Nvidia seems to be suffering from its own vast success as it’s senior engineers are cashing out their stock options and retiring.
Very much expected.
When Microsoft had their IPOs, they created three billionaires and about 12,000 millionaires.
It was crazy.
Technical writers suddenly saw stock options of over $3m .
Testers were seeing up to $4m and some of the engineers who would pass off as junior devs in 2024 were seeing as much as $10m .
Many of the senior staff and executives retired immediately to use their money to fund the wildest dreams and fantasies.
Some bought whole libraries. Some engineers bought guitars and went into music.
Some of them to buy golf courses and play golf all day or buy a baseball team.
A good number started their own companies. Docker, Kubernetes, Xiaomi, Tableau, DocuSign, etc where started by many of these new millionaires. Either they started or they were first angel investors.
But that one no be wahala. Of course that popularity drew more senior engineers from and other players willing to work.
It created more youngsters who had the dream of joining the company to do big things.
It’s normal, but replacements dey. Besides, retirement doesn’t stop them from being shareholders and they will always be involved in critical decisions making at production level or training new staff.
The same thing will happen, many of them will quit to start their own AI centered venture, or go into hardware (maybe wearables), others will invest in other startups.
Or… They might just go back to their family farms.
That’s the ripple effect I expect.