Ex-Meta Worker Gave Up $1.68M in Stock, Now He's Making $369K a Year Working 20 Hours a Week

A former Meta product leader who gave up a stock package he valued at $1.68M (£1.24M) now charges founders $4,000 (£2,960) a month and works about 20 hours a week.

Jason Shen, 40, arrived at Meta through an acquisition rather than a job application, joining with the team from Midgame, the voice AI gaming company Facebook bought in July 2020. He ran product teams there for close to three years before resigning in June 2023.

His target cash compensation, salary and bonus combined, was around $250,000 (£184,800), and he was vesting 230 Meta restricted stock units, or RSUs, every quarter. Three more years at that rate would have delivered 2,760 further units.

At a share price of about $609 (£450), those units came to roughly $1.68M before tax. Shen gave the figures in an interview with Business Insider, published as a first-person essay on 19 August.

Meta shares have since fallen below that mark. The stock closed at $546.03 (£403.57) on 19 August, the day the essay ran, valuing the same 2,760 units at about $1.51M (£1.11M). The difference is roughly $174,000 (£128,500), and the shares now sit some 31% below their 52-week high of $790.80 (£584.50).

Neither figure is what he would have banked. RSUs are taxed as ordinary income in the year they vest. They are also forfeited the moment an employee leaves, which is what makes them work as a retention device.

On top of the stock, Shen set aside about $150,000 (£110,900), raised mostly by selling down his investment portfolio, as money he was prepared to lose.

'I would have had to grind for that money for years,' he said of the stock he left behind.

What He Charges Founders Now

His rates page puts monthly retainers from $4,000 and notes that clients typically expense the cost through their company. A discovery call is priced at a nominal $1, and he recommends a 12-week minimum, which puts a first engagement at about $12,000 (£8,870).

Cofounder disputes are billed separately. Repair runs as a 13-week programme for founder pairs rather than an open-ended retainer.

Shen took a sabbatical after leaving Meta and began coaching full-time in January 2024. Revenue over the last 12 months came to $369,000 (£272,700), more than twice the sum he staked. That figure is turnover rather than profit, and he has not said what the business clears.

Software, marketing, health insurance, a coworking space, and card processing fees all come out of it.

He runs it alone. His executive assistant has gone, replaced by AI tools he uses to keep on top of client work, and his own site logs more than a thousand coaching sessions. He told the podcast, The Knowledge with David Elikwu, in January 2025 that the business is 'really just me'.

A single client held on retainer for a year at $4,000 a month bills $48,000 (£35,500).

Active coach practitioners earn an average of $49,283 (£36,400) a year from their entire practice, according to the 2025 ICF Global Coaching Study, conducted by PwC across 10,035 responses from 127 countries.

Why He Left the $250,000 Package Behind

By his account, the arithmetic of Meta's performance review pushed him out. He ran an internal resilience programme for hundreds of employees, led workshops, and mentored junior colleagues. All of it counted toward organisational impact, a category worth 10% of his performance review.

Writing on his own website in April 2024, Shen described the wider backdrop. Meta had rebranded, cut tens of thousands of jobs across repeated layoffs and reorganisations, and watched its share price fall 76% in a single year. 'I had had enough.'

Whether the move pays off in cash remains open. He has not matched his Big Tech earnings and has given himself until 2028 to get there.