HN Gopher Feed (2017-08-06) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Silicon Valley's millionaire engineers who get paid gobs of money
and barely work
186 points by SQL2219
http://www.businessinsider.com/rest-and-vest-millionaire-enginee...___________________________________________________________________
p0nce - 1 hours ago
Sad to see tech giants not recapturing carbon with their unlimited
money.
lettersdigits - 1 hours ago
> "Most of my friends at Google work four hours a day. They are
senior engineers and don't work hard. They know the Google system,
know when to kick into gear. They are engineers, so they optimized
the performance cycles of their own jobs," one engineer
described.Is this really prevalent at Google?edit:quotes
muzz - 45 minutes ago
My experience is that it isn't, because of the performance review
process. If someone could "optimize" their evaluation--
including peer evaluation, evaluation from other teams, stack
ranking, etc-- then I guess they could work less. But I really
don't see how they could do this.
WalterBright - 1 hours ago
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.
feelin_googley - 35 minutes ago
"It's a defensive measure." "That's Microsoft Research's whole
model."?
natch - 1 hours ago
I've posted before that I suspect this is the trouble with a lot of
Google services that don't always seem to get the love they
deserve. People who are well on their way to vesting just aren't
hungry anymore, and can't be bothered to care. Not limited to
Google of course.
zw123456 - 1 hours ago
Yes, but the Wall Street CEO's are sooooo hard working. Give me a
break. I once worked for a company whose CEO completely ran the
thing into the ground and eventually got fired but got paid
millions anyhow. I jokingly said I could have ruined the company
for half what they paid that meathead.I think the real scandal is
the ridiculous amounts of money CEO's get paid for doing nothing in
a lot of cases. The money these "high paid engineers" are getting
is peanuts compared to the sums these CEO's are getting.Sorry for
the rant, but it just stuck in my craw a little.
mavhc - 1 hours ago
Someone once said that your boss isn't paid more because he's
better/works harder, but because only 1 of the row below can be
promoted to boss, so they have to make the pay amazing, so
everyone below works really hard for the company to try and get
promoted.
rb808 - 2 hours ago
Google is sounding more like IBM every year.
home_boi - 2 hours ago
Did IBM pay well back in the day?
DonHopkins - 1 hours ago
There are more important things than money to attract talented
researchers. The cafeteria at IBM Research - Almaden [1]
offered an "IBM Burger" [2]. (I had one, and they were
delicious! A big hulking mainframe of a hamburger.) When Sun
found out about that, they had their own cafeteria offer a "Sun
Burger", in the hopes of attracting better qualified
researchers. Cargo cult corporate research menu design at its
best![1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research_-
_Almaden[2] http://kiranh.blogspot.nl/2006/02/
edoceo - 2 hours ago
Oh yes, glorious 80s
icelancer - 2 hours ago
Still does for the right positions. Research-directed ones pay
exceptionally well.
freyir - 2 hours ago
> "They are really good engineers, really indispensable. And then
they start to pull 9-5 days"Worthless slackers.
tensor - 27 minutes ago
That quote is super cringe worthy.The article is very unclear,
they also quote:>"Most of my friends at Google work four hours a
day. They are senior engineers and don't work hard. They know the
Google system, know when to kick into gear. They are engineers,
so they optimized the performance cycles of their own jobs," one
engineer described.Probably a lot of cherry picking going on.
pm90 - 11 minutes ago
I don't think its that surprising. Essentially what happens is,
engineers do a good job and keep getting promoted. If their
service is required/essential, they continue to get funding
etc. until they reach such a stage that they know their systems
through and through. They're also at a point in their lives
where other things take priority (most of the times its
children).I don't particularly find this situation to be bad.
They are doing the tasks assigned to them, and there is a
defacto agreement with the management that they have other
things to take care of as well, but will get a ton of shit done
when they do work.
jonas21 - 1 minutes ago
It's not really contradictory. A 9 to 5 day can easily turn
into 4 hours of real work. Show up, eat breakfast, spend some
time reading HN and catching up on email, an hour of work,
lunch, an hour or two working, coffee, play some foosball,
another hour of work, go to the gym, time to go home!
techsupporter - 2 hours ago
Edit: Never mind all that, I didn't get the joke. My apologies.
