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You should try working in an investment bank as a contractor. You need to find the right team, but a lot of them are massive collections of people doing virtual
by osrec 7y ago
You should try working in an investment bank as a contractor. You need to find the right team, but a lot of them are massive collections of people doing virtually nothing but getting paid great daily rates. The trick is to look busy and wrap your team/yourself in a perceived sense of enigma and complexity. If you play your cards right, you can end up in a situation where no one will ask questions as long as you fire off an email now and again. You can keep getting paid for doing almost nothing for years.
- linuxftw 7y agoThis describes >80% of engineering departments at past large firms where I've worked. Ironically, these people are 'architects' and get paid handsomely.
- maxxxxx 7y agoThe IT department in my company is full of “senior architects” and “principal architects” who are very pleasant talkers but don’t do anything from what I can tell. They have a ton of stories how they helped others but whenever I needed something from them nothing ever happened besides a lot of meetings.
- linuxftw 7y agoThis is precisely why corporations have so many meetings. Without them, there's whole divisions of people that would be doing nothing all day, every day. No code reviews, no specs, no code, no operational capacity, just taking the credit for other people's actual output.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bitcoinmoney 7y agoWhat is handsomely? Like Netflix handsomely or 140k?
- solotronics 7y agoI have a theory that in most large companies the 80/20 rule applies. 20% of the engineers do 80% of the work.
- mrguyorama 7y agoIt also feels like those same 80% of the engineers doing nothing are taking home 80% of the compensation
- webninja 7y agoBecause those other 80% are focused on posturing and tasks associated with getting higher pay.
- ThePadawan 7y agoSure, because the other 80% of engineers have to clean up after the 20%.
- imtringued 7y agoThat doesn't mean the other 80% are useless. They generally work on less important things that are still bringing in more revenue than they cost in salaries.
- paganel 7y agoThe George Costanza way of doing business. The more I grow less young (I’m close to 40 now) the more I realize that the Costanza character is one of the closest approximations of daily life in a society like ours. Dilbert or “The Office” TV series are also very good fits but George Costanza is in a world of his own.
- mprev 7y agoUgh, but who wants to do nothing all day? You get one life; why waste your days?
- osrec 7y agoI agree with you, but a lot of people are happy to take the money for doing nothing. Sometimes this is driven by lack of capability - if you're not good at much, not very driven but still want a great income and lifestyle, this sorta hits the sweet spot. Also a lot of these people lie to themselves about their own importance, in order to have a (false) sense of self worth (but they're okay with it).
- webninja 7y agoHaving nothing to do but being forced to look busy is a special kind of hell.
- thearch 7y agoI work in energy trading, and understimulated traders over low-season periods like Summer are extremely dangerous. So dangerous that a lot of events take place in Q2 and Q3 to emphasize networking over mindless bored trading.
- stefek99 7y agoThe trouble with bank that I had - most of the websites were firewalled. I was gardening various projects on GitHub and increasing my StackOverflow reputation. I wasn't enjoying it. At some level there is a need for accomplishment. Poor work ethics become a virus, difficult to concentrate at home later.