[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
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Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
I was cruising LinkedIn this afternoon trying to find the name of
someone I interviewed about a decade ago. Of course, he's moved
across the country and now works at Microsoft. Which put a thought
into my head: A lot of smart people I know work at startups, but
_all of the smartest people I know_ work at FAANG /MAMAA. In fact,
none of the smartest people I know, to my knowledge, have ever
pursued a startup. Does this ring true for you as well?
Author : debacle
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-12-04 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
| firebaze wrote:
| I have not too many data points to add, but the 2nd smartest
| person I know joined Microsoft and left after 2 years to found a
| startup.
|
| The smartest person I know left the industry after doing a few
| years of freelance work1 earning heaps of money and bought a
| property for their family to settle somewhere remote.
|
| 1 ABAP
| anticorporate wrote:
| The smartest people I know left tech.
|
| No, this isn't sarcasm or a joke. I do wonder if there's some
| sort of inverse correlation between intelligence and ability to
| thrive under corporate bureaucracy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's less about intelligence I think and more about curiosity,
| autonomy, and mastery not being able to survive in said
| corporate bureaucracy. You either get wealthy or make do within
| your means and leave for industries, orgs, and teams that crush
| your soul less (or, hopefully yet rarely, bring you joy and
| meaningful work).
|
| Some crabs find their way out of the pot, some don't.
| incahoots wrote:
| Monetizing everything in the tech sector makes doing anything
| in the sphere a chore, and furthers the decline of innovation
| at the largest levels due to the incisiveness need to appease
| shareholders, or corporate suit jockeys.
|
| Someone else touched it on it briefly, the smartest people in
| tech are usually in OpenSource. DEFCON comes to mind when I'm
| asked "whos the smartest people I know"
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Did they leave only tech or the corporate world in general?
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| If we assume that 1% of the human population are potential
| geniuses, then at the moment, we have about 80 million potential
| geniuses on the planet. They are not always aware that they have
| this potential. Life and financial circumstances follow a
| standard distribution. Not every potential genius on Earth will
| receive the required education and a nurturing environment. You
| can assume there are more potential geniuses in India and China
| (simply by the numbers), and they do not always have the perfect
| conditions to cultivate their abilities. So, if you look around
| and pick 100 people, there is a chance that one of them is a
| genius or potential genius. Some of these individuals may be
| plumbers. They might have interests that are completely different
| from what you might expect of a smart person. Also, if you
| consider the number of people working in a company, you can
| estimate how many potential geniuses are among them. Although
| high-tech companies may have a higher concentration of such
| individuals, you cannot deny the high probability that a Mexican
| immigrant working at Amazon in their warehouse, packing your
| goods, could be a potential genius.
|
| [1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-
| population/#:~:text=8.1%....
| physicsguy wrote:
| The smartest people I have personally worked with work for
| companies like Siemens, GE, etc. on very technical things that
| require an understanding of a broad range of tech combined with a
| lot of domain expertise, usually gained from at least some stint
| in academia. Usually money not so motivating as an interesting
| problem domain.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not at all. None of the smartest people I have known have worked
| for a FAANG company. Most of them haven't worked for startups,
| either.
|
| They tend to work for companies that are on the forefront of
| whatever flavor of tech they are interested in, so they work for
| a variety of different kinds of companies.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Doctors
| incahoots wrote:
| As someone with a wife in the business, I would taper your
| expectations. I don't doubt many are smart, but personality
| wise, they're incredibly lacking. I will say the majority of
| the doctors from other countries are shinning examples and
| don't get enough praise for their ability to act quickly,
| especially those who hail from countries that suffer turmoil
| regularly.
| goalonetwo wrote:
| After my last bunch of medical issues, I lost confidence in
| this field almost entirely.
|
| Doctors (or at least most of them) are not critical thinkers.
| They simply repeat the knowledge they have seen in textbooks or
| in other patients. As soon as what you have is out of the
| common path, you are on your own. I had to do my own research
| to figure out the cause of my symptoms and bring those to my
| doctors that agreed with my research.
| i_am_a_peasant wrote:
| It happens, I've seen a lot of doctors mess up. But they're
| still better equipped than you to discern medical fact from
| non fact during research. The sweet spot is a doctor that
| involves you in the decision making process, is transparent
| and intellectually honest. I've had doctors that admitted to
| me they didn't know what's wrong with me but gave me a list
| of probable options and a series of possible tests to
| undergo.