In my defense, text doesn't convey emotion very well.Leaving up
the post for my own shame.What, because they work 40 hours per
week?I have a 4x10 schedule (including a weekend day) and I work
exactly my assigned hours. The company is paying me for those
hours and nothing more--exceptional circumstances excluded, of
course--so I feel no qualms about sticking with that. I get to
have a life outside of work, too.
thisone - 2 hours ago
I believe that was sarcasm
Zyst - 2 hours ago
I also got the same idea.I do dislike forums like ArsTechnica
where "/s" is prominent, I believe that if you need to write
a sarcasm tag to get that across, you likely should not be
writing sarcasm at all.Then again there's people like parent
which will miss what I believe to be obvious sarcasm, and I
wonder all over again if there's a point to it all.Sometimes
I think we should just not write sarcasm at all on written
communications.
thrill - 2 hours ago
Unless you hold up a sarcasm sign here you will downvoted
into oblivion.
Tade0 - 2 hours ago
I tend to find typical instances of sarcasm(especially in
written form) so unfunny that I don't even recognize
them.That being said I had no problem seeing sarcasm in
this example, chiefly because the language was obviously
different(how often does one use the word "worthless" to
describe people?). I guess it makes for a useful rule of
thumb regarding what could be reasonably considered
sarcasm.
mgiannopoulos - 2 hours ago
There are no verbal or visual elements in written form. We
are strangers across continents and cultures. Usually
English is not our first language. People reading may be in
a different mood or mindset. Etc etc. The Elders of the
Internet were right to give us smilies :)
tnecniv - 2 hours ago
It's just Poe's Law coming into play. It can't be avoided
really.Hell, people can't decide if The Prince is a satire
or not.
[deleted]
mgiannopoulos - 2 hours ago
Only working 8 hours? How dare they? /s
[deleted]
IBM - 1 hours ago
This is probably why Apple, a hardware company, has operating
margins that are higher than Google and Microsoft (even though
their gross margins are almost half of Google's and
Microsoft's).The only person I can think of that might have this
arrangement at Apple is Scott Forstall. I think that's why he's
been radio silent until very recently (or he could just be very
loyal to Apple). Maybe Katie Cotton when they changed their
approach to PR from wartime to peacetime, but that could just be a
regular retirement.I mostly don't understand how Google and
Microsoft employ so many people, or what they even do.>"I've
actually had a number of people, including today at Google X, ...
send me pictures of themselves on a roof, kicking back doing
nothing, with the hashtag 'unassigned' or 'rest and vest.' It's
something that really happens, and apparently, somewhat often," the
actor Brener told Business Insider's Melia Robinson last
year.Called it a year ago [1]:>I've speculated for a long time that
basically anything interesting Google says they're doing is
essentially meant to be a jobs program to keep employees from
leaving, PR for external stakeholders like investors, media, being
attractive to potential employees, etc. They seem to have lots of
formal ways to keep employees from leaving/close as well including
investments off of Google's balance sheet (not GV or Google
Capital) into ex-employee startups and just flat out paying people
not to leave (which is the arrangement I'm guessing that Matt Cutts
is under). It all seems very Microsoft of old. Can anyone at Google
(or ex-employees) tell me if this is true?[1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12410662
cylinder - 2 hours ago
All's good when the stock price is inflated. The reckoning (cost
cutting) will come.
tanilama - 1 hours ago
Which is inevitable. They better saved enough money before the
company wiped them out for its own existential crisis, because by
then, it is hard to imagine how could they return to this
ridiculous lifestyle once again.
contingencies - 37 minutes ago
They've got cash reserves of like 100 billion...
rwmj - 41 minutes ago
Or maybe they'll entrench their advertising monopoly and perhaps
gain a few more in driving cars and so on, and then they'll coast
along as rentiers?
