480 | You should publish more.

01:08:42.680 | You might discover that it'll be easier and then obviously you might grow further.

01:08:47.840 | And then you might be like, "You know what?

01:08:48.840 | I don't need to go back because my newsletter is growing so much."

01:08:51.640 | You never know.

01:08:54.000 | That could be the dream.

01:08:55.000 | I'll follow in your footsteps.

01:08:56.000 | All right, buddy.

01:08:57.000 | Well, it was great chatting with you and I'll see you around the internet sphere and we'll

01:09:03.440 | be in touch.

01:09:04.440 | Absolutely.

01:09:05.440 | Thanks for having me on, Sam.

01:09:06.440 | All right.

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