There's at least one huge respect in which tech is different, at least in the USA: worker compensation.
In the book, Tracy Kidder writes repeatedly about how Data General (the company at the heart of the book) is proud of its austerity. It doesn't pay well. It's proud of having an ugly, austere, warehouse-like building. It puts its critical engineers in the windowless basement of this building. Kidder is describing a world that's very far from the FAANG of today, at least were compensation is concerned.
I worked for a guy that converted half the office into a store with windows so shoppers could "watch us work" ... things haven't changed much, for non-FAANG.
Offices were pretty much for managers. The standard was (high-walled) cubicles. Although a lot of the people involved here were in hardware so a lot of their work was in open labs.
That was Aaron Sorkin’s story in The Social Network, but it seems to have been a fiction. Steven Levy’s history of the company is much more detailed (and Levy is trying to be faithful to the historical record, unlike Sorkin) – and it argues that there’s no evidence for this Sorkin story about Zuckerberg‘s motive.
It's a very public place in the United States. It's not clear that people should expect or be entitled to much privacy in these public places.
We also know that, regardless of the degree of privacy to which people should be entitled, they're not legally entitled to much privacy in these places. Federal court rulings have been extremely clear on this point. In these places, we don't even have the right to not be photographed.
>they're not legally entitled to much privacy in these places.
While I think this is a really cool project, I also agree with the privacy issues. CA is a two party consent state, and recording a conversation (which this is likely to do) like this is likely illegal. While a person might not have a expectation of privacy about someone just hearing the conversation, they are protected by law if they are recorded without their knowledge.
NB: I am not a lawyer, and the above could very well be wrong.
Edit: As I was informed below, I was wrong on the legal points.
There is no right to privacy in a public space. It is not illegal to record an area where individuals would not have the expectation of privacy, even without their consent. Therefore, this is not illegal.
If this were a restaurant, that would be a different story.
> Exceptions (one-party consent required): (1) where there is no expectation of privacy, (2) recording within government proceedings that are open to the public, (3) recording certain crimes or communications regarding such crimes (for the purpose of obtaining evidence), (4) a victim of domestic violence recording a communication made to
him/her by the perpetrator (for the purpose of obtaining a restraining order or
evidence that the perpetrator violated an existing restraining order), and (5) a peace officer recording a communication within a location in response to an emergency hostage situation.
No legally protected right. This doesn't mean it is ethical, and given that it is a protected right in other jurisdictions shows it deserves more consideration and should not be hand waived away.
If "it's legal" is the argument being used to defense a behavior, it's safe to assume it's not actually a good one.
No, "it's legal" is the argument being used to defend the "it's illegal" and "you're not allowed to" argument. The argument to support the project is that it's cool af.
We’ve needed this – easy, direct eye contact – for quite a long time. I keep waiting for someone to develop it. I think that Apple has a relevant patent, but I don’t know how much content is in the patent, and I’ve never heard that Apple has done anything with it.
> Having been in relatively low-pressure parts of academia (polisci, behavioural economics, behavioural genetics), I can't say I've ever seen clear fraud
LaCour? Gino? The Ariely study mentioned in the article?
I'm not sure that I understand. What does it mean for a noncompete to apply only to base compensation? Is the idea that if you join a competing company within X months of leaving your old company, you need to repay your base salary to the old company?
I think they are saying that the compensation they their previous employer paid them to not work for the competition for a year was based on their salary, not their salary plus bonuses, so it was not as good a deal as it sounds.
It means that GP was paid their salary for the non-compete time. In finance it is common for total compensation to be the salary plus a "bonus" of 100% of salary in normal years + any performance bonus. This means that if you had a non-compete in the finance industry and you left your employer for a competitor, then your previous employer could pay you your salary (meaning 50% of your usual compensation) to not work for that competitor for a year.
(These numbers are typical of finance industry compensation and non-compete terms.)
No, it just means that during the period after you stop working at the old job but before you can start working at the new job, you are paid only your base. This can be a significant reduction in total comp in industries such as finance.
I have worked jobs where the best bonus over 5 years was $500, while the typical year all we got was a promise that if things go well there will be a bonus. I've worked other jobs where the worst bonus was $15000 (a really bad year for the company), and could be up to $50,000. This is as a regular engineer, management can get a lot more. The first company taught me at until the money is in my account the bonus is meaningless. The second taught me that they aren't just a rumor. Most companies don't even pretend to offer a bonus which is acceptable - at least I know what I will make.
I think everyone should make 2-3x the poverty level income (we can debate exact numbers), and everything after that is bonus. So long as the company pays a bonus most years it means in a bad year you have enough to live on and don't need to find a new job, while in a good year you have a nice bonus to buy nice toys.
In finance, it's common to see a base of 150,000 and a VR of between 300k and 750k for engineers. During garden leave, you get paid your $150,000 as part of payroll, but are ineligble for VR. Your total comp goes from 450,000 (in mediocre years) or 900,000 (in good years) to 150,000 for whatever your non-compete period is (6 months, 12 months, 24 months are all common).
In finance you make more money, but work more hours and have more stress per hour typically. Still probably a good deal, but it's not a Pareto efficient deal.
At least in the US, an institution’s “facilities and administrative” F&A rate gets negotiated with the Federal government every four or five years.
I know of some institutions with F&A rates at or above 70%!! I presume that an institution trying to negotiate a higher F&A rate than this would have some significant pushback!
70% is not that high these days -- there are institutions (normally non-university-affiliated research institutions like the Salk Institute that still apply for NIH and NSF grants) have overheads of 90%! It's important to realize that overheads aren't taken out of the grant given to the researcher, they are added to it. So if a researcher gets a $100K grant at institution with 70% overhead, the institution gets $170K.
Many grant giving institutions limit what they are willing to pay. For example, from my understanding the European research council will only pay 25% even if you university demands more.
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