geff82 - 2 hours ago
Ok, thanks for sharing this. I made this observation for the last 3
years myself, not as an employee even, but as a contractor. I had
three positions at two companies, all paying quite high
(150k$/year). I changed the positions because the workload was so
low that I had an hour of work a day, then pretending I was doing
work for the rest of the day which I can't stand for more than a
few months. Now I changed again in the hopes of having real work to
do, comes out that they contracted me only for "if there will be
work in a few months". Interviewing several people on what I can do
for them: essentially nothing. "Maybe you could google if using
docker would make sense". On the one hand this kind of "work" feeds
my family and hives me lots of freedom, but on the other hand it
leads to nothing. And I am usually not the only one who has no idea
why they are going to work.
ashark - 2 hours ago
It's kind of an open secret, I think, that (at least in the US)
there's not anywhere near an average of 8 hours of work a day per
"full-time" employee. Probably closer to 3 by the time you
average out the overloaded and the ones who are doing almost
nothing.
icelancer - 2 hours ago
I've been in those jobs before. (Though never paid as much as
your examples.) The only way I stayed sane was to basically take
Coursera classes and teach myself things while being paid to do
so. It felt enough like work and was obviously an incredible
opportunity to be paid to learn.You do start to go insane and
there is an effect on your resume/CV as the black hole widens
there.
geff82 - 1 hours ago
You sound like my colleague Michael. It is you? ;) Essentially
we were doing Coursera stuff together.
pault - 24 minutes ago
Are you guys hiring? :)
Grustaf - 2 hours ago
You could spend the extra time learning about new technologies
and languages. Become an expert at Haskell or AI. Since you're
probably in America I suppose they'd sue you if you started
working on a side project but you can at least get thoroughly
prepared for one!
geff82 - 1 hours ago
Well, as someone who can not sit doing nothing, I accumulated a
lot of knowledge. I did Coursera courses, studied some courses
at university, studied for a total of 5 boat- and radio
licenses (Europe...), I did about 6 IT certifications that I
prepared for at work, set up complete mail servers and recently
dove into the topic of data science.
sevenfive - 2 hours ago
Nah, go for gold. Learn math and physics!
Grustaf - 54 minutes ago
Good point. Might be harder to disguise as coding though!
1024core - 40 minutes ago
> I changed the positions because the workload was so lowI knew
someone who basically took full advantage of this. He was a
contractor too, but just added a clause that he'd be allowed to
work from home/remotely. So he was doing multiple gigs
simultaneously; so instead of making $100/hr (or thereabouts, I'm
not sure about the exact numbers), he was making $400/hr. It's
probably not legal to do what he was doing, but he sure was
livin' large.
pault - 23 minutes ago
I'm curious if people that do this ever get a "perfect storm"
of all clients having unplanned work at the same time. It
sounds great in theory but I feel like it would just tangle you
up in a web of lies.
Swizec - 2 hours ago
> she had been killing herself to make it more successful and
protect her people from losing their jobs over it.> As tired as she
was, she couldn't just quit this job. She owed a big chunk of money
in taxes thanks to that stock and needed her salary to pay those
taxes.> after getting violently ill at the thought of going to
workBurned out and trapped by debt. Not a great place to be even
with the $1mm/year compensation. Most of which is illiquid I
assume.
hendzen - 2 hours ago
Google/FB stock is in no way illiquid.
Swizec - 2 hours ago
It says the stock was from a recent acquisition and the article
context is about vesting. One can surmise her stock is tied up
in a vesting schedule and thus illiquid for now.
lisper - 2 hours ago
It can be if it's part of the compensation in an acquisition
deal.
Kiro - 1 hours ago
How?
lisper - 1 hours ago
Because it can be subject to a vesting schedule.
tryingagainbro - 2 hours ago
Burned out and trapped by debt. Not a great place to be even with
the $1mm/year compensation. Most of which is illiquid I assume.
It can be worse, like being trapped making $8 an hour at some
supermarket.
muzz - 2 hours ago
Not sure how "She owed a big chunk of money in taxes thanks to
that stock". One has to do really risky/dumb things with stock
options to get into that scenario
encoderer - 1 hours ago
All you have to do is execute them and hold. You owe taxes.
