How I survived being a $220k/year intern • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by chrisseaton » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #44

chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> contributed thousands of lines of features/fixes/optimizations to high profile projects What's more responsible than pushing code to a high-profile project? Responsible for the product's performance, security. Responsible for what the customer sees and experiences. Responsible for keeping their data safe and guarding the company's reputation. Responsible enough to be allowed to work independently from home. Respons…

My reading was that those were to open source projects the company didn't control.

Contributions required by paying customers as a result of a commercial support contract.

If he's pushing to Redis he's responsible for the integrity of probably billions of dollars worth of data. That's a massive, international-scale level of responsibility, in the name of his employer. That's huge responsibility!

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

#52

Post by mamcx » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

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, but the environment is okey, I keep going.

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

#53

Post by chrisseaton » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

soared wrote: post #36

“jUsT QuIt yOuR jOb” -hn With no second thought on any outside life factors.

Someone who earns nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year can probably quit their job and continue to support themselves and any outside life factors for several years if they want to.

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

#54

Post by herenorthere » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

RobRivera wrote: post #22

herenorthere wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To be fair, his severance legal vernacular seemed problematic.

Fair enough-- I suppose that makes his decision moderately more reasonable

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

#55

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #44

chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> contributed thousands of lines of features/fixes/optimizations to high profile projects What's more responsible than pushing code to a high-profile project? Responsible for the product's performance, security. Responsible for what the customer sees and experiences. Responsible for keeping their data safe and guarding the company's reputation. Responsible enough to be allowed to work independently from home. Respons…

My reading was that those were to open source projects the company didn't control.

[deleted]

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

#56

Post by autarch » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #46

I think "Matt" thinks he's a bit cleverer than he is. It's not clear what he's talking about. He also uses the word "fraud" ad nauseam. One place I worked actually used Pivotal Tracker, and I found it worked pretty well from the end-user perspective. Wasn't ground-breaking software or anything, but it at least worked. I could see my tasks at a glance a lot easier than with, say, Basecamp. Just another person with an…

For what it's worth I think Tracker is a very small part of the overall Pivotal business. I think their main focus is their cloud computing products.

I love PT and I've used it for 6+ years at my last two jobs.

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

#57

Post by betadreamer » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

No interns make that high of a salary. That means they value his work/skill. It’s clearly a management problem but this is a hard problem. In fact it’s different for everyone. Some people like well structured management and others don’t. On top of that he was remote, which makes it even harder.

His rants are mostly in sales. Engineer ranting about sales is like Sales people saying Engineers are pointless. (Btw both are very common perception). Now that I’ve done both ends I can share that sales people are doing that for a reason. At the end of the day, high end sales are all politics and you need to be good at the game.

This type of rant is what interns do.

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

#58

Post by goostavos » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

lawlorino wrote: post #21

> 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 Am I being a bit dim or did they immediately contradict themselves here?

I read that sentence like 8 times trying to figure out how the first part tied into the latter part. I may be similarly dim.

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

#59

Post by throwawayjava » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

bootlooped wrote: post #41

herenorthere wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It makes me suspicious of a person who passes up $50k because they would rather write a rant on their blog. What type of personality does that? Sure the agreement was one sided, and maybe it even had questionable legal basis and would be unenforceable, but guess what, so do many other contracts consumers sign every day, and those don't usually net us $50k!

> passes up 50K

If the author had another job lined up already, the severance package wasn't worth much of anything -- it only paid out until he had a new position. So, probably closer to passing up $0 than to passing up $50K.

Still a bit of an annoying personality. If you know you won't get any $ from the severance package, just send a "thanks but no thanks" message to the person off-boarding you. Don't harass some poor corporate lawyer 2 years of out law school with inane demands for preferential terms on the severance contract for an individual contributor.

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

#60

Post by HarryHirsch » Sun, Mar 08, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

tracerbulletx wrote: post #11

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.

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 are paid does nothing about the ennui. You clearly never held a no-show job before.