I don't understand people who write things like this. If you're unhappy leave, if you think the corporate culture is wrong, either participate in fixing it, or get out. I honestly can't stand people who self righteously sound the alarm about how they can see all of the things wrong with everybody else. It sounds especially childish when you are making so much money.
How I survived being a $220k/year intern
11–20 of 197 posts
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#12I wonder how widespread this phenomenon actually is, anyone has similar stories to share?
Extremely, and not just in tech. Most people just don’t want to admit it because most people need to feel like they “earned” their money. The reality that many, even most in some companies, people get paid simply to maintain a social system is a troubling thought for a lot of people.
You can easily work for a decade at some companies and contribute absolutely nothing if you know how to play the politics.
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#13Being paid a lot of money for not having any responsibility sounds good to me. This guy sure seems angry about it though.
Some people just don't enjoy that kind of life. I worked for a large financial company where I had a super easy job, very little responsibility, but great compensation. I didn't last a year there. Every day I could feel the life being drained from me. After a few years I would have been a braindead drone just like the rest of them. Doing what I'm good at is far more fulfilling than getting paid to waste my life.
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#14> I worked from home for three years with a $220,000 salary, traveled a total of six times, two SF, one Seattle, three to Europe, and contributed thousands of lines of features/fixes/optimizations to high profile projects, all the while never being granted responsibility greater than what you’d give a middle school intern.
But... that all sounds like a lot of responsibility doesn't it?
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#15the weirdest thing to me about pivotal is that they require full-time pair programming. how do people survive in that company at all? i can't fathom being yoked to someone (literally) 40-50 hours a week.
I think if a dev shop is literally yoking their programming pairs together, they're taking the metaphor a bit too far!
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#16Being paid a lot of money for not having any responsibility sounds good to me. This guy sure seems angry about it though.
[deleted]
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#17Being paid a lot of money for not having any responsibility sounds good to me. This guy sure seems angry about it though.
Some people just don't enjoy that kind of life. I worked for a large financial company where I had a super easy job, very little responsibility, but great compensation. I didn't last a year there. Every day I could feel the life being drained from me. After a few years I would have been a braindead drone just like the rest of them. Doing what I'm good at is far more fulfilling than getting paid to waste my life.
My first real job out of grad school was like that. I was making bank but not doing anything useful. It was soul crushing to spend so much time doing nothing, or doing bullshit work - writing reports that no one would read, making presentations that no one needed to hear...
I took a paycut but the world is totally different when you enjoy your job.
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#18I work for the "Labs" (Services) portion of Pivotal and I've seen this guy's stuff on HN before...
Can't comment on what non-services teams are like at Pivotal but the services organization is pretty spectacular.
Pivotal's got problems just like every other organization does, but this guy seems to be mad as hell and blowing things a _bit_ out of proportion.
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#19Being paid a lot of money for not having any responsibility sounds good to me. This guy sure seems angry about it though.
also giving up a $50k severance package doesn't sound as exceptional when you've already collected $660,000 from them. Yeah it's still a lot of money, but apparently being able to promote his blog with anecdotes from Pivotal was worth the $50k to him...
Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern
#20title really needs the leading ‘How’ from TFA