It’s not that bad, either sell immediately or hold for a year plus.

As for the immediate taxes, they have taxes withheld by automatically selling a portion of your holdings to cover necessary withholding. The only problem is most aren’t withholding enough based on the marginal tax bump they take due to the inflated earnings.

I don’t think bay area engineers will get hit that hard, more and more companies are doing away with RSOs for rank and file.