Owning your company's stock can be lucrative. It can also make career decisions complicated.

The day after Rob Waters learned of his layoff from Google last year, he was encouraged to apply for a new role there as an AI sales specialist. Google soon offered him the position, with a six-figure salary.

Waters wasn't sure he wanted to return. He'd grown frustrated with the bureaucracy at Google and how the reorganization that eliminated his team had been handled.

But walking away meant giving up about a few hundred thousand dollars in unvested equity.

"I killed myself working and dedicating myself, and then all I got to show for it was getting let go," said the 42-year-old, who lives in San Francisco.

He'd also dreamed of starting his own company. The layoff, he said, "ripped the bandaid off." Waters decided to bet on himself and pursue Kanawai AI, a startup he cofounded.

"All the equity that was unvested was gone," he said. "I went from making very high six figures to zero."

Stock compensation has long given Big Tech workers a powerful incentive to stay put. Since the end of 2022, shares of Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have all at least doubled.

But years of Big Tech layoffs have reminded some workers that their stock compensation isn't guaranteed. Meanwhile, the AI boom has created another path to potential equity riches. And for some workers, years of gains on vested stock have given them the financial security to leave Big Tech on their own terms.

Julie Zhu, 29, had wanted to become a founder since she was 18 and said she'd developed a "love-hate relationship" with Apple, where she worked as a product designer. She was grateful for what she'd learned at the company but said it was a high-pressure, high-stress environment. She wanted more control over her work.

Still, Zhu wanted to make sure she could afford the risk of leaving. Her goal was to have three to five years of runway. Her Apple stock came in handy.

"I didn't sell anything during my time at Apple, and Apple has been doing really well," she said.

Last year, after nearly four years at Apple, Zhu resigned to focus on Odd One In, the artist collectible company she'd been building on the side. She said it felt like the right time, though leaving meant forfeiting the remaining quarter of her Apple stock grant that hadn't yet vested.