[neerkumar]

Everyone who worked at Google or a company like Google knows that 90% of people do a job well below their skills. That's how it is in those places.

To sue them because you have back-end skills, but you were doing front end is laughable. There are so many PhDs in ML there writing SQL queries, or PhDs in CS changing the color of some text for an A/B test. That's how it works in the best companies in the world. You get the money and the prestige, but the job is bad.

[geebee]

My guess is that this is true of a lot of finance and law jobs as well. Actually, I once talked to a dermatologist who said he wished he got to use his mind more often (he said this on hearing that I was a programmer! I guess he thought it was a lot of deep thinking and logic or something? Seriously made me realize that my impressions of other fields is probably just as flawed).

Of course, there are jobs in all these fields that are fascinating, and people with boring jobs often have had a project here and there that was interesting, so that's what you hear about and how your impressions are formed when you aren't part of another field. After all, people at parties don't like to talk about how boring they are.

[kamaal]

I think many people complain about this too. I remember a very famous HR person of a famous IT services firm in India once told in a public event that software was one of those areas where every one expects to be treated special and expects to be given a job where they feel they are generating tremendous value, by the virtue of which deserve a very high salary.

While only a handful such jobs exist in any company.

The standard response for these things used to be 'Go find a different job which you think works for you'. But these days its either 'do as I say' or 'prepared to get sued'.

[solotronics]

there is probably some kind of sweet spot where you get to do whatever really cool stuff you can think of and your company is just pretty good

[TheArcane]

Probably in R&D departments of tech companies.

[whipoodle]

This is actually very helpful to know, thank you.

[mclightning]

this is very true.