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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

#291

Post by lmm »

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…

Our human instincts can't deal with how many people there are in the world. A doctor can only treat one person at a time; even one who was saving a life every time they operated - let's say twice a day - would probably be saving less person-hours than someone who can make Google's results 1% faster. Our instincts recoil at the idea that that's more important (mine included), but our instincts were formed in a time when we lived in tribes of at most a few hundred.

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

#292

Post by lmm »

sjg007 wrote: post #76
hendzen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 medic…

But most contributions to society are about labour saving - if we don't think that kind of life is valuable then surely those contributions aren't really valuable either.

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

#293

Post by StavrosK »

pdimitar wrote: post #143
StavrosK wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's only been three years. Give it a few decades.

I had a failed relationship that lasted 8 years before. But I know what you are talking about. Time can kill love. I do believe we're on the right track however. We are sensitive to the relationship killers and we are actively addressing them. Being inert is not our thing.

I think that's the actual reason for doing well, ie addressing problems. (Lack of) honesty is just one of those.

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

#294

Post by Applejinx »

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…

Capital.

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

#295

Post by k__ »

richardknop wrote: post #280
k__ wrote: post #69

Aren'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.

Oh no. Companies like McKinsey / Accenture etc are not more efficient. Their bureaucracies and inefficiencies are way worse than tech companies like Facebook or Google.

I see.

The whole up or out principle sounded rather efficient to me.

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

#296

Post by Applejinx »

banku_brougham wrote: post #231

I notice ther was no mention of amazon, but that is a large tech company with 10s of thousands of engineers. Anyone have an amzn rest and vest story?

I think that's culturally impossible. Amazon's a bit of a snake-pit and there's no way such behavior could exist in that environment: it'd be painting a giant target on your back.

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

#297

Post by Applejinx »

k__ wrote: post #266
thaumasiotes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have the rule that you either get better and a promotion or you will be fired. The conventional term for this is "up or out".

Yes, but why aren't other companies do this?

Because that's also a mistake: the problem there is, you cannot keep a person doing something they're optimal for if you need to continually promote them.

One of the holy grails of effectiveness at doing stuff is having some comprehension of your boundaries. To categorically disavow even the concept of boundaries is catastrophically silly.

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

#298

Post by gaius »

mcv wrote: post #262
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…

Also, the first engineer mentioned in the article is in no way coasting, but sounds like she's recovering from a burn out. It is incredibly important to let burnt out employees rest and recover.

I didn't understand why she was "livid" that her manager told her to take some time off, on full pay, to recover.

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

#299

Post by pixelmonkey »

lmm wrote: post #291
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…

Our human instincts can't deal with how many people there are in the world. A doctor can only treat one person at a time; even one who was saving a life every time they operated - let's say twice a day - would probably be saving less person-hours than someone who can make Google's results 1% faster. Our instincts recoil at the idea that that's more important (mine included), but our instincts were formed in a time wh…

You really think a single engineer's marginal contribution to speed improvements of Google search results or engagement improvements in Facebook's newsfeed are of similar value to highly-technical life-saving treatment, delivered at scale in hospitals?

Certainly, I could imagine the latter being devalued, at the physician level, if there were good automated alternatives. But, there aren't.

Does your opinion hold of engineers working on Snap and Instagram?

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

#300

Post by rorykoehler »

WalterBright wrote: post #164

There's something corrosive to the soul about having no purpose in life. I retired once. It lasted about 6 weeks, then I decided to create the D programming language. I plan to work until my mind no longer functions. I'm not interested in retiring.

For me retirement means not having to worry about income ever again, not to stop working.
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