Author Topic: F-You Money?  (Read 4969 times)

RecoveringCarClown

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F-You Money?
« on: February 13, 2017, 11:54:35 PM »
Um, I would say they had FU money long before those payments...but they stuck around anyway and took the cash, would you?

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2017/02/13/google-self-driving-car-staff-took-f-you-money-and-ran-report/

slugline

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2017, 11:08:33 AM »
Sounds like they need to get some "SWAMI" types that are actually in love with the idea of getting self-driving cars to market.

yachi

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2017, 11:52:25 AM »
You have to get into the comments to see that antimustachian:

"A couple millions isn't quite enough to get me to retire yet. I've got that and no debt. I'm not going to buy a yacht or Ferrari, though some late 60s muscle cars would be enticing. But seriously, how many years can you live on 2 million without actual income? A lot yes. But if you stay healthy even people reaching retirement age can live decades.

And it's not like these people retired they moved on to make more money."

gimp

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2017, 03:32:10 PM »
This is not remotely worthy of this subforum.

These people basically choose the jobs they want, working on what they're interested in. Money is nice, lots of money is nicer, but lots of money just accelerated a lot of these people's plans of working on other things they're interested in.

Remember, lots of people really enjoy what they do... especially, you know, engineers at google.

Metric Mouse

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #4 on: February 17, 2017, 12:58:27 AM »
This is not remotely worthy of this subforum.

These people basically choose the jobs they want, working on what they're interested in. Money is nice, lots of money is nicer, but lots of money just accelerated a lot of these people's plans of working on other things they're interested in.

Remember, lots of people really enjoy what they do... especially, you know, engineers at google.
If they enjoyed it so much, why exactly did they leave? Seems like when people have enough, even 'good' jobs start to seem like a drag.

MgoSam

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #5 on: February 17, 2017, 10:33:31 AM »
This is not remotely worthy of this subforum.

These people basically choose the jobs they want, working on what they're interested in. Money is nice, lots of money is nicer, but lots of money just accelerated a lot of these people's plans of working on other things they're interested in.

Remember, lots of people really enjoy what they do... especially, you know, engineers at google.
If they enjoyed it so much, why exactly did they leave? Seems like when people have enough, even 'good' jobs start to seem like a drag.

Depends, the article doesn't give a lot of details but I've seen some compensation packages where if you stay with the company you can't get the money but if you leave now then your options are fully vested. If you had a job you liked but were receiving job offers from competitors for a similar position and you knew that you could walk away with a FU money I imagine most people would do so. Gotta keep in mind that  it is very common for people to leave jobs and switch companies if a better off arrives.

Former Buffalo Bills HC Marrone had a clause in his contract that if there was an ownership change he could leave and get his full salary and he did when the team was sold. From what I've read it seems there's more to the story than just that.

yachi

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #6 on: February 17, 2017, 11:31:13 AM »
This is not remotely worthy of this subforum.

These people basically choose the jobs they want, working on what they're interested in. Money is nice, lots of money is nicer, but lots of money just accelerated a lot of these people's plans of working on other things they're interested in.

Remember, lots of people really enjoy what they do... especially, you know, engineers at google.
If they enjoyed it so much, why exactly did they leave? Seems like when people have enough, even 'good' jobs start to seem like a drag.

I believed the project changed direction at some point too.  It moved from Google creating their own, stand alone car solution, to providing the software for other companies to use.  At the time, this was blamed for engineers leaving.

gimp

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #7 on: February 18, 2017, 10:12:23 PM »
This is not remotely worthy of this subforum.

These people basically choose the jobs they want, working on what they're interested in. Money is nice, lots of money is nicer, but lots of money just accelerated a lot of these people's plans of working on other things they're interested in.

Remember, lots of people really enjoy what they do... especially, you know, engineers at google.
If they enjoyed it so much, why exactly did they leave? Seems like when people have enough, even 'good' jobs start to seem like a drag.

Age, disagreements with the direction of the project, new interests (professional and personal), wanting to move out of the bay area, etc.

Metric Mouse

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2017, 11:54:00 AM »
I guess the moral of the story is even when people say they like their jobs, with enough money to choose, they still often choose to do something different. No different for garbage men or google code monkeys.

maizefolk

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Re: F-You Money?
« Reply #9 on: February 19, 2017, 12:11:21 PM »
They left google to start their own companies doing the same sort of work they were doing at google:

Quote
...Chris Urmson who co-founded a startup with ex-Tesla employee Sterling Anderson, and others who founded a self-driving truck company called Otto which was purchased by Uber last year [for $680M], and another who founded Argo AI which received a $1 billion investment from Ford last week.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/13/2126221/engineers-on-googles-self-driving-car-project-were-paid-so-much-that-they-quit

That doesn't sound like being sick of work, it sounds like wanting to do the same work, but be the one who makes the really big bucks when you get acquired.