| biohax2015 wrote:
| They work in VC, PE, or investment banking.
| Ologn wrote:
| > A lot of smart people I know work a startups, but all of the
| smartest people I know work at FAANG/MAMAA
|
| A lot of smart people I know work at FAANG/MAMAA, but many of the
| smartest people I know _founded_ startups.
| wavemode wrote:
| The smartest software engineers I know work on open-source
| software.
|
| The smartest PEOPLE I know aren't software engineers at all.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It wouldn't be either, really. The smartest people I've worked
| with are usually not engineers at all. I started my career
| working on classified defense and intelligence projects and the
| research scientists driving new capabilities are still the only
| people I've ever encountered in any line of work doing things
| that I legitimately felt it would take me a decade to understand.
| Think for instance of everything Claude Shannon did while he was
| at Bell Labs.
|
| Of the two, though, obviously larger companies are more likely to
| even be able to fund truly novel research compared to a startup.
| There's only so much you can do under the constraint that
| anything you build has to be a component of a usable product you
| can plausibly sell to a defined market in the next six months.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Don't know many smart people. I've interacted with some, followed
| others, but admittedly I'm not sure where most of them work.
| Offhand one person I know works at some small noname company
| working in niche industry they enjoy. Not sure of much more
| detail than that. I'm familiar with the area of work of others,
| but am unaware of the professional status. Frankly I got the
| impression a few of them were either independent contractors who
| bounced around or otherwise not working traditional jobs.
| n_ary wrote:
| I know a few who probably doesn't realize how smart they actually
| are.
|
| Smartest one I known so far works at a corp and is often moved
| between teams for new projects. Second smartest person I know
| works at a tiny startup and enjoys life and as chill as Buddha.
| The third smartest person I know doesn't do tech anymore, was
| promoted to higher level management and left tech because he made
| immense f*ku money and is mostly travelling these days.
| Havoc wrote:
| The notion that all the smart people work for 5 companies
| seems...not all that smart.
| tomcam wrote:
| > all of the smartest people I know
|
| Is it your thought that the post and "I know" part translates
| to all smart people? Perhaps the original post was edited?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Of the smartest people I know, one became a university professor,
| one works at DeepMind, one at Amazon, two work at local small
| companies with comparatively low compensation but a healthy
| atmosphere and good work-life balance, and one left tech to do
| their own thing in the education field.
| kylecazar wrote:
| The smartest person I know personally works at Stripe...
| supportengineer wrote:
| On the East Coast. None of them stayed in the Bay Area very long.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I've bounced around a few companies, and all the smartest people
| I know are in the semiconductor industry. Some of them - self-
| proclaimed hardware engineers - would write better code than what
| I've seen come out of lifelong software devs. They have crazy
| deep, specialised knowledge on so many fields it boggles the
| mind.
|
| There's no real divide between startups and corporations in terms
| of talents from what I perceived. The industry was in general
| seething with talent.
| drBonkers wrote:
| Isn't the pay poor in the semiconductor industry?
| sharadov wrote:
| The smartest person I know who's in his 50's is now an alcoholic
| - made and lost a fortune. He's still worth an easy 20 million
| dollars, but is way too driven and edgy to just shut up and
| retire.
|
| I read a line that there is a thin line separating genius from
| madness.
|
| His entire life has exemplified this.
|
| It's profoundly sad to see him - his genius is a curse.
| kromem wrote:
| The smartest person I know turned down a position as CEO of one
| of the largest companies in the world to become CEO of a smaller
| and more independent oriented competitor and is apparently loving
| their job.
|
| In terms of developers, it's typically been the opposite. That
| the best developers I know had previously worked at larger firms,
| but don't anymore.
|
| I suspect part of being smart in general comes with the
| realization that there's more to life than a job's status and
| salary, and prioritizing those other things is a wise thing to
| do. So having picked up competency at large companies when
| younger but moving away from them later on trends to correlate
| with the smarter people I know.
| tomcam wrote:
| Microsoft
| goalonetwo wrote:
| I used to think that people at FAANGs are some of the smartest.
| That's the usual narrative anyways.
|
| After working with a lot of them, I realize that they have a long
| tail of brilliant people (it's a good place to rest/vest and
| retire) but most of them are average cogs that are only good at
| grinding leetcode and average on everything else.
|
| I have seen way smarter people in startups that will never accept
| to work at places like FAANGs.
| conformist wrote:
| By pure IQ: The smartest people I know very likely work in pure
| maths at universities.
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