Big Tech Kills 'Rest and Vest'āStock Now a Hustle, Not a Nap
Silicon Valley's beloved 'rest and vest' schemeāa.k.a. playing golf in the office while your RSUs matureāfaces extinction thanks to front-loaded equity vesting schedules. Levels.fyi cofounder Zaheer Mohiuddin calls this 'one of the biggest stories of the year for tech employees' that no oneās noticing, like a free Slack message from Elon. Nvidia, Airbnb, and Google now demand employees earn their 40% year-one equity like poor peasants farming for peasants: 30% in year two, then ever-shrinking slices with annual performance reviews dramatically deciding whoās living the stock dream or suffering the equity exile. So, to all rest-and-vest millionaires of yore, say goodbye to coast-mode and hello to grind-mode. Game on, techies: hustle hard or risk becoming a low-RSU ghost.
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Silicon Valley just traded the couch for a treadmill: you no longer get stock for showing up, now you gotta perform or wave goodbye to that sweet equity cheese.
Remember 'rest and vest'? Well, Big Tech just canceled that snooze button. Work hard or watch your RSUs vanish like a LinkedIn endorsement from your boss.
Front-loaded equity: because why reward engineers for calendar time when you can punish them for showing up without grinding like Elon on Twitter?
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 9/26/2025 | Author: Alistair Barr
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