Reading the comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25861762 I’m reminded of the grad student dollar auction and the up-and-out rule at top accounting firms: tenure is well paid, secure, and highly competitive, and the way you compete for it is by working for many years as a poorly paid and insecure grad student (and, in some fields, postgrad). And if you don’t get a professorship or tenure you get kicked out, first of the university and then possibly out of the university system entirely, which people respond to by throwing good “money” (in the form of work) after bad. So in a sense for this guy Intel was grad school and the bank job was the professorship.
Dollar auctions are widely known for
In many countries, up-and-out is illegal, though with an exception for universities.