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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

#121

Post by kentt »

ashark wrote: post #45
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.

I agree, but there is something I just can't make sense of. I would love to just work my ass off for 4 hours a day but you won't get through any part of an interview if someone finds that out.

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

#122

Post by shostack »

ashark wrote: post #45
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.

For knowledge workers, there may be 3 hours of actual "doing stuff" time, but for me at least, I'm constantly thinking about work, even when I try not to. It just bleeds into my thoughts in the shower, at dinner, lying in bed, etc.

The way I see it to anyone who might question why I'm lying on a couch at work with headphones is that the hard part of my job happens in my head. The easy part is what I mash into the keyboard after I've spent hours finalizing my plan of attack in my head.

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

#123

Post by pdimitar »

pault wrote: post #104
1024core wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I ain't a swindler for sure but I had to do this several times during my life, in order to provide for my family, to kill debts, to fix health problems and a load of other things life loves to hit you under the belt with.

That perfect storm you described indeed happened several times and I was indeed lying about it but you know what? I was willing to own up to every single promise and engagement I made -- and I did, even though it took a toll on my mental health and work motivation.

And no, I wasn't living large at all at the time.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] »

scurvy wrote: post #86
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…

At Microsoft, we called a lot of these people in Group B, "volunteers". They were with the company through the glory years and had great wealth. They just wanted to come to work every day because they liked saying that they worked at MS. The best response given when I asked one why they still worked, "Why would I spend time at home? Have you met my wife and kids?"

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by sverige »

tnecniv wrote: post #43
Zyst wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Prince is easy once you've read Discourses on Livy.

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

#126

Post by wbl »

IBM wrote: post #105
pixelmonkey wrote: post #87

One 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 competition is a click away and has very low barriers to entry. Facebook might have network effects, but Google doesn't. If someone made a better search engine, people would switch. What evidence that Google's search monopoly is anti-consumer is there?

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

#127

Post by pdimitar »

geff82 wrote: post #60
Grustaf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Well, as someone who can not sit doing nothing, I accumulated a lot of knowledge. I did Coursera courses, studied some courses at university, studied for a total of 5 boat- and radio licenses (Europe...), I did about 6 IT certifications that I prepared for at work, set up complete mail servers and recently dove into the topic of data science.

Did you learn how to self-host your own email? If so, I'm very interested in learning how and which resources did you use.

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

#128

Post by cpeterso »

scurvy wrote: post #86
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…

At Microsoft, we called a lot of these people in Group B, "volunteers". They were with the company through the glory years and had great wealth. They just wanted to come to work every day because they liked saying that they worked at MS. The best response given when I asked one why they still worked, "Why would I spend time at home? Have you met my wife and kids?"

When I worked at Microsoft, people joking called the Red West campus "Red Vest" because it was home to fun projects (like internet and Xbox) that attracted people who had vested enough MSFT options that they didn't need to work.

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

#129

Post by madhadron »

jonas21 wrote: post #115
tensor wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not really contradictory. A 9 to 5 day can easily turn into 4 hours of real work. Show up, eat breakfast, spend some time reading HN, an hour of work, lunch, an hour or two working, grab coffee, play some foosball, another hour of work, go to the gym, time to go home!

Conversely, most engineers only have three to five hours of really hard, sustainable technical work in them per day, and that's assuming a regular schedule, adequate sleep, good nutrition, no major emotional upsets going on... Now, that is work. No checking Facebook. No checking email. Process optimized so there are no long periods of waiting around.

I have had periods when my day was six hours: five hours of hard work and an hour of eating lunch at my desk while I chatted with someone, dealt with email, got tomorrow planned, and other overhead. It remains my most effective schedule when I'm doing straight technical work as opposed to people work. That hasn't stopped bosses from wanting me to sit around the office for a couple more hours so other people, who did take regular Facebook breaks and the like, didn't feel like I was a part timer.

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

#130

Post by duncan_bayne »

pdimitar wrote: post #114
scurvy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, he said it jokingly.

I ain't buying it. I don't know the concrete person, that's a fact. I spent my younger years in much more social jobs compared to programming in cubicles (thank the gods I work remotely for 5+ years now) and out of probably 200+ men I've heard joking about horrible wife and kids, I can assure you no more than 5 were really joking. And I don't mean offhand conversations -- I am talking about people who I've chatted wi…

My experience - also anecdotal - supports this. Only a small minority of people who 'joke' about their home life are actually joking. See also:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.html

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