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How I survived being a $220k/year intern

matt.sh

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Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#131

Post by hobofan »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #80

I think everyone is hyper focused on the 220k number, which is not that unusual for a VC-backed Silicon Valley startup. Admittedly the article is a bit rant-filled, but I have also heard other people say Pivotal is (was?) a bit weird, especially regarding taking pair programming a bit too far (another blog example: http://mwilden.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-i-dont-like-pair-pro... ) I am a bit surprised at all the criti…

I wouldn't want to encourage anyone else to write such a rambling "speaking out" blog post that you can't really take anything away from. There are good ways to write such blog posts, e.g these accounts from an ex-Apple employee[0], that nicely lay out what was going wrong. I tried to extract similar information from this blog post, but failed, as it was filled with so many detours, vagueness, and subjective name calling about the company in general rather than an actual retelling on how he personally was supposedly mistreated.

[0]: https://techreflect.net/2019/12/10/aperture-senior-qa-2004-2...

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#132

Post by DoreenMichele »

mamcx wrote: post #52

If anyone is tired of getting $220k/year, i could take it!. --- I think sometimes developers have drink so hard the kool aid of changing the world and all that, and if is not happening, then get sad. But why? Maybe because I have a long time in this industry, but this is what I do: If see an opportunity to improve things (without need to convince others) I do. If need to convince others, and succeed, great. If not, b…

I think sometimes developers have drink so hard the kool aid

I think a lot of people just have no perspective. I'm fond of this movie scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlHlKi2dATw

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#134

Post by lima »

deanCommie wrote: post #117

Something smelled fishy, so I did a bit of follow-up. This dude is leaving out a huge detail to make his employment troubles be a pivotal problem when...it's not. Let's footnote a coupleo f his "Story of Pivotal The Employment" > Hired To contribute to Redis > All My Work Is Owned by Another Employee? What? The primary redis maintainer, not a pivotal employee? > Let’s Organize Instead of Being A Hobby Project Let's m…

Not disagreeing, just pointing out that Redis development was sponsored by Pivotal at the time, and antirez was presumably on their payroll: http://antirez.com/news/91

The response by antirez is professional and reasonable.

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#135

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

alexfromapex wrote: post #30

Having worked for a strange startup with plenty of cronyism and nepotism, I honestly think there needs to be some kind of government oversight to make sure that executives aren't squandering investors' money or worse that the investors are in on some kind of shell company.

The point of private investing is that the investors get to do that kind of oversight on their own. There's a whole world of public companies to work for, if you're looking for government oversight to double check the investors' work. (Although Pivotal seems to have been a public subsidiary for at least part of the author's story.)

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#136

Post by _2d30 »

noja wrote: post #76
_2d30 wrote: post #29

Blog posts like this are usually best interpreted as the bitter ranting of an ex-employee who was let go. The author himself was semi-notorious (possibly still so?) in the Redis community for being a bit of a self-serving demagogue (to put it nicely). Generally speaking, if an individual was a remote, WFH, IC employee whose manager didn't even talk to them for a year, they probably don't have the working knowledge to…

> The entitlement is strong with this one. You'd need to know what sales were earning before you resort to name calling.

I'm not sure why the amount that sales is earning is relevant. The sales team could all be earning $20B/yr each but it may very well be the case that they are worth that. He was making $220k/yr as a remote employee. That, again, disregards any possible equity comp as well. The median _household_ income in the US is ~$60K, indicating he was earning over 3X the median. Speaking from experience, that $220k/yr is very much so inline with the cash comp at top end firms for a Sr. SWE. He was clearly NOT being treated as an "unneeded, low skilled, interchangeable burden".

The world isn't zero-sum everywhere.

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#138

Post by slumdev »

So much whining in this thread.

It is possible to make $220k/year and also be unhappy. Deal with it.

Beyond a point, money won't increase your happiness. Riding out a terrible job where you're underutilized and overpaid because the job pays well isn't "grit".

It's dishonest. It's opportunism. It's cowardly.

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#139

Post by buzzkillington »

aprdm wrote: post #93
HarryHirsch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rachel had something about fixing corporate culture recently (hint: you can't), and sometimes really you can't leave. Some are shackled to their jobs through their visa, others because of healthcare needs (their health insurance has favourable terms, and they need to care for a family member), and others because of the nature of the industry (university faculty comes to mind, especially post-2008). The fact that you…

The concept of fixing corporate culture seems like a weird one, if you remove corporate and go for the generic term, can you "fix culture"? I think what you can do is influence the culture of a company and reap the rewards, having done the devops transformation in two difference companies that were deemed unfixable (both more than 4 offices and 3k people) I feel it is very doable! It just takes time and it is not an…

The type of person who will write blogs about how terrible a company is is not the type of person who has enough empathy to understand why things are as fucked as they are and how to fix them.

Re: How I survived being a $220k/year intern

#140

Post by seangrogg »

gregd wrote: post #82
kaiabwpdjqn wrote: post #10

I find this post to be relatively unimpressive. He spends a great amount of time complaining about how the company was shit in a way that implies he was personally offended, but the title says he got a generous salary for little expected work. It’s not clear to me why he is bitter about anything. I have no doubt that the company was genuinely poorly run. His observations about problems in the sales culture are likely…

While I don't disagree with most of what you're saying, this idea that people should (or can) just leave employment, needs to stop. This is not the way most of the world works and many people are "stuck" in very shitty situations that don't have many opportunities, out. But with regard to the rest of your comment, absolutely. This guy is a knob.

> this idea that people should (or can) just leave employment, needs to stop

On the contrary, when my friends/family complain about employment I'll usually ask them why they stay. While sometimes people just want to vent (and that's totally okay) there have been various instances where they realized that their notion that they need that particular employer was flawed and they've been able to move on to other gainful employment.

While the idea that people should just leave their job is overused and probably unrealistic for some individuals if you stop saying it you may miss a chance to help someone realize that they may be their own best bet for getting out of their current plight and move forward to something (hopefully) better.

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