Look up dual basis.
muzz - 53 minutes ago
Like I said, risky/dumb things
[deleted]
capkutay - 2 hours ago
These engineers are worth more to them just sitting around
relaxing, being content with their lives instead of taking a high
octane job at a competitor or startup that will eventually compete
with one of their smaller services (mail, ad analytics, etc).
hendzen - 2 hours ago
The fact that they have a the market position and capital to buy
up human resources and waste them simply to keep competitors from
being able to develop products goes to show that they are abusing
their monopoly positions. Wouldn't it be better for the economy &
society at large if these talented people were working hard at
building new & better products?
ws_jl - 1 hours ago
Alas, the employee would have to act ultimately.
hendzen - 1 hours ago
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?
sjg007 - 1 hours ago
Because some people want to work, to be useful? Redditing
is like shouting into the void, totally useless (hacker
news is kinda similar). At the top of Maslow's hierarchy
is where you find the need to do work that contributes to
society.I read this NYTimes articles about a New Yorker who
was paid $5m to vacate his apartment for new development.
He was the last hold out. It turns out when he was young
he was in medical school but dropped out after he received
a sizable inheritance. He was also quite good in school
etc...His regret? I could've been a doctor! Basically he
felt his life was unlived and unexamined despite the luxury
of money.So if you rest and vest but spend 8hrs a day at
work doing nothing... then what's the point? How long
would you do it?
myrloc - 2 hours ago
True. The issue then becomes: what could they be doing for
society? This takes more ingenuity and leadership.
sjg007 - 1 hours ago
Noam Chomsky visited Google and basically asked this question.
scurvy - 43 minutes ago
This was Microsoft's strategy post-dotcom implosion. "We have
more money than everyone. Hire all the smart people even if we
don't have anything for them to do." It worked until...Google.
ChemicalWarfare - 15 minutes ago
The article lumps few different scenarios under the sensationalist
"look, ppl are making shit ton of $$$ and are barely working!!!"
umbrella.None of the scenarios are unique to SV or even IT world in
general, the only "shock factor" is the compensation figures.But
again, most of the scenarios are pretty typical to corporate
environments. Unless you're on some "kick ass all-star" team, once
you start growing you can cruise if you choose to.What struck me as
odd is the "Just don?t talk about it and everyone will assume
you're on someone else?s team" bit. Can't really picture an
environment where a person doesn't show up the next day and
everyone just "assumes" they are on a different team now...
icelancer - 2 hours ago
>Medina said he experienced the high-pay, no-work situation early
in his career when he was a software engineer in grad school. He
finished his project months early, and warned his company he would
be leaving after graduation.>They kept him on for the remaining
months to train others on his software but didn't want him to start
a new coding project. His job during those months involved hanging
out at the office writing a little documentation and being
available to answer questions, he recalls.This isn't a good
example. The company budgeted X dollars over Y months for a total
comp package of Z for an engineer they knew had a discrete
timeline, and the engineer finished in Y-3 months. What should the
company do, fire the engineer and save delta-Z? The company got
what it wanted and more by having him stick around and answer
questions and do documentation work for 8-10 hours a week of "free"
labor.
NTDF9 - 2 hours ago
Reminds me of the common saying,"The hardest thing about working at
Google was the job interview to get the job in the first place."
hendzen - 2 hours ago
I wonder how much of this is due to non-voting shares being sold to
the public that prevent an activist investor from being able to
push the board to trim the fat?
mklarmann - 1 hours ago
It pains me that the article speaks obviously of a female manager.
