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"As more of them arrived, foreign employees began describing their experiences with a joke: When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets. The first is to hold

by pavlov 4y ago

"As more of them arrived, foreign employees began describing their experiences with a joke: When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets. The first is to hold all the gold you’ll accumulate, and with so many living expenses taken care of, it will soon grow heavy. The second bucket is for all the shit you take. When that bucket is full, you pick up your bucket of gold and leave. It often doesn’t take long; many people Neom hires last less than a year." So it's basically like working at a FAANG, except you have to go sit in the middle of a remote desert to work on your PowerPoints.

ignoramous 4y ago
The difference in media coverage and the reaction that follows when folks in the West (say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates) dream up ambitious future, and when folks in the East do so, is quite telling.
- bambax 4y ago
  Untrue. Most of Musk's "dreams" are ridiculed everywhere, and rightly so. Dystopia is dystopia, no matter where it comes from. (Although, to make matters worse, MBS is a criminal and a despot.)
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    Ya, I think ideas coming from someone who calls himself "his royal highness" deserve some extra scrutiny. It's so strange seeing these futuristic dystopian ideas coming from a ruling monarch that was born into the position. It's like they are preserving the worst of humanity's past and preparing to carry it directly into a dystopian future.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Have you been living under a rock? The sheer amount of vitriol Elon gets rivals that Trump gets!
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    We must measure the amount of unearned or undeserved vitriol. Trump’s is 110% deserved. Musk is at about 83%.
    - concordDance 4y ago
      The amount at least is very disproportionate. He seems to get a more vitriol than Xi Jinping, the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Wilson, Bill Gates, the Sacklers, Hillary Clinton and Larry Elison combined. Despite far lesser crimes (by the standards of those who dump on Musk).
    - eastbound 4y ago
      Only because he didn’t declare himself candidate. Actually the vitriol seems very much oriented, in French newspapers, it’s unnatural. He doesn’t do a tenth of Jeff Bezos’ evils and journalists are not talking about Jeff Bezos’ actions on national TV.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        He's much louder than Bezos. The upside (EV's going mainstream, reusable rockets, full-globe high-speed low-latency internet connectivity) of Musk also seems bigger.
- Bayart 4y ago
  You think nobody takes the piss out of them ? Bezos was the joke of the day he launched a dick rocket.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  What do you think it tells you?
- simonh 4y ago
  The difference between those people is not east and west. It's that the first three built their own companies using their own skills and experience in the face of an awful lot of people saying No, while the last one was born a prince to a Trillion-air royal family and grew up surrounded by people terrified to say anything but Yes. But that's really beside the point. The real issue is this project is a monumental waste of resources. Innovating on advanced technology takes a huge amount of investment, but it doesn't follow that a huge amount of investment, by itself, will result in useful advanced technology.
  - idlehand 4y ago
    It's probably not a very efficient use of capital, but it's better than the Saudis spending it on their military.
lrem 4y ago
I work in the G and it doesn't seem to be like that. First point, the average tenure in my team is somewhere between 6 and 8 years.
- asah 4y ago
  Many of my friends are still there, 15 years later!
Jedd 4y ago
Hmm, a friend of mine worked in Saudi in the mid 1990's, and the (similarly metaphorical) story he told me was slightly different. When picked up at the airport you are presented the two buckets. When either one is full, it is time to leave. I expect all employment requires the same trade-off consideration, but I gather in those parts of the world, for ex-pats, both buckets feel like they fill up at an alarmingly brisk rate.

by pavlov 4y ago

ignoramous 4y ago

The difference in media coverage and the reaction that follows when folks in the West (say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates) dream up ambitious future, and when folks in the East do so, is quite telling.

bambax 4y ago
Untrue. Most of Musk's "dreams" are ridiculed everywhere, and rightly so. Dystopia is dystopia, no matter where it comes from. (Although, to make matters worse, MBS is a criminal and a despot.)
- jjeaff 4y ago
  Ya, I think ideas coming from someone who calls himself "his royal highness" deserve some extra scrutiny. It's so strange seeing these futuristic dystopian ideas coming from a ruling monarch that was born into the position. It's like they are preserving the worst of humanity's past and preparing to carry it directly into a dystopian future.
concordDance 4y ago
Have you been living under a rock? The sheer amount of vitriol Elon gets rivals that Trump gets!
- rbanffy 4y ago
  We must measure the amount of unearned or undeserved vitriol. Trump’s is 110% deserved. Musk is at about 83%.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    The amount at least is very disproportionate. He seems to get a more vitriol than Xi Jinping, the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Wilson, Bill Gates, the Sacklers, Hillary Clinton and Larry Elison combined. Despite far lesser crimes (by the standards of those who dump on Musk).
  - eastbound 4y ago
    Only because he didn’t declare himself candidate. Actually the vitriol seems very much oriented, in French newspapers, it’s unnatural. He doesn’t do a tenth of Jeff Bezos’ evils and journalists are not talking about Jeff Bezos’ actions on national TV.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      He's much louder than Bezos. The upside (EV's going mainstream, reusable rockets, full-globe high-speed low-latency internet connectivity) of Musk also seems bigger.
Bayart 4y ago
You think nobody takes the piss out of them ? Bezos was the joke of the day he launched a dick rocket.
coffeeblack 4y ago
What do you think it tells you?
simonh 4y ago
The difference between those people is not east and west. It's that the first three built their own companies using their own skills and experience in the face of an awful lot of people saying No, while the last one was born a prince to a Trillion-air royal family and grew up surrounded by people terrified to say anything but Yes. But that's really beside the point. The real issue is this project is a monumental waste of resources. Innovating on advanced technology takes a huge amount of investment, but it doesn't follow that a huge amount of investment, by itself, will result in useful advanced technology.
- idlehand 4y ago
  It's probably not a very efficient use of capital, but it's better than the Saudis spending it on their military.

lrem 4y ago

I work in the G and it doesn't seem to be like that. First point, the average tenure in my team is somewhere between 6 and 8 years.

asah 4y ago
Many of my friends are still there, 15 years later!

Jedd 4y ago

Hmm, a friend of mine worked in Saudi in the mid 1990's, and the (similarly metaphorical) story he told me was slightly different. When picked up at the airport you are presented the two buckets. When either one is full, it is time to leave. I expect all employment requires the same trade-off consideration, but I gather in those parts of the world, for ex-pats, both buckets feel like they fill up at an alarmingly brisk rate.