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Comment by pseudoramble | Hacker News Reader

My perspective is a bit different since I don't have stock options, just plain retirement and such. So, take this with that in mind.

I would recommend giving yourself a break from following it. My reasons for not looking are these: Values of assets change a ton day-to-day, and a year or two from now who knows what it will look like! I also don't have any control over prices. I could shuffle assets around, but again I don't know what will happen a few years from now. So, I don't gain much by looking at the numbers often.

Sorry it's a stressful sad time for you though. It does suck!

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This is something covered very well by Taleb in "Fooled By Randomness." Simply by exposing yourself to random fluctuations on a shorter cadence, you are experiencing stress reactions that would never occur if you checked it on a less frequent cadence. Anyone who has played fantasy football will be familiar with this. If you check your players' scores every five minutes, it is infinitely more stressful than just checking them once on Monday morning.

Exactly the book I came here to mention.

I used to write software for financial traders, so I know it's possible to make money by following second-to-second shifts in the market. But it's a zero-sum game, and I saw our traders take a lot of money from people who were responding to second-to-second shifts in the market.

These days I put my money in long-term investments and then look at them every few years. The other day I saw mention of the big market price jumps. I thought, "maybe now's the time to rebalance things?" And then I sat very still until the urge passed, because reacting to headline news strikes me as a great way to lose money.

Also why defaulting to hooking up mothers in labour to continuous monitoring is a bad idea. Better, unless something else is medically called for, to check in at sparser intervals instead.

Also a good reason not to get these "breathing monitors" for infants, again, unless medically indicated.

Same advice. Unless you're a day trader, just pick strong assets and look at them once in a while. You'll get sick if you keep reacting to the fluctuations every day.

Since the GP talks about stock options I’m guessing these are part of their total compensation and not a discretionary investment. I’m in a similar boat - stock is about 50% of my total compensation but its value has dropped by 90%. It’s hard to be blasé about losing almost half my income.

Unless you are aiming for the C suite you should NEVER have any company stock as that is putting too many eggs in one basket. If you have all your eggs in one basket you better watch that basket on a level that only C suite people have access to. (I'm not sure if they do,but at least they can unlike those below)

Many developers have a decent chunk of their total compensation in RSUs these days.

In this case, you don’t have much choice if company stock makes up a large portion of your income. You can sell immediately but the money you receive from that transaction is much less - it’s lowered income even if you immediately diversify.

I.value company stock offers at zero. If I get it and can sell it is a nice bonus. I've seen too many burned by then. The only reason i'm not one is I knew this could happen so I didn't count one things. (They have worked out once in a.while too, but until the money is in my bank account I don't count it)

I don't understand how someone can tie 50% of their income to a highly volatile asset. But thanks for the perspective.

That’s how my employer and many other large tech companies structure compensation.

Yeah, exactly why I mentioned it. I don't have that setup, so it's different for me. Don't want to be dismissive of that point!

How does it work though? Do you sell stock to use as income? Do you hold onto it and get by on salary? I'm not really familiar with how people use these kinds of setups in total comp.

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