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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

#41

Post by mgiannopoulos »

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…

There are no verbal or visual elements in written form. We are strangers across continents and cultures. Usually English is not our first language. People reading may be in a different mood or mindset. Etc etc. The Elders of the Internet were right to give us smilies :)

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

#42

Post by johan_larson »

muzz wrote: post #33
boulos wrote: post #28

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 a…

Yes and moreover, engineers are expected to have an upward trajectory until they reach senior level. Edit: I'm not sure what happens these days if someone doesn't get promoted in a timely manner.

Clarification: "Senior SWE", the formal rank, at Google is indeed a plausible terminal level. If you get there, they'll let you stay indefinitely. But it isn't particularly senior. If you start at Google straight out of college, it's two promotions up, and you may not have supervised anyone higher than an intern.

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

#43

Post by tnecniv »

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…

It's just Poe's Law coming into play. It can't be avoided really.

Hell, people can't decide if The Prince is a satire or not.

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

m-j-fox wrote: post #40
jokoon wrote: post #32

I wonder what kind of work they do that makes them so unique and indispensable. I also heard stories about engineers who did not share how their code worked, so that the company would not risk firing them.

I've wondered this about CEOs. For the price of one Jamie Diamond you could hire the entire graduating class of Harvard Business School. Surely, between them, they could perform his duties, no?

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by ashark »

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…

It's kind of an open secret, I think, that (at least in the US) there's not anywhere near an average of 8 hours of work a day per "full-time" employee. Probably closer to 3 by the time you average out the overloaded and the ones who are doing almost nothing.

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

#46

Post by ws_jl »

hendzen wrote: post #24
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?

Alas, the employee would have to act ultimately.

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

#47

Post by lettersdigits »

> "Most of my friends at Google work four hours a day. They are senior engineers and don't work hard. They know the Google system, know when to kick into gear. They are engineers, so they optimized the performance cycles of their own jobs," one engineer described.

Is this really prevalent at Google?

edit:quotes

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

#48

Post by js2 »

lisper wrote: post #34

It's not just SV that has this phenomenon. I worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab from 1988 to 2000. I had risen to the rank of Senior Member of the Technical Staff, the second-highest rung on the technical career ladder. Beyond that there is the rank of Principal, which is very hard to attain. It's essentially the equivalent of getting tenure. It requires peer review. Most engineers never attain it, and I was not o…

You don't want to know how many of your taxpayer dollars went to pay me for helping to shepherd purchase orders through the JPL bureaucracy.

:-(

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

#49

Post by boulos »

johan_larson wrote: post #42
muzz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and moreover, engineers are expected to have an upward trajectory until they reach senior level. Edit: I'm not sure what happens these days if someone doesn't get promoted in a timely manner.

Clarification: "Senior SWE", the formal rank, at Google is indeed a plausible terminal level. If you get there, they'll let you stay indefinitely. But it isn't particularly senior. If you start at Google straight out of college, it's two promotions up, and you may not have supervised anyone higher than an intern.

Thanks for that (as you surmised, I meant "senior" in the broad sense). For those following along, new college grads usually start at Level 3 ("SWE II"), and "Senior SWE" (Level 5) is considered "high enough". Explicitly the guidance for L5 is that: "All Google engineers are expected to reach this level".
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