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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

#71

Post by thaumasiotes »

boulos wrote: post #49
johan_larson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

What are levels 1 and 2?

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

#74

Post by WalterBright »

I attended Caltech in the era that Feynman was a professor there. I heard he was paid XXX a year. I opined that was ridiculous, who could possibly be worth that much?

An upperclassman laughed and told me that Feynman was worth that much to the university even if he did nothing. Attaching his name to the university brought in donations, grants, and top talent.

Of course, Feynman being Feynman, worked like hell anyway.

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

#75

Post by klodolph »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #71
boulos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

What are levels 1 and 2?

From what I understand, the levels exist across all job ladders, but the SWE ladder starts at level 3, except in rare cases involving acquisitions. Facebook is the same way, and Amazon starts at level 4.

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

#76

Post by sjg007 »

hendzen wrote: post #61
ws_jl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, the employee would have to act ultimately.

People respond to incentives. If you can get paid 250K+ to sit around and hang out on reddit all day, why wouldn't you do that instead of busting your ass?

Because some people want to work, to be useful? Redditing is like shouting into the void, totally useless (hacker news is kinda similar). At the top of Maslow's hierarchy is where you find the need to do work that contributes to society.

I read this NYTimes articles about a New Yorker who was paid $5m to vacate his apartment for new development. He was the last hold out. It turns out when he was young he was in medical school but dropped out after he received a sizable inheritance. He was also quite good in school etc...

His regret? I could've been a doctor! Basically he felt his life was unlived and unexamined despite the luxury of money.

So if you rest and vest but spend 8hrs a day at work doing nothing... then what's the point? How long would you do it?

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

#77

Post by sjg007 »

myrloc wrote: post #25
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.

Noam Chomsky visited Google and basically asked this question.

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

#78

Post by chronid »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #71
boulos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

What are levels 1 and 2?

Data center engineers, IIRC.

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

#79

Post by DonHopkins »

home_boi wrote: post #4
rb808 wrote: post #2

Google is sounding more like IBM every year.

Did IBM pay well back in the day?

There are more important things than money to attract talented researchers. The cafeteria at IBM Research - Almaden [1] offered an "IBM Burger" [2]. (I had one, and they were delicious! A big hulking mainframe of a hamburger.) When Sun found out about that, they had their own cafeteria offer a "Sun Burger", in the hopes of attracting better qualified researchers. Cargo cult corporate research menu design at its best!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research_-_Almaden

[2] http://kiranh.blogspot.nl/2006/02/

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

#80

Post by muzz »

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.

Yes, but: 1) promotions are not particularly easy. they are approved by committee, ie not because a manager happens to favor an employee 2) Senior SWE itself is an Individual Contributor role (some say the optimal level if one wants to remain an IC). Only at the next level is leadership required 3) There is a HUGE jump in compensation between Senior SWE and the next level (Staff). Senior SWEs are not pulling anywhere near the $1M/yr referred to in the title
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