But then often the writer unwillingly mixes it up, and makes her a
male. It smells a bit like gender bias.
adamnemecek - 2 hours ago
So what exactly does indispensable engineer mean? How many people
making more than 1M a year are at each of these companies?
thrill - 2 hours ago
And can they use one more?
boulos - 2 hours ago
There seems to be conflation in this article between two very
different groups.Group A is folks who are acquired and have
outsized grants that say vest over N years (N between 2 and 4). It
turns out the acquisition was probably a mistake, but the acquiring
company made it (and won't own up to it). That's what's described
in the Facebook and Microsoft examples. This is the classic "rest
and vest" scenario (Note: an acquisition is not required, just any
outsized grant).Group B is "just" engineers at Google, Facebook,
etc. getting paid really well for not doing much, while hanging out
with the lavish perks. I've never heard of anyone refer to this as
"rest and vest". In particular, I found this quote disturbing:>
There are a lot 'coasters' who reached a certain level and don't
want to work any harder. They just do a 9-5 job, won?t work to get
promoted, don?t want to get promoted.At Google (and elsewhere),
it's considered fine to reach a senior / terminal level and stay
there. Is a VP or Director of Engineering lazy if they never move
up? Of course not. The same is true of individual
contributors.Finally, the numbers mentioned for compensation are
normal for very senior engineers at Google (and again, Facebook,
Microsoft, etc.). This isn't "rest and vest", it's just business as
usual. I don't particularly agree with the folks who spend their
days in classes, taking long lunches, etc. but if they get their
work done, what do I care?
[deleted]
scurvy - 49 minutes ago
At Microsoft, we called a lot of these people in Group B,
"volunteers". They were with the company through the glory years
and had great wealth. They just wanted to come to work every day
because they liked saying that they worked at MS. The best
response given when I asked one why they still worked, "Why would
I spend time at home? Have you met my wife and kids?"
yulaow - 29 minutes ago
Well that's a profoundly sad and depressing answer, hoping to
never end with that kind of thoughts
dsacco - 27 minutes ago
It's a lighthearted joke.
scurvy - 25 minutes ago
Indeed, he said it jokingly.
pdimitar - 3 minutes ago
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 between midnight
and 4 AM. (It was a job with wildly varying
schedules)"Joke" in the marital context usually means "I
am too scared to confront my wife so I'll pretend I am
light-hearted and make-believe I am just joining the
popular marital jokes club -- while secretly I am hating
every second of my home life".Sorry for cynicism. It's
what I found during my whole life. Anecdotal evidence for
sure but, my $0.02.
muzz - 2 hours ago
Yes and moreover, engineers are expected to have an upward
trajectory until they reach senior level. Edit: I'm not sure
what happens these days if someone doesn't get promoted in a
timely manner.
johan_larson - 2 hours ago
Clarification: "Senior SWE", the formal rank, at Google is
indeed a plausible terminal level. If you get there, they'll
let you stay indefinitely. But it isn't particularly senior. If
you start at Google straight out of college, it's two
promotions up, and you may not have supervised anyone higher
than an intern.
boulos - 1 hours ago
Thanks for that (as you surmised, I meant "senior" in the
broad sense). For those following along, new college grads
usually start at Level 3 ("SWE II"), and "Senior SWE" (Level
5) is considered "high enough". Explicitly the guidance for
L5 is that: "All Google engineers are expected to reach this
level".
thaumasiotes - 1 hours ago
What are levels 1 and 2?
klodolph - 1 hours ago
From what I understand, the levels exist across all job
ladders, but the SWE ladder starts at level 3, except in
rare cases involving acquisitions. Facebook is the same
way, and Amazon starts at level 4.
chronid - 1 hours ago
Data center engineers, IIRC.
