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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

#181

Post by pdimitar »

mattm wrote: post #144
pdimitar wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've also learned that a big reason why some people are workaholics is because they don't want to go home. Working late at the office gives them a good excuse.

That's a sad and miserable existence. :(

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

#182

Post by hosh »

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…

I buy it. Relationships are hard and marriages are harder, even for partners trying to make things work. It was shocking to me that my friends who are married also have their own struggles. In hindsight, it is normal. I used to think, "well, those guys should have a better marriage", and now I realize how difficult it actually is, and how widespread. The parents from Rick & Morty? Yeah.

My wife and I had tried a lot of things. What seems to be working is applying the practices laid out in "Crucial Conversations". That has been helping both at home and work. It isn't magic sauce, though it helps that even after all that, we still want to try. It feels like the eigenvector is pointing towards a better relationship.

(We both work from home).

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

madhadron wrote: post #129
jonas21 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by robertcorey »

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?"

that's really sad. it's like they've been domesticated.

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

#185

Post by kbutler »

user5994461 wrote: post #150
pdimitar wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known and talked with enough people to know that you are very likely right -- that still doesn't stop me from thinking "how the hell can love and respect exist in such conditions?" People are extremely diverse indeed. I've known such couples and couldn't for the life of me ever imagine me being in such a relationship. But they are out there.

Are you really surprised that people can't get along when they re stuck together 24/7 all days? That's what happens when they retire.

My wife and I recently took a trip together involving hours of driving throughout western Europe. We were glad to find we enjoyed just being together, even at the end of the trip.

I think it's important to keep building that relationship (courting) throughout the working years, not just to avoid hitting retirement and thinking, "What am I going to do with this person for the rest of my life?" but also just to enjoy all the years along the way!

You wanted to be together enough to get married - isn't it worth investing time and effort to keep enhancing that, rather than just letting it wither?

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

#186

Post by aisofteng »

antod wrote: post #153
asah wrote: post #36

Can confirm. But it's not a nefarious thing and the people aren't slackers: 90% of the people who end up in this position are ass-kickers who strive to have impact and get bored: most feel bad about slacking but their bodies and minds simply need a rest. They created BILLIONS in value and even providing tech support, they "pay for themselves" many times over -- that's why companies like Google keep them around. Subtl…

And for a rich company, I suppose keeping them around stops their competitors from hiring them a while.

The article explicitly mentions this.

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

#187

Post by shopkins »

wbl wrote: post #126
IBM wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Google has such a vast amount of data on users that its search really can't be beat right now. If you're fully in the ecosystem with mail, maps, contacts, calendar, smartphone, apps, etc. you're going to get better results -- not to mention switching could mean giving up these integrated products.

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

#189

Post by peterburkimsher »

shoefly wrote: post #168

This happened to me once. I ended up coding my own personal projects at the "host" company to pass the time. Otherwise, I would have gone nuts.

That's what I'm doing now. It's ok, but it's against my contract to get paid for those projects. So I have to give everything away for free, open-source!

Sounds great, but that also means my marketing budget is zero. I can't find users. I've put in all this effort, but nobody knows about it, and it feels all like a waste of time. But you know, I still get paid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#190

Post by jessaustin »

m-j-fox wrote: post #113
samsonradu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think you mean Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan) and my opinion is that they can't. They would likely lack the real-world experience to take highly important decisions under pressure. At that level it's not all science, knowing the right people and people skills in general are very important. His public appearances are quite good also, a very good speaker.

Blame autocorrect. But you get my point: doesn't have to be the HBS class; could be the HBS professors; or 100 bankers with 20-years experience each. Point being, there's got to be a better explanation for CEO pay than ROI on their services.

Economists call this the principal-agent problem. When/if we figure out how to have public corporations without boards of directors who are scandalously traitorous to the common stock investor, most commerce will move to that new model.
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