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

businessinsider.com

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191–200 of 335 posts

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

#191

Post by peterburkimsher »

Is it unethical to keep a chair warm when my boss didn't give me new tasks to do?

For other areas of life (immigration), I need to get more years of continuous relevant work experience.

I come to an office every day, but my boss just doesn't have enough to keep me busy. My job title is "Project Engineer", which is vague enough to cover everything from DLL debugging to Node.JS programming to network monitoring to evaluating Advanced Planning systems. The latest task is to do some online course in machine learning, even though he didn't specify how the company will need it.

On bad days, I feel useless. But I reconcile the situation to myself by saying it's basically a "basic income" (the salary is not high; the minimum that people on my visa can have). I could think about changing after I have the years of work experience, but years just come with patience, not with productivity. I feel like my situation isn't "fair" because my friends are so much more stressed, but I need the years, not the results.

I also do a lot of side projects and post them online (e.g. learning Chinese - http://pingtype.github.io ), but my contract and visa specifically state that I can't have any other paid work. So all my projects must be free and open source.

If another rest-and-vest person wants to comfort their conscience, I suggest reading more about Basic Income theories.

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

#192

Post by jessaustin »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #175

Why are programmers called engineers these days? An engineer has an engineering degree and does something completely different than computer programming.

Having interacted with various P.E.'s and been mostly disappointed with their work (seriously these guys are worse than architects as far as having creativity pointed only toward fuck-ups that the client would never want), I wonder why programmers/coders/whatevers even want to engage in this pretense. Why not call ourselves "code lawyers"?

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

#193

Post by sn9 »

ianbicking wrote: post #165
thaumasiotes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are levels 1 and 2?

Usually companies try to make it so that levels mean roughly the same thing across all professions, so 1 and 2 or 3 mean "almost no experience". So while there might be people at level 1 and 2 in the HR department, or receptionist, or other professions where there is extremely close supervision, they don't hire anyone at that level for engineering. Often management also has a similar level system, but starts at a yet…

That's so confusing for students and new graduates. I would imagine a large number of students aren't applying for those jobs because they think the jobs require more experience than they do, shrinking the talent pool from which companies draw.

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

#194

Post by wbl »

shopkins wrote: post #187
wbl wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if we break up Google, this harms consumers by stopping the integration.

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

#195

Post by patrickdavey »

hosh wrote: post #182
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 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…

Absolutely this. Crucial conversations should be mandatory reading for anyone entering into marriage. Fantastic book. And not just for marriage either, just good life skill on how to approach tricky subjects.

Go read it. Honestly :)

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

#196

Post by madengr »

WalterBright wrote: post #166
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…

Back when I worked at Boeing, there was a story from a gate guard (checks badges of people coming in) that an engineer he knew drove up to the gate one day, stopped, shook his head, did a U-turn, and drove off. He was never seen again (and abandoned his family).

That sounds more like burnout.

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

#197

Post by DonbunEf7 »

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.

It's true. I recently was terminated. Two days later, I was spending all my time on my side business, my programming language, and about four home-improvement projects that had been planned but never executed.

"I can't slow down, I can't hold back, though you know I wish I could; you know there ain't no rest for the wicked until we close our eyes for good."

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

#199

Post by 0xbear »

This actually dates back decades. DEC invented "no output division": a team comprised of senior but bored people who would be unfashionable and dangerous to kick out. You give them some bullshit bling project and segregate them well from people who are actually doing meaningful work so that they don't get in the way. It's better if they do something meaningless for you than something meaningful for a competitor.

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

#200

Post by morgante »

hendzen wrote: post #61
ws_jl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, the employee would have to act ultimately.

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?

If I spend more than a week without getting meaningful work done, I get extremely depressed. I love the thrill of building projects and creating business value.

You'd actually have to pay me more to do nothing than to do something.

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