muzz - 1 hours ago
Yes, but: 1) promotions are not particularly easy. they are
approved by committee, ie not because a manager happens to
favor an employee 2) Senior SWE itself is an Individual
Contributor role (some say the optimal level if one wants to
remain an IC). Only at the next level is leadership required
3) There is a HUGE jump in compensation between Senior SWE
and the next level (Staff). Senior SWEs are not pulling
anywhere near the $1M/yr referred to in the title
muzz - 59 minutes ago
Also by "they'll let you stay indefinitely" you mean there is
no expectation of any further promotion. If someone starts
slacking, that would theoretically show up in perf
ChuckMcM - 49 minutes ago
And they wonder why house prices in the bay area are so high. :-(I
started work at Sun Microsystems on the Monday after they had
IPO'ed (the previous Friday). It was about a year later when all of
the various restrictions on personal stock sales had been lifted
that I clued in that some people just didn't care any more about
work and it was quietly explained to my shocked ears that these
people were now multi-millionaires and working was no longer 'for a
living' it was 'for the fun of it.' Or not. And I asked why they
didn't just leave and the answer was simple, because it gave them
something to do and their friends all worked here. Further many of
them had been given additional "refresher" options and the more the
stock went up the more they were worth thousands a month in
additional value down the road.I was fascinated to see how the
different people responded to that new found wealth and the options
it brought with it. For the good ones, it empowers a sort of
fearlessness to do the right thing even if you boss doesn't think
its the right thing. Or to advocate for an important point that
might be politically inconvenient for the company. For some it
affected their opinion of everyone else as if they were somehow so
much "more" than folks who hadn't been there pre-IPO.Fortunately
most of the latter types left fairly quickly.I could see how it
could easily be the 'best' management choice to have someone like
that not putting in too much face time at work. Bad managers
control their reports by threatening to fire them, if you can't
control them they are a threat to the bad manager, better to keep
them far away from anything that could set them off.That said, if
you find yourself in this place the absolute worse thing you can do
is to do nothing. Get healthy, learn something, use that 'free'
time productively. It isn't like you can get it back later.
YANT2017 - 1 hours ago
This article is very misleading. It's not uncommon for engineers
who've been instrumental to a key product or development to be
given a light duty afterwards. This is primarily because these
folks bust their ass and quite literally are exhausted once their
project ships. The time with light duty is meant to retain this
key talent and give them back some work-life balance. Also if your
thing lands and it's big enough you usually get promoted and they
want you to focus on soft skill development, literally making
friends, so you can go on to do something bigger. My last half, my
manager told me that all he wanted me to do this half was make
friends. This is because he was giving me space to find the next
big thing. When you shift from task oriented work to bigger
picture stuff, you can't just start building stuff thinking people
will use it. You have to spend time talking to people about what
problems they have and see if you can come up with a way to solve
them. It's really not unlike a startup in that regard.There's also
the old joke of the mechanic that comes to fix the machine by
knowing where to tap with a hammer. So having people around who
know where to tap is key. They are well worth what they are
getting because sites like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc... can't
go down and if they do millions of dollars are burning for each
minute those sites are down.
k__ - 1 hours ago
Aren't companies like McKinsey more efficient?They have the rule
that you either get better and a promotion or you will be fired.So
they only keep people that improve every year or they get new
people.
sjg007 - 17 minutes ago
No. The partner model is different. Tech companies are keeping
talent on the bench. McKinsey and co turn over hardworking
younglins.
thaumasiotes - 1 hours ago
> They have the rule that you either get better and a promotion
or you will be fired.The conventional term for this is "up or
out".
jokoon - 2 hours ago
I wonder what kind of work they do that makes them so unique and
indispensable. I also heard stories about engineers who did not
share how their code worked, so that the company would not risk
firing them.
chillacy - 1 hours ago
That's definitely one way. I'm not sure if that happens
intentionally at my company, but the severe lack of documentation
lends itself to creating a culture where a select few who have
been around for 5+ years tend to know exactly where to find
everything, who to talk to, etc. And that's very valuable in that
climate, even if they do little coding themselves.
m-j-fox - 2 hours ago
I've wondered this about CEOs. For the price of one Jamie Diamond
you could hire the entire graduating class of Harvard Business
School. Surely, between them, they could perform his duties, no?
[deleted]
samsonradu - 1 hours ago
Think you mean Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan) and my opinion is that
they can't. They would likely lack the real-world experience to
take highly important decisions under pressure. At that level
it's not all science, knowing the right people and people
skills in general are very important. His public appearances
are quite good also, a very good speaker.
m-j-fox - 5 minutes ago
Blame autocorrect. But you get my point: doesn't have to be
the HBS class; could be the HBS professors; or 100 bankers
with 20-years experience each. Point being, there's got to be
a better explanation for CEO pay than ROI on their services.
fapjacks - 1 hours ago
I'm getting more and more confident as time goes on that a
machine could perform his duties. It seems Bridgewater (for
example) agrees with me.
