The smartest all jumped on career ladders because of the head start from their degrees and grades. The non-technical went to banks because what other profession pays $100k a year for a liberal arts degree? The technical went to the most recognizable companies that would take them and pay them a lot of money.
The entrepreneurs are a much more interesting bunch; most are technical, some never had a corporate job, some did YC, some left their corporate job and are mindlessly trying to be entrepreneurs, lots have raised funding, and a very select few have exited or hit Series C.
"mindlessly"?
What are they missing? I'm curious, because this is a path that has always appealed to me, but that I didn't take in my twenties or early thirties. I hope to be in a position to be able to do it in my late thirties, but am not committed to the idea.
However, in my experience the skillset that makes a good $BigCo employee is often distinct from, or even mutually incompatible with, the skillset that makes a good entrepreneur.
Since ex-BigCo employees are likely to get funding even with very little traction (because VCs like to invest in ex-BigCo teams), those entrepreneurs are more likely to found a business that is well-funded but fundamentally doomed to fail. The founders want to feel like they’re running a business, and they go through the motions of it, despite little substance or strategy behind the product. I believe Paul Graham calls it “playing house.”
Nonetheless, even though my business ultimately failed, I thank my lucky stars I'm not working in the cube farm anymore. On to business #2!
Came here to post the same, as I take a break from getting people to click on advertisements, at a job that pays way too much money to even consider anything else.
It's pretty damn depressing that the brightest minds of our generation have been sucked up by these companies that really do nothing but further meaningless consumerism. When people ask what I do, I say I work at a button factory.
I've seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere, and I don't understand it. While I can't speak for others, there are many jobs I probably wouldn't take regardless of how much they paid. These jobs often harm society or are bad for other reasons (lack of autonomy, burnout, etc.).
Most jobs I'm qualified for pay me enough that I'm happy. Once I reach that point, I'm optimizing other axes.
Edit:// no idea why I got down voted. I lived of adsense half of 2015 and full 2016. Still don't know why people actually clicked, or why they didn't have a adblock to begin with
— Jeff Hammerbacher
Glad to say I've overcome it, but I still take Methylphenidate as it helps with my severe depression.
1. Alcoholism, watched this man crawl from prodigal son to non-productive leech.
2. Weed. I have no problems with recreational weed on some occasions, and have enjoyed it myself, this person has their mind constantly fried. Kid went from a 16 year old CS stunner to a 22 year old, reaction shot, deep-fried potato. Maybe not the 'smartest,' but he had major future in his field.
3. Xanax. Friend of mine, beautiful content producer, amazing aspirations. While being majorly depressed he moved from SSRIs which weren't helping him, to taking Xanax he'd buy illegally. Slowly got out of hand while abandoning his aspirations, classes, and more. He's no longer working. He committed suicide a few weeks ago.
4. Xanax, again. Dear friend of mine. Closest person I've ever known. Instead of long-term medications to deal with her issues, she turns to Xanax as a short-term fix. The immense pain caused by whatever is bothering her at the time turns her to Xanax, which in turn normally ends in her becoming unproductive for the rest of the day and sleeping for 12-16 hours. She's never been able to find anything else that helps, and in turn without Xanax she cannot handle problems well. Breakdowns, endless crying, hyper-focuses on topics. I fear things will not change for the better, although I still try.
Mental illness / mental differences are other slow disasters that my friends have much experience with. Many of us have one of many things, most commonly autism or ASPD.
There are others, too many to name that I feel have been lost for a reason or another. Sad shit.
I mean, I know plenty of people working in web development and app development, but I still think the people writing assembly for a system that's not been in development for a decade or two are doing pretty damn well at it. Doing anything particularly complicated with ASM is both tricky and tedious as all hell.
• Low-level infrastructural/optimisation stuff, such as large-scale data analysis systems, language runtimes, and operating systems. Work is hard but even small wins have high impact.
• Developer tools, including using machine learning to help tools help developers better. Improving the state of programming is always welcome.
• Online advertising—such are the times.
• Avoiding the tech industry for a while to relieve burnout and work on personal projects—this person inspired me to do the same.
My own strategy is to intentionally target areas that have been neglected for no good reason. While there are plenty of smart people in my field (fluid dynamics), I feel that if the field had a wider reputation, even more smart people would join, and the number of opportunities I have would shrink. Marketing folks seem to call this the "blue ocean strategy".
So what can you learn from how smart people behave? It would be better to try to distill rational principles from their behavior rather than saying choice X is optimal. For example, ask why choice X is optimal rather than just believing choice X is optimal.
On a much more positive note though a particularly smart person I know works on speech recognition software that uses linguistic features in order to assess communication skills and to some extent psychological properties (in an anonymous, privacy-compliant fashion) such as current predisposition for depression (which can manifest in features like pitch, voice melody and prosody).
He is currently homeless and needs your help: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=51kJATJUJxik3DjLLxQB6dw...
Also the distributed ID.
Where can I read your thoughts?
Definitely the right time to be in that field ($$$$) but it isn't without its moral hazards. I find the area interesting, but the high level maths is beyond me.
He's living amongst the forests, homeschooling his children, after indulging and destroying himself with consumerism, alcohol and drugs.
People I've learned to know recently? Writing web applications.
Getting people to click on ads
Biochemistry MD/PhDs
Geologist for a lithium mining company
;-)
Healthcare. There were lots of changes brought about by Obamacare, and while of course many of the political aspects have either been changed or are at risk of being changed with little or no notice, the implementation also created great changes in the industry that aren't going away regardless of the political climate. There are all kinds of niches where something not much more complicated than a simple CRUD app on an iPad can significantly reduce costs and/or improve outcomes. The industry has realized this, and it's going to be a hot place to work for the foreseeable future - and one that can make a real difference in people's lives.
Government. The last I looked was ~2016, but 18F was doing some great things at the time. They had far more latitude in hiring and compensation than is typical for the public sector, but I'm not sure if this is still the case.
Dev community outreach. In my experience, there are at least two kinds of "developer evangelists" - those that are skilled socially (and have to gain the respect of developers) and those that are skilled technically (and may have to learn how to do the social side). Those who are technically-skilled and have proven themselves before taking on the role tend to be both very effective and well compensated. There are a couple of people I know in those roles, but they are people I very much respect.
Devops. Especially at a junior level, I've encountered far more people I would consider to be exceptionally talented on the ops side of things than purely development. I don't know where their careers will end up taking them from there, but I've seen those people rise quickly through the junior > mid-level > senior progression. If a team has someone who is exceptionally smart, motivated, and productive, devops is easily the role I'd want them to be in. Their work there can make the entire team substantially more productive. I think (good) managers see this as well, which is why devops seems to have a higher proportion of very talented people.
Finally, there is something of a revolution happening in academic publishing. It's yet to be seen if the lessons learned by the F/OSS software world can compete and win the cultural war between established academic publishers (e.g. Elsevier), but the people I know who are working in that space definitely qualify as the smartest people I know.
From what I've seen, 18F serves a very valid purpose, has a lot of room to do great things, and would be a rewarding job. I never really looked into it myself because my ideology wouldn't allow me work for a government entity, but otherwise it would be near the top of my list.
