🍋 Nerd Wars Heat Up

Author

Short Squeez
December 29, 2021

Together With

“You'll stop caring what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do." â€“ David Foster Wallace

Good Morning! Apple is closing most stores in NYC due to a rise in omicron cases. US home-price growth slowed for the second straight month in October, an indication that the hot housing market may be starting to cool. Meta (ex. Facebook) is pushing ahead with its new office in the Farley Building across Penn Station, with a goal of bringing workers back early in 2022.

If you are looking to invest those holiday bonuses, check out today's sponsor, Masterworks, which allows you to invest in art.

1. Story of the Day: Nerd Wars Heat Up

Nerd wars are heating up in Silicon Valley. Apple has issued rare bonuses to the top 10-20% of its engineers to keep them from being poached by rival Meta.

The bonuses are being distributed as restricted stock units and came as a surprise to many who received them. They ranged from $50,000 to as much as $180,000, that vest over 4 years, providing an incentive to stay at Apple.

The value equals the annual stock grant given to some engineering managers. The value could also go up a lot more in 4 years' time if Apple stock keeps up its historical trajectory. Apple shares are up 36% this year, putting its market cap at nearly $3 trillion.   

Meta has been aggressively shaving away Apple talent and has hired ~100 engineers from Apple over the last few months.

Apple's hard stance of return to office has also led to some of the talent drain. Apple expects corporate employees to work from the office at least 3 days/week, and hardware engineers 4-5 days/week. Meta is more relaxed with its policies.

The two companies have been rivals for long but the rivalry is only expected to heat up in AR / VR and smartwatches, with both planning major hardware releases over the next couple of years.

Short Squeez Takeaway: Big Tech companies and bulge-bracket banks (like Goldman) can no longer rely on prestige for employees to stay at their firm. Employees have decreasing loyalties to where they work and gone are the days of building a career at one firm. Top talent will go where it's valued and compensated the most. Pay up or we quit.

Source: Bloomberg

2. Markets Rundown

US stocks mostly finished lower yesterday as investors continue to look to pandemic news for direction with the threat of the omicron variant looming large.

Movers & Shakers

  • (+) Krispy Kreme ($DNUT) +10% after announcing a new promotion aimed at boosting customer traffic through the New Year holiday.

  • (+) Vista Outdoor ($VSTO) +4% after it announced the acquisition of hunting-gear manufacturer Stone Glacier.

  • (–) Coinbase ($COIN) -7% as major cryptocurrencies came under pressure.

3. Top Reads

  • Waymo and Geely's Zeekr partner to develop driverless taxis (Reuters)

  • Spider-Man: No Way Home becomes first pandemic-era film to top $1bn (BBC)

  • Rivian delays deliveries of pickup, SUV with big battery packs to 2023 (Reuters)

  • NYC home sales to slow on supply gap, Brown Harris Stevens CEO says (BB)

  • Fintech stocks fall back to earth (WSJ)

  • Apple set to become first $3T company this year? (Fox)

  • Elon Musk criticised after China space complaint to UN (BBC)

  • 4 ways to manage your personal finances by doing less (WSJ)

  • Cathie Wood is still a star, but some of the shine came off this year (CNBC)

A Message from Masterworks: Are You READY?!

This is an investment opportunity bigger than Bikini Bottom.

A KAWS SpongeBob painting sold for a staggering $6 million in 2019. Not so shocking considering that the art market has been on fire for a while. The Wall Street Journal recently called it one of the hottest markets on Earth. 

But how can you break into this hot market without breaking the bank?

With Masterworks, of course.

Masterworks is the fintech startup disrupting an estimated $1.7T art market, so you can invest in blue-chip paintings by icons like Koons, KAWS, and Banksy without dishing out millions of dollars. 

Even in today’s unpredictable market, Masterworks delivered investors a net IRR of 30%+ in 2020 and 2021… which is way more impressive than a talking sponge who wears pants.

You can join almost 300,000 members today! Short Squeez Readers get priority access to their new offerings

*See important disclosures

4. Book of the Day: Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter

Why is it easy to pay $4 for a soda on vacation, when we wouldn’t spend more than $1 on that same soda at our local grocery store?

We think of money as numbers, values, and amounts, but when it comes down to it, when we actually use our money, we engage our hearts more than our heads. Emotions play a powerful role in shaping our financial behavior, often making us our own worst enemies as we try to save, access value, and spend responsibly. In Dollars and Sense, behavioral economist Dan Ariely teams up with financial comedian and writer Jeff Kreisler to challenge many of our most basic assumptions about the precarious relationship between our brains and our money. In doing so, they undermine many of personal finance’s most sacred beliefs and explain how we can override some of our own instincts to make better financial choices.

Exploring a wide range of everyday topics—from the lure of pain-free spending with credit cards to the pitfalls of household budgeting to the seduction of holiday sales—Ariely and Kreisler demonstrate how our misplaced confidence in our spending habits frequently leads us astray, costing us more than we realize, whether it’s the real value of the time we spend driving forty-five minutes to save $10 or our inability to properly assess what the things we buy are actually worth.

The result not only reveals the rationale behind our most head-scratching financial choices but also offers clear guidance for navigating the treacherous financial landscape of the brain. Fascinating, engaging, funny, and essential, Dollars and Sense provides the practical tools we need to understand and improve our financial choices, save and spend smarter, and ultimately live better.

“The cost to rent an apartment in some major cities can climb to more than $4,000 per month, and we don’t seem to blink. The price of gas rises 15 cents, and it can swing a national election.”

5. Short Squeez Picks

6. Daily Visual: Global Stock of Electric Passenger Cars

Source: Statista

7. Daily Acumen: Defining Success Wrong

Here are three ways you are defining success wrong and what you can do to help yourself stay on track.

Seeking external validation. Happiness comes from within. It doesn't mean we don't care what others think. We do. When we concentrate on ourselves, on our own path, we experience true happiness, true freedom.

Overidentifying with your career. When we first meet someone, we often talk about our work. The place on the career ladder often determines our sense of self-worth and identity. The job we're so obsessed with will likely be reduced to three bullets on a resume or a LinkedIn profile in 15 years. Self-worth isn't the same thing as net worth. Realize that relationships and connections make us happier than status.

Comparing yourself to others. The practice of measuring success against others is a recipe for misery. If we want to keep score, why not compare ourselves instead with the person we were yesterday, the person we were last year, or even five years ago?

Source: Fast Company

8. Crypto Corner

9. Memes of the Day

Reply

or to participate.