Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's a profoundly sad and depressing answer, hoping to never end with that kind of thoughts
It's a lighthearted joke.
Indeed, he said it jokingly.
“Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
101–110 of 335 posts
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been in those jobs before. (Though never paid as much as your examples.) The only way I stayed sane was to basically take Coursera classes and teach myself things while being paid to do so. It felt enough like work and was obviously an incredible opportunity to be paid to learn. You do start to go insane and there is an effect on your resume/CV as the black hole widens there.
You sound like my colleague Michael. It is you? ;) Essentially we were doing Coursera stuff together.
Are you guys hiring? :)
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#103I did the work-from-home (wfh) thing for about 5 years across two different jobs. The first job was the worst kind of wfh situation because there simply weren't any boundaries between work and home and day work bled into night into weekends. The second was the other worst kind, paid very well to do almost nothing, and again day nothing bled into night nothing into weekend nothing. I tried to use it to study things or…
>I'd structure my days very differently What would your restructured day look like?
I think I would definitely put more effort into establishing clearer space/time boundaries between work and home. I live near a local library and might turn it into an office of sorts so that I have a place to go, people to interact with and so on.
I'd definitely put more effort into making sure I'd wake up, shower, and dress for work during work hours and then stop at the end of the work day.
Basically, better discipline, more delineation.
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#104Ok, 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…
> I changed the positions because the workload was so low I knew someone who basically took full advantage of this. He was a contractor too, but just added a clause that he'd be allowed to work from home/remotely. So he was doing multiple gigs simultaneously; so instead of making $100/hr (or thereabouts, I'm not sure about the exact numbers), he was making $400/hr. It's probably not legal to do what he was doing, but…
I'm curious if people that do this ever get a "perfect storm" of all clients having unplanned work at the same time. It sounds great in theory but I feel like it would just tangle you up in a web of lies.
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#105One of the interesting trends of the past 10 years is the degree to which "big tech" has replaced "big finance" as the place for the elite to go to collect huge paychecks for relatively "nice" white collar work. It makes total sense for top SV engineers to get paid well, IMO. But I am afraid working for these big tech firms is starting to have that feeling of "elite pedigree" that pervades complacent industries, like…
I had a similar thought. I'd say that tech has been firmly in the "masters of the universe" phase for a while now and while I don't think the end of it will be the same as in finance (the nature of the businesses are completely different, there's no systemic risk), I think tech's comeuppance will be anti-trust. It's already happening in the EU, and in the US Democrats are making that a big part of their platform [1]. The election of Trump has revealed the shift towards populism in American politics, and I think Democrats see anti-trust as good politics to capitalize on it. Personally I think it's smart both from a political and policy perspective. Tech seems to tend toward monopoly, and anti-trust is critical to combating that. It's also a perfectly good and necessary counterbalance in capitalism.
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/31/16021844/a...
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#106Aren't companies like McKinsey more efficient? They have the rule that you either get better and a promotion or you will be fired. So they only keep people that improve every year or they get new people.
No. The partner model is different. Tech companies are keeping talent on the bench. McKinsey and co turn over hardworking younglins.
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#107It'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…
From your linked blog post: > The situation is particularly ironic because the argument that has been advanced for discarding Lisp in favor of C++ (and now for Java) is that JPL should use "industry best practice." The problem with this argument is twofold: first, we're confusing best practice with standard practice. The two are not the same. And second, we're assuming that best (or even standard) practice is an inva…
Its great that they make the distinction. But I also hope that they do update standard practices as well. i.e. not allow their codebase to become un-maintainable, use good distributed VC's etc.
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#108The article lumps few different scenarios under the sensationalist "look, ppl are making shit ton of $$$ and are barely working!!!" umbrella.
None of the scenarios are unique to SV or even IT world in general, the only "shock factor" is the compensation figures.
But again, most of the scenarios are pretty typical to corporate environments. Unless you're on some "kick ass all-star" team, once you start growing you can cruise if you choose to.
What struck me as odd is the "Just don’t talk about it and everyone will assume you're on someone else’s team" bit. Can't really picture an environment where a person doesn't show up the next day and everyone just "assumes" they are on a different team now...
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#109One of the interesting trends of the past 10 years is the degree to which "big tech" has replaced "big finance" as the place for the elite to go to collect huge paychecks for relatively "nice" white collar work. It makes total sense for top SV engineers to get paid well, IMO. But I am afraid working for these big tech firms is starting to have that feeling of "elite pedigree" that pervades complacent industries, like…
> But what is the exact mechanism that is making it so finance and tech are among the only fields where labor compensation is commensurate with leveraged value-add?
What makes you think labor compensation in tech is commensurate with the leveraged value-add? I think you're generalizing too broadly.
The vast majority of tech workers, even at the "Big Names", are not anywhere near a position where they can "rest and vest". Also their compensation per unit of added value really isn't comparable to their similarly skilled/socially connected peers in finance. A "rest and vest" Google Engineer whose blood, sweat, and tears made Google a multi-billion dollar product might make in the very low 7 figures per year, while a moderately skilled investment banker earning his bank tens of millions of dollars in a year might make a similar salary.
Re: “Rest and vest”: engineers who get paid and barely work
#110> "They are really good engineers, really indispensable. And then they start to pull 9-5 days" Worthless slackers.
That quote is super cringe worthy. The article is very unclear, they also quote: >"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. Probably a lot of cherry picking going on.
I don't think its that surprising. Essentially what happens is, engineers do a good job and keep getting promoted. If their service is required/essential, they continue to get funding etc. until they reach such a stage that they know their systems through and through. They're also at a point in their lives where other things take priority (most of the times its children).
I don't particularly find this situation to be bad. They are doing the tasks assigned to them, and there is a defacto agreement with the management that they have other things to take care of as well, but will get a ton of shit done when they do work.