pixelmonkey - 47 minutes ago
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 finance.In 2002-2006, one could have
written a similar article, but about top staff at Goldman, Morgan,
UBS, etc. There were plenty of $300k-$500k salaries being paid for
maintenance work for profitable business lines.Options and RSUs are
an interesting twist in Silicon Valley. To compete with the stock
option packages given out by startups to early employees, Google
and Facebook grant RSUs (and similar) instead. In Wall Street, the
"golden handcuffs" used to be a near-guarantee of a year-on-year
raise, an end-of-year cash bonus, and a track toward promotions
that had built-in pay increases. No one wanted to throw away their
time invested in a single firm. SV firms are different in that
turnover is high, so vesting acts to counteract that. They have
such fast-growing stock values, the stock grants can also be used
in lieu of bonuses. Plus, to management, it really is "funny money"
that does not actually increase operating expense.Anyway, though
the mechanics are different, it seems the net result is the same.
"Golden handcuffs" are as real in tech as they are in finance.The
saddest reflection I have on reading this article is on how
capitalism seems to value different professions wrongly.These
salaries are bigger than top specialist physician salaries. And
physicians need 12-17 years of post-undergrad training, as well as
often requiring $200k of medical school student loan debt.It just
seems like if Google and Facebook can afford to pay this price for
engineers (who add leveraged value via their software
contributions), capitalism should figure out how to pay doctors
more, as well.And go down the list of other "non-BS, but
comparatively underpaid" professions like teachers, firefighters,
etc. They could all use a compensation upgrade.But what is the
exact mechanism that is making it so finance and tech are among the
only fields where labor compensation is commensurate with leveraged
value-add?
IBM - 22 minutes ago
I had a similar thought. I'd say that tech has been firmly in the
"masters of the universe" phase for a while now and while I don't
think the end of it will be the same as in finance (the nature of
the businesses are completely different, there's no systemic
risk), I think tech's comeuppance will be anti-trust. It's
already happening in the EU, and in the US Democrats are making
that a big part of their platform [1]. The election of Trump has
revealed the shift towards populism in American politics, and I
think Democrats see anti-trust as good politics to capitalize on
it. Personally I think it's smart both from a political and
policy perspective. Tech seems to tend toward monopoly, and anti-
trust is critical to combating that. It's also a perfectly good
and necessary counterbalance in capitalism.[1]
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/31/16021844/a...
sidlls - 13 minutes ago
> But what is the exact mechanism that is making it so finance
and tech are among the only fields where labor compensation is
commensurate with leveraged value-add?What makes you think labor
compensation in tech is commensurate with the leveraged value-
add? I think you're generalizing too broadly.The vast majority of
tech workers, even at the "Big Names", are not anywhere near a
position where they can "rest and vest". Also their compensation
per unit of added value really isn't comparable to their
similarly skilled/socially connected peers in finance. A "rest
and vest" Google Engineer whose blood, sweat, and tears made
Google a multi-billion dollar product might make in the very low
7 figures per year, while a moderately skilled investment banker
earning his bank tens of millions of dollars in a year might make
a similar salary.
pixelmonkey - 6 minutes ago
You are right that compensation is uneven in every industry.
You are also right I am generalizing a bit too much.My main
point, though, is more that in tech/finance it is very possible
for compensation to be (largely) commensurate with leveraged
value-add. Whereas in professions like teaching and
firefighting, it is simply impossible.
lisper - 2 hours ago
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 optimistic that I ever
would. So in 2000 I decided my JPL career had peaked, and so I quit
to go work for an obscure little Silicon Valley startup in Mountain
View. ;-)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.The problem was that
my promotion did not in any way coincide with JPL's strategic needs
for my skills. One of the reasons I had left was because I had been
on the losing side of huge political fight
(http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html) and when I returned I
couldn't find a project that was willing to take me on. But they
couldn't fire me because I was a Principal. So I basically spent
the next three years getting paid for doing nothing, and getting
pretty depressed about it. It's actually not fun to feel like a
parasite, at least it wasn't for me.
js2 - 1 hours ago
You don't want to know how many of your taxpayer dollars went to
pay me for helping to shepherd purchase orders through the JPL
bureaucracy.:-(
maxxxxx - 1 hours ago
Working the bureaucracy is often much more difficult than the
engineering part. In my company the tech leads spend more on
figuring out what documentation to produce and how to store it
than either writing documentation or producing software.
