One of the oldest rules in tech pay still looks like one of the smartest.
Levels.fyi, a company that tracks compensation across the industry, recently analyzed what would have happened to the same senior Microsoft software engineer pay package in two scenarios.
In one, the employee sold their stock as it vested and reinvested the money in the S&P 500. That person would be about $50,000 better off than the colleague who held onto all of their Microsoft shares.
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That’s a reminder that even in the AI era, diversification can pay off. The biggest AI winners, like Nvidia, OpenAI, and Anthropic, have delivered extraordinary gains.
But for many tech employees, spreading investments beyond a single employer remains the safer, and sometimes more profitable, strategy.
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