If someone made $2 million/year over 10 years, after taxes, it would be $1 million (NYC has local taxes too). Let's say all of it was saved and invested in SP500 or Meta.
SP500: tripled over 10 years i.e. ~12% a year. Reinvesting dividends gives ~14% a year
Meta: 8x over 10 years i.e. ~23% a year.
If growth was uniform over 10 years and compensation/savings was uniform over 10 years, total portfolio would be:
((1+r)^11-1)/r (geometric series since each year's contributions grow for different amount of times)
1 (this year) + (1+r) (previous year) + (1+r)^2 (previous-to-previous year) and so on
SP500: 14% -> $23M
Meta: 23% -> $38M
Now, it's entirely possible, the compensation for a position like this runs into $10s of millions and one can easily account for non-uniform compensation.
Even in NYC, actually even in Manhattan, $10M is more than comfortable for retirement. It lets you draw $300-$400K (3-4% per year adjusted for inflation annually). If one is taking a short sabbatical, then it's a no-brainer.
This seems to assume unusual optimism or foresight, most people don’t invest their life savings 100% into stocks and don’t hold on to 100% of their company vests through ups and downs. You might as well say “assuming he put all his money in NVDA…”
It's a back-of-the-envelope calculation not a precise one. It doesn't take foresight to invest in SP500. DCAing (dollar-cost averaging) into an index fund is actually the recommended savings strategy with a short-term cash balance of 6 months-2 years of cash savings depending on your plans (sabbatical etc.), especially when one is decades away from retirement age.
I only included meta because he works/worked at meta and it's not unusual for people to just leave their rsus in their accounts after they vested. I agree though that one shouldn't pick stocks that happened to explode (e.g. nvda).
There are several unrealistic assumptions I did make:
* Presumably when someone starts, they earn less than in recent years. He probably wasn't making huge amounts his first few years. Amounts invested in earlier years are smaller but have more time to compound and amounts invested in recent years are larger but have had less time to compound.
* Returns aren't constant.
* I pulled the $2 million/yr out of thin air. It could be $1 million/yr or even $10 million/yr. I have no idea what the overall head of a project like PyTorch would make.
* Everyone's expenses are different. In and around NYC, one can live on $80k/year, $120-150k/year as well as as on $1 million/yr. I assumed zero since I wanted a nice even $1 million/yr savings. Maybe it was $500k/yr of savings in which case all the numbers should be halved.
In any case, I can't see how one wouldn't end up with at least $10 million in a position like this with 10 years at meta. Unless one buys a $5 million unit in Manhattan and is burdened by a high mortgage.