Buttons840 - 1 hours ago
From your linked blog post:> The situation is particularly ironic
because the argument that has been advanced for discarding Lisp
in favor of C++ (and now for Java) is that JPL should use
"industry best practice." The problem with this argument is
twofold: first, we're confusing best practice with standard
practice. The two are not the same. And second, we're assuming
that best (or even standard) practice is an invariant with
respect to the task, that the best way to write a word processor
is also the best way to write a spacecacraft control system. It
isn't.Well said. I think I'm going to have to hold onto this
argument for a rainy day.
pm90 - 16 minutes ago
Its great that they make the distinction. But I also hope that
they do update standard practices as well. i.e. not allow their
codebase to become un-maintainable, use good distributed VC's
etc.
lisper - 1 hours ago
Thanks for the kind words.
doktrin - 46 minutes ago
I worked at another FFRDC, and had a similar experience. MTS-A
(the equivalent of 'Principal' at JPL, I assume) was basically
reserved for lifers. Likewise, the promotion requirements for
engineers was the same for that of researchers (i.e. published
white papers, presentations at academic conferences, etc.) - and
was not particularly well mapped to any actual day to day work
done by engineers.
loeg - 2 hours ago
Where do I sign up for that job?
asah - 2 hours ago
Can confirm.But it's not a nefarious thing and the people aren't
slackers: 90% of the people who end up in this position are ass-
kickers who strive to have impact and get bored: most feel bad
about slacking but their bodies and minds simply need a rest.
They created BILLIONS in value and even providing tech support,
they "pay for themselves" many times over -- that's why companies
like Google keep them around.Subtly: the kind of people who end up
resting-and-vesting are precisely the kind of hyper-ambitious
people who develop unique knowledge and skills.
bane - 41 minutes ago
I did the work-from-home (wfh) thing for about 5 years across two
different jobs. The first job was the worst kind of wfh situation
because there simply weren't any boundaries between work and home
and day work bled into night into weekends.The second was the other
worst kind, paid very well to do almost nothing, and again day
nothing bled into night nothing into weekend nothing. I tried to
use it to study things or learn other topics, but every once in a
while I'd be needed for a few days, go and put a fire out and be
back home doing not much at all. The reason for the situation was a
disastrous corporate management. However, the situation was so
great in theory (get paid top-10 metro senior pay to do nothing at
all) that I actually had a hard time changing jobs because I kept
telling myself I actually enjoyed screwing around.Given a binary
choice of one or the other I'd actually choose the second job
again, but I'd structure my days very differently and try to be
much more productive. The good news is that life isn't binary, and
I'm in a place now where I work most days in an office, but can wfh
when I need to, and rigorously control my schedule so work and
home-life don't intersect. I took a pay cut, but I love this
current work much more than either of those two jobs (and my wife
is much happier as well) -- lessons learned I guess.
RSchaeffer - 38 minutes ago
>I'd structure my days very differentlyWhat would your
restructured day look like?
bane - 23 minutes ago
I think I would definitely put more effort into establishing
clearer space/time boundaries between work and home. I live
near a local library and might turn it into an office of sorts
so that I have a place to go, people to interact with and so
on.I'd definitely put more effort into making sure I'd wake up,
shower, and dress for work during work hours and then stop at
the end of the work day.Basically, better discipline, more
delineation.
jdswain - 6 minutes ago
I used to go out in the morning to a local Starbucks and do
email and planning tasks plus also get some social
interaction. That worked really well for staring the day with
a clear boundary.At the end of the day I'd walk up to the
train station (through a park) to meet my wife, so I'd have a
clear boundary on both ends of my day. It worked really well
while I lived there. Now I'm in a small town and it's a bit
harder to do something similar.
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