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“Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

businessinsider.com

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Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#21

Post by Zyst »

thisone wrote: post #14
techsupporter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Never mind all that, I didn't get the joke. My apologies. In my defense, text doesn't convey emotion very well. Leaving up the post for my own shame. What, because they work 40 hours per week? I have a 4x10 schedule (including a weekend day) and I work exactly my assigned hours. The company is paying me for those hours and nothing more--exceptional circumstances excluded, of course--so I feel no qualms about st…

I believe that was sarcasm

I also got the same idea.

I do dislike forums like ArsTechnica where "/s" is prominent, I believe that if you need to write a sarcasm tag to get that across, you likely should not be writing sarcasm at all.

Then again there's people like parent which will miss what I believe to be obvious sarcasm, and I wonder all over again if there's a point to it all.

Sometimes I think we should just not write sarcasm at all on written communications.

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#22

Post by hendzen »

Swizec wrote: post #10

> she had been killing herself to make it more successful and protect her people from losing their jobs over it. > As tired as she was, she couldn't just quit this job. She owed a big chunk of money in taxes thanks to that stock and needed her salary to pay those taxes. > after getting violently ill at the thought of going to work Burned out and trapped by debt. Not a great place to be even with the $1mm/year compens…

Google/FB stock is in no way illiquid.

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#24

Post by hendzen »

capkutay wrote: post #11

These engineers are worth more to them just sitting around relaxing, being content with their lives instead of taking a high octane job at a competitor or startup that will eventually compete with one of their smaller services (mail, ad analytics, etc).

The fact that they have a the market position and capital to buy up human resources and waste them simply to keep competitors from being able to develop products goes to show that they are abusing their monopoly positions. Wouldn't it be better for the economy & society at large if these talented people were working hard at building new & better products?

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#25

Post by myrloc »

capkutay wrote: post #11

These engineers are worth more to them just sitting around relaxing, being content with their lives instead of taking a high octane job at a competitor or startup that will eventually compete with one of their smaller services (mail, ad analytics, etc).

True. The issue then becomes: what could they be doing for society? This takes more ingenuity and leadership.

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#26

Post by sevenfive »

Grustaf wrote: post #20
geff82 wrote: post #7

Ok, thanks for sharing this. I made this observation for the last 3 years myself, not as an employee even, but as a contractor. I had three positions at two companies, all paying quite high (150k$/year). I changed the positions because the workload was so low that I had an hour of work a day, then pretending I was doing work for the rest of the day which I can't stand for more than a few months. Now I changed again i…

You could spend the extra time learning about new technologies and languages. Become an expert at Haskell or AI. Since you're probably in America I suppose they'd sue you if you started working on a side project but you can at least get thoroughly prepared for one!

Nah, go for gold. Learn math and physics!

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#27

Post by tryingagainbro »

Swizec wrote: post #10

> she had been killing herself to make it more successful and protect her people from losing their jobs over it. > As tired as she was, she couldn't just quit this job. She owed a big chunk of money in taxes thanks to that stock and needed her salary to pay those taxes. > after getting violently ill at the thought of going to work Burned out and trapped by debt. Not a great place to be even with the $1mm/year compens…

Burned out and trapped by debt. Not a great place to be even with the $1mm/year compensation. Most of which is illiquid I assume.

It can be worse, like being trapped making $8 an hour at some supermarket.

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#28

Post by boulos »

There seems to be conflation in this article between two very different groups.

Group A is folks who are acquired and have outsized grants that say vest over N years (N between 2 and 4). It turns out the acquisition was probably a mistake, but the acquiring company made it (and won't own up to it). That's what's described in the Facebook and Microsoft examples. This is the classic "rest and vest" scenario (Note: an acquisition is not required, just any outsized grant).

Group B is "just" engineers at Google, Facebook, etc. getting paid really well for not doing much, while hanging out with the lavish perks. I've never heard of anyone refer to this as "rest and vest". In particular, I found this quote disturbing:

> There are a lot 'coasters' who reached a certain level and don't want to work any harder. They just do a 9-5 job, won’t work to get promoted, don’t want to get promoted.

At Google (and elsewhere), it's considered fine to reach a senior / terminal level and stay there. Is a VP or Director of Engineering lazy if they never move up? Of course not. The same is true of individual contributors.

Finally, the numbers mentioned for compensation are normal for very senior engineers at Google (and again, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.). This isn't "rest and vest", it's just business as usual. I don't particularly agree with the folks who spend their days in classes, taking long lunches, etc. but if they get their work done, what do I care?

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#29

Post by thrill »

Zyst wrote: post #21
thisone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that was sarcasm

I also got the same idea. I do dislike forums like ArsTechnica where "/s" is prominent, I believe that if you need to write a sarcasm tag to get that across, you likely should not be writing sarcasm at all. Then again there's people like parent which will miss what I believe to be obvious sarcasm, and I wonder all over again if there's a point to it all. Sometimes I think we should just not write sarcasm at all on wr…

Unless you hold up a sarcasm sign here you will downvoted into oblivion.

Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work

#30

Post by muzz »

Swizec wrote: post #10

> she had been killing herself to make it more successful and protect her people from losing their jobs over it. > As tired as she was, she couldn't just quit this job. She owed a big chunk of money in taxes thanks to that stock and needed her salary to pay those taxes. > after getting violently ill at the thought of going to work Burned out and trapped by debt. Not a great place to be even with the $1mm/year compens…

Not sure how "She owed a big chunk of money in taxes thanks to that stock". One has to do really risky/dumb things with stock options to get into that scenario
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