r/qualcomm

Qualcomm CFO’s exact QCOM holding

Qualcomm’s current CFO and COO is Akash Palkhiwala. Has been selling Q stocks steadily.

Why listen to the CEO when his own CFO does not believe in Q future.

The latest SEC Form 4 available through August 19, 2026 shows that he sold 2,500 QCOM shares on August 12, 2026 and still owned 20,684 shares directly after the sale. Therefore, he has not sold all his Qualcomm stock. (Qualcomm)

At the latest quoted QCOM price of $160.19, those 20,684 directly owned shares are worth approximately $3.31 million.

His recent selling history

Transaction dateShares soldDirect QCOM shares remainingDecember 18–19, 202512,53842,265 (SEC)January 2, 20263,33338,932 (SEC)February 6, 20263,33335,599 (SEC)March 12, 20262,50033,099 (SEC)April 13, 20262,50030,684* (SEC)May 12, 20262,50028,184 (SEC)June 11, 20262,50025,684 (SEC)July 14, 20262,50023,184 (SEC)August 12, 20262,50020,684 (SEC)

*The April figure includes 85 shares purchased through Qualcomm’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan on April 1, 2026. (SEC)

During calendar 2026, he has therefore:

Sold 21,666 shares

Acquired 85 ESPP shares

Reduced his direct position from 42,265 to 20,684 shares

Reduced the position by approximately 51.1%

Qualcomm’s January 2026 proxy reported that he owned 54,803 shares on December 15, 2025. Compared with that earlier point, his directly owned position has fallen about 62.3%, including the large December 18–19 sale. (SEC)

Is he planning to sell everything?

His currently disclosed Rule 10b5-1 plan was adopted on December 8, 2025. It authorizes sales of up to 30,000 shares and is scheduled to terminate on February 26, 2027. (SEC)

The March, April, May, June, July and August transactions were each for 2,500 shares under that plan—15,000 shares sold so far. Consequently:

Maximum authorized under the plan: 30,000

Already sold under the plan: 15,000

Potentially remaining under the plan: up to 15,000

Current directly owned shares: 20,684

Hypothetical shares remaining after all 15,000 additional shares were sold: 5,684

That calculation assumes no new vesting, stock awards, ESPP purchases or other transactions. Also, “up to 30,000” does not guarantee that every authorized share will actually be sold.

He owns more economic exposure than the 20,684 shares

The 20,684 figure is the exact number of vested common shares directly owned after the latest reported transaction. It does not include all of his unvested Qualcomm compensation.

The latest comprehensive proxy snapshot, measured at Qualcomm’s fiscal year-end in September 2025, reported for Palkhiwala:

76,629 unvested shares or stock units

129,909 unearned performance-stock units or related rights

These awards were not yet fully vested or earned and will change with vesting, performance results, taxes, forfeitures and subsequent grants. Therefore, they should not simply be added to the current 20,684-share figure as though they were presently owned common stock. (SEC)

My assessment

He is selling aggressively, but he is not selling all his Qualcomm equity. His direct holdings have fallen roughly by half during 2026, and the disclosed plan could reduce them further. However:

The sales are occurring through a plan established in advance rather than through a sudden discretionary liquidation.

The disclosed plan itself would not take his direct holdings to zero.

He continues to hold approximately $3.31 million in vested QCOM shares, plus substantial unvested and performance-based Qualcomm equity.

Qualcomm requires non-CEO executive officers to own actual shares worth at least two times their salary. His last disclosed annual base salary was $900,000, implying a roughly $1.8 million ownership guideline; at the latest stock price, his current direct position remains above that level, assuming the salary and guideline have not changed. (SEC)

So the accurate description is: substantial planned diversification and monetization—not a complete exit from Qualcomm stock.

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u/Open_Arm_5230 — 13 hours ago

Need suggestions?

Recently i got an offer from Qualcomm staff position
I have total 11 years experience in embedded devices drivers .
Whenever i tell someone Qualcomm they are asking why are you going?
It will kill WLB like that
If its that had so many people are working
I am confused

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u/Level-Constant-3817 — 16 hours ago
▲ 101 r/qualcomm

India != anywhere else, and this is ruining the sub

99% of the posts here are low quality content, people complaining of being lowballed at offer or getting paid less than same-yoe lateral hires. People complaining about wlb, managers, non advancing in their careers. Sometimes, people straight hating the company.

I am sure these complains have merits, and they totally deserve to be heard. Most of these posts are from India. It is clear that the working conditions of Indian colleagues is pretty bad, and I fully sympathize with you. As a Qualcomm employee I realized this while working with colleagues in Hyderabad or other Indian locations. You guys are always online, whatever time of the day. You guys work on weekends. And we (as non Indian employees) don’t. And then, as a lurker of this sub, I got a confirmation by reading all the disgruntled posts and comment that plague the sub. I am sorry and I wish you guys could get better working conditions.

