311–320 of 335 posts
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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.
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I thought the people who were resting and vesting at Google were all making new messaging programs? They are up to 3 or 4 now?
Honestly it's the opposite. The way you get noticed and promoted at Google is by building something new, even if Google is already doing something else in that space. That's part of the reason there's so much duplication at Google. The VIPs (Vest In Peacers) are more inclined to do the easier thing of adopting and building on what's already there, which is of course the better thing: virtue of laziness and so forth.…
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> To my surprise, when I announced my departure, a bunch of people suddenly came out of the woodwork to tell me that they really didn't want me to go, including a number of very senior managers. So I used that as leverage to negotiate a deal for myself: I would come back after a year on the condition that I be promoted to Principal. Which is what happened. Every time I hear how someone had to threaten to leave to get…
> Every time I hear how someone had to threaten to leave to get recognition/raise he deserves, the believe in meritocracy dies a little in me :). Well, there is this problem with all support and maintenance tasks: if you do everything perfectly, no one notices. It takes you leaving (or a threat of you leaving) for people to realize that your contributions are important to the operation. I don't think I've heard of an…
Yet, this is also true for Ops, design, security... and also nurses, electricians, plumbers, a lot of "traditional" engineering, accounting... essentially most jobs, perhaps.
It'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…
> To my surprise, when I announced my departure, a bunch of people suddenly came out of the woodwork to tell me that they really didn't want me to go, including a number of very senior managers. So I used that as leverage to negotiate a deal for myself: I would come back after a year on the condition that I be promoted to Principal. Which is what happened. Every time I hear how someone had to threaten to leave to get…
Employee: "Hey boss, you should give me a raise."
Boss: "Why?"
Employee: "Because if you don't then the opportunity cost
of working here will be too great for me to
stay."
Boss: "Oh. Ok. Here's a raise."
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.
What was the XXX figure? It'd be interesting to know.
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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 e…
It's not "at scale" though if we're talking about a single doctor, is my point. Of course saving a life is more important than saving one person a tenth of a second or making them slightly happier - but if you do enough of the latter then it adds up to something just as important as the former.
> Certainly, I could imagine the latter being devalued, at the physician level, if there were good automated alternatives. But, there aren't.
There's a limit to how much impact one doctor can have. A "10x doctor" can't save that many more lives, because they only ever save lives on a 1:1 basis.
> Does your opinion hold of engineers working on Snap and Instagram?
Yes, to the extent that they're actually enhancing people's lives. I've known Snapchat bring a lot of happiness to people, in a very human, social-based way; I don't know Instagram well enough but I'd imagine it's similar. It's certainly possible for well-paid engineers to be producing things that negatively impact other people (e.g. "dark patterns" in UI), but I think that's very much the exception rather than the rule.
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The numbers aren't advertised that way, and also Google is inverted in that you apply to Google and then after meeting a hiring bar for a level they match you with a specific role.
Right they aren't advertised that way, but they can certainly be interpreted that way. There's rarely any sort of explanation of the numbering system in job posts. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that a III requires more experience than a I or II.
https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/software-e...
https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/?&src=Online/House%20...
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.
What was the XXX figure? It'd be interesting to know.
That book also makes the claim that in the 1960s (perhaps as early as 1960 itself), Feynman's salary crossed $20,000/year and that he was the highest-paid member of the faculty. Inflation-adjusted, that is at most $165k/year.
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…
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Like I said, risky/dumb things
To realize the benefit of ISOs you need long term gains treatment. That requires you "prepay" tax when you execute. It's the difference between 20% and 33%+ effective tax rate.