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> The best and brightