Month: October 2025

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

A few years ago, FAANG engineers were famously “locked in” by massive equity windfalls. Today, the same dynamic is playing out with AI chipmakers.

According to Levels.fyi data, engineers at AMD, Broadcom, and Nvidia are sitting on life-changing stock gains.

Heavy equity-based offers made in late 2023 have ballooned as these stocks have soared. Some Nvidia mid-level engineers, for instance, have seen total compensation swell from roughly $360,000 to $670,000.

Broadcom and AMD engineers are experiencing similar locked-up wealth increases, according to Levels.fyi estimates.

This is the new cost of leaving. Imagine getting 10,000 restricted stock units at $100 a share, which would be worth $1 million over four years. That’s the typical vesting period for equity awards like this.

At a normal company, the stock might go up a bit, or it might fall. So your year 3 and 4 vests would probably be worth about $500,000 in total, or maybe $750,000 if you’re lucky and the stock goes up a bit.

What if you’re at a fancy AI company, and the stock triples? That total 4-year award would balloon to $3 million. Walking away after year 2 could mean forfeiting about $1.5 million. So people often stay.

The “golden handcuffs” haven’t disappeared; they’ve just migrated from Big Tech software giants to the silicon stars powering the AI boom.

Levels.fyi calls these “silicon handcuffs.”

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• I shop at Costco at least once a week for myself and my teenage daughter.
• Frozen pineapples are a key ingredient in my daughter’s post-track-practice smoothies.
• Costco’s rotisserie chicken is another staple that we use in a variety of meals throughout the week.

As a mom and business owner, I’ve learned that fueling a young athlete requires more than just smart nutrition. It also requires curiosity for trying new things and finding ways to enjoy the process together.

So, although the only thing that gets my teenage daughter excited about a Costco run in our home city of Toronto is the chance to hunt down a viral snack she’s seen on TikTok, I welcome it.

Here’s a look at one of our weekly hauls, complete with my daughter’s track bag must-haves and practical staples that keep our household energized and feeling good.

Organika electrolytes are a staple in my daughter’s training bag.

This time, we stocked up on two bags of Organika electrolytes: classic lemonade and a variety pack with pink lemonade, wild raspberry, and pineapple passion fruit flavors.

I like that we can add these to water rather than purchasing bottled sports drinks because it helps reduce plastic waste — one small way I balance performance and my interest in sustainability.

We can’t get enough of these Kirkland Signature chocolate chip granola bars.

These peanut allergen-free chocolate chip granola bars are in constant rotation.

My daughter usually grabs one on the way to class or stashes a couple in her bag just in case.

They’re not flashy, but they’re reliable and disappear fast in our house (even when I’m buying more than 60 at a time).

We also like to buy a pack of strawberry, mango, and blueberry That’s It mini fruit bars.

That’s It mini fruit bars are one of our true staples — they’re made with just fruit, no filler.

My daughter keeps a few in her track bag, and I love having them on hand for long weekends at meets.

Frozen fruits, like strawberries and pineapples, are vital ingredients in protein smoothies.

Smoothies are a daily thing in our house. My daughter’s favorite post-practice combination includes pineapples, strawberries, and vanilla protein milk.

So, we always make sure to grab a few bags of frozen fruit when we shop at Costco.

We can never have too many eggs.

Although my daughter doesn’t eat eggs, I scramble them for myself daily. I also bake muffins almost every other day, and waffles are practically a morning ritual, so we still go through eggs quickly.

We like to keep sliced blueberry bagels in the freezer.

These blueberry bagels are perfect for post-workout sandwiches or grab-and-go breakfasts.

Spudlers bacon hash browns are great for a quick, easy breakfast.

These hash browns are quick, flavorful, and almost impossible to mess up.

The chopped potatoes are mixed with green and red bell peppers, onions, and bits of bacon, and are a perfect source of carbs before one of my daughter’s morning workouts.

Kirkland Signature rotisserie chicken is a weeknight lifesaver.

I rarely leave the store without a Costco rotisserie chicken. We toss it into wraps, grain bowls, or salads, especially after late practices.

Perlini’s prosciutto and Parmigiano pasta has been a go-to choice on busy nights.

We didn’t go into our trip planning to buy this pack of Perlini pasta, but I was hungry and they were handing out samples — classic Costco timing.

To our surprise, it’s become a reliable, quick meal. The stuffed pasta bites cook up in minutes and deliver just the right amount of comfort on a busy night.

Island Way sorbet was one of my daughter’s viral must-haves.

This 10-pack of Island Way sorbet includes four flavors: lemon, pomegranate, ruby berry, and piña colada.

I love that each of the sorbets is packaged in a real fruit shell, including coconut, grapefruit, orange, and lemon. They’re almost too pretty to eat.

Click to keep reading Costco diaries like this one.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the BI Tech Memo newsletter.
• Sign up for the weekly BI Tech Memo newsletter here.

Meta chopped 600 employees from its Meta Superintelligence Labs group this week. Google is removing managers again. Broadcom cut staff recently, too.

These 3 companies have one thing in common: They are growing quickly and minting money from the AI boom. So why are they still shedding employees?

I asked Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology. He’s been analyzing the tech industry for decades.

“The Meta cuts are a perfect example of AI working too well not failing. These aren’t demand-driven layoffs; they’re the result of a massive internal restructuring as AI changes the cost structure of tech itself.”

This is perfectly illustrated by another scoop this week from Business Insider’s Jyoti Mann. She reported that Meta executive Michel Port recently told some employees that their jobs were being replaced by new automated processes.

Here’s the rest of Brad’s take, edited for clarity and length:

“In Meta’s case, it looks like a consolidation and reprioritization issue. Meta has hundreds of separate AI initiatives spanning Llama, infrastructure, content moderation, recommendation systems, and ad optimization. The 600 jobs being cut are largely from overlapping research or support teams as Meta shifts from “AI research mode” to “AI productization mode.” Once the models are trained and deployed, you simply don’t need the same headcount to maintain that velocity, especially when internal tools are now automating much of the work engineers used to do manually.

Think of it like the moment after an airplane reaches cruising altitude: you need fewer hands in the cockpit. The heavy lift training, data labeling, model architecture is done. Now the focus is on efficiency, inference, and monetization.

More broadly, all the major AI players — Meta, Google, Microsoft, Broadcom — are demonstrating the same pattern. They’re investing billions in infrastructure while trimming the human layers that are being displaced by those very systems. It’s not layoffs because business is bad; it’s because AI is doing exactly what it promised: automating middle-tier technical and operational roles.

If the industrial revolution replaced muscle, AI is replacing repetition and coordination. It’s not that Meta or Google suddenly need fewer ideas; they just need fewer people to execute them.”

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