But these sterile discussions and complaints are ruining this sub. This is not r/fuckQualcomm (which somehow exists).

These issues should be discussed openly and thoroughly, but in a more organized and contained manner. Probably the best way would be to have megathreads dedicated to geo areas and with the purpose of discussing compensation, wlb or anything else major.

Believe me, it’s not about confining and putting away all the complaints. It about consolidating them. Right now they are completely diluted, Every post saying the damned same thing and a couple of comments reading like “Qualcomm bad, what is your yoe, can I dm you”. It’s not good for the sub, it’s not good for the complainers.

And once again, it is tremendously unfortunate and unfair, but Qualcomm employees in other countries (especially Europe) are treated much better. The sub makes it look like it’s just bad everywhere and no space is left for any other kind of discussion (I.e., AR is coming, tricks to make the best out of it? Questions you would like answered, but you can’t ask your manager, why does my damned snapdragon thinkpad run so bad and hot all the time). I think we would all benefit from that. I think this is what the sub is supposed to be about.

Please mods, step in. This sub is useless and honestly dying.

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u/ta_opossum — 1 day ago

Lowballed “Engineer” and it’s been worst choice Joining as engineer

I have joined Qualcomm when I was at 2yoe.

offered 20Lpa as base, 1L bonus, 1L relocation, 16K stocks, 8% of base as perf bonus.

Now, my friend joined qualcomm at 2yrs 4months exp and got 28Lpa as base with senior engineer, 30K stocks, 5L joining bonus.

The gap is just 6months. And there is huge difference in pay.

In AR26, I am expecting promotion. I will have 1yr 6months of Qualcomm exp by Nov & I am top performer in our team (I got to know this somehow). But I’m fully skeptical.

Even with promo, I won’t reach 28Lpa base.

Without promo, max I will reach to 22Lpa

How much Can I expect in AR26 hikes?

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u/Busy-Target2534 — 2 days ago
▲ 5 r/qualcomm+1 crossposts

Engineer to sr. engineer

I joined qlcm in March 2024. It's been more than 2 years and hoping to be promoted this year end. ( 2.8 years). Will i be promoted. Started with 15.5 base and now has 20.

How much shall I expect?

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u/ImpactNo6610 — 1 day ago

How to prepare for senior devops role at Qualcomm?

I have an interview scheduled with a senior director next week for the senior devops engineer role. Need some guidance on how to prepare for the round. I have 7 yoe at a product based org, experienced in linux, k8s, python , golang and observablity tools and it’s really shitty out here as well.

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u/daawgisnotokay — 1 day ago

Question about low rating in AR

So it’s been 6 months since I have joined Qualcomm as an engineer, I have a masters degree from the US but this is my first time working for a multinational company. I have been told by my manager my performance has been below expectation, so I wanted to know what will happen if I get a low rating in AR

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u/Ok-Masterpiece4846 — 2 days ago

Stay or Switch

Joined qualcomm in 2021 as an Engineer. Currently at senior engineer level from 2023, however the base salary has not even reached 30lpa. And lateral hires in the org are getting hired at much more salary at the same level. Considering the stock position and skeptical ar26 numbers even if there is promotion.what should I do. Should I stay or look for a switch once ar numbers are revealed?

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u/RefuseWonderful2658 — 2 days ago

First AR at QCOM, Help a homie out with that's it gonna be like.

EDIT SUBJECT : I meant what's it gonna be not "that's*

Hi all,

It's been about an year here at QCOMM, I am eligible for an AR this year and wanted to know how things would go. I don't have many friends here and I tried asking folks in my team and all they said was you will need to send your work and updates to my manager and then he will grade me based on that. I am a Sr. So what can I expect ?

Sorry if it's not an apt question here..

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u/TheCursedCreation — 2 days ago

Discussion on compensation and YoE

Lately I am seeing many posts regarding the “lowballing” in a particular designation and that Qualcomm is not giving on par compensation when compared with AMD/Nvidia.
My take on this is, it’s true that we are ultimately working for money, but I feel Qualcomm is at least paying enough to live a comfortable life(correct me if I am wrong).
Also, I feel in the initial days of the carrier(because I see most of the posts are for 3-6 YoE) one should look for improving the learning curve rather than chasing money(because after 7-8 YoE your learning curve starts to saturate and you try to be in your comfort zone).
This is my take on the topic of general compensation and YoE, I am open for discussion on this matter.

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u/Fit-Nebula3083 — 2 days ago
▲ 7 r/qualcomm+1 crossposts

Qualcomm Automotive Linux + BlueZ: Can BlueZ work with this Bluetooth setup?

