Amazon staff might get paid 50% less because shares have fallen so much

Okay, there are stupid headlines and REALLY stupid headlines. This is the latter.

There is a reason "equity components" of compensation are called "variable compensation" just like bonuses are. Anyone who "counts on them" is really setting themselves up for disappointment.

That people "believe" they are wealthier than they are because they are counting stock that they either don't have, or hasn't vested yet, at face value? Well that problem is quite old.

During the dot com meltdown, so many people put down payments on houses that they were going to buy with "stock options" but didn't exercise the options because once they do that, they would "stop going up." Our neighbor who was a realtor, has 8 houses "fall out of escrow" because the buyer withdrew (giving up their good faith money) before the close during 1999.

Stock based compensation == 0 until it is sold and the taxes paid, then it is worth what ever you were left with. But counting it as "income" before you sell it? Not smart.

Years ago, my neighbor would always refer to his car as his "quarter million dollar Oldsmobile". I finally got curious enough to ask him the origin of the name, as the car didn't look like a high dollar collector car to me.

He laughed and said that's what his stock options would have been worth today if he hadn't sold them to buy the Olds.