Hi, I’m working with a Qualcomm Automotive Linux target and trying to determine whether I can use BlueZ for a Bluetooth plugin.

Here’s what I found on the target:

  • busctl list | grep -i org.bluezorg.bluez ... (activatable)
  • Linux Bluetooth kernel module is loaded: bluetooth 802816 0
  • Kernel logs show: Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
  • Qualcomm SCMI Bluetooth devices exist: /dev/scmi_bluetooth and /dev/scmi_bluetooth1
  • /sys/class/bluetooth exists
  • qcom-uscmi has scmi_bluetooth and scmi_bluetooth1 devices
  • However, which bluetoothd returns nothing
  • ps | grep '[b]luetoothd' returns nothing
  • hciconfig -a returns no output
  • No hci0 is visible

So it looks like the Linux Bluetooth subsystem and Qualcomm SCMI Bluetooth infrastructure are present, and D-Bus has an activatable org.bluez entry, but there is no visible Bluetooth controller/HCI and bluetoothd isn't available in PATH.

My questions:

  1. Does this setup support BlueZ?
  2. What Qualcomm-specific component/driver/firmware is needed to expose hci0?
  3. Is scmi_bluetooth an alternative interface to the normal HCI/BlueZ architecture?
  4. What should I check in the Yocto layers/build to determine whether BlueZ can be enabled?
  5. If BlueZ is not the intended stack on this Qualcomm Automotive Linux build, what is the recommended alternative?

Any guidance on how these Qualcomm SCMI Bluetooth components connect to the standard Linux HCI/BlueZ stack would be really helpful.

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u/UpsetCricket6627 — 1 day ago

It seems joining as “Engineer” is a bad choice in Qualcomm. Lowballed

Joining as engineer is indeed a bad choice.

Suppose If i you get “Engineer” at 1yoe with max base 22, you need 2 years to get promoted to senior engineer and max you can reach to 28Lpa base.

Suppose if you get “Engineer” at 2yoe with max base 22, you need 2years to reach to max 28lpa base.

At the same point, Qualcomm is offering senior engineer roles for 2.5yoe, 3yoe (btech) are getting 28lpa base.

So veteran engineers are being low balled.

Sometimes I feel Leaving Qualcomm is a better option.

Other similar semiconductor companies are following strict yoe based roles. I don’t know why Qualcomm is treating engineers as shit.

(Sorry to say this, this is what i have observed at Qualcomm)

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u/Kindly-Program8657 — 3 days ago

Qualcomm is not doing well

Qualcomm is losing market share will have more layoff in USA ?

The CEO is clueless and slapping AI on every product line

It's losing key talent. Salary also sucks

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u/DeliciousOx1 — 3 days ago

Engineer at Qualcomm

I have 1 yoe plus a master's degree from the US.

And I got an Engineer level offer from Qualcomm Bangalore.

Here are the compensation details:

22 lakh base pay

$16k RSUs vested over 3 years

4 lakh joining bonus for first year (and 3 lakh joining bonus for second year, totally 7 lakh joining bonus)

8% of performance bonus

Is this a good offer?

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u/Mobile_Economist7921 — 2 days ago

Annual Stock Grant at NVIDIA

Hi Everyone,

I might get an offer from NVIDIA. Just wanted to know what is the annual stock grant for a person having 3 YOE. From the previous company I have 10L worth of stocks. Also please share what is the one time grant when you join having 3 YOE or similiar.

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u/Common-Squirrel-3636 — 3 days ago

Engineer to Senior Engineer

I am currently working at Engineer position where my base is around 20lpa. I am expecting good rating and promotion in this AR, could you guys please suggest me how much hike I can expect in base plus refresher rsu and bonus. Thanks in advance

reddit.com
u/Nice-Share-179 — 2 days ago

Stay or Switch

Joined qualcomm in 2021 as an Engineer. Currently at senior engineer level from 2023, however the base salary has not even reached 30lpa. And lateral hires in the org are getting hired at much more salary at the same level. Considering the stock position and skeptical ar26 numbers even if there is promotion.what should I do . Should I stay or look for a switch once ar numbers are revealed?

reddit.com
u/RefuseWonderful2658 — 3 days ago

Is this a low ball?

Had Almost 3 years experience with 14.5 CTC.

Joined Qualcomm as an Engineer last month with 23 gross pay, 3 JB, 2 Performance and 16k Stocks.

this is 100%+ of the hike, which I felt was great but if you see according to the standard of the company— it turns out, mostly here everyone got Senior Engineer which makes 10+ diff in CTC. Need to stay 1.5-2+ years to be eligible for Senior, after that there are tonne of people in the line of promotion.

reddit.com
u/Visible_Forever_7636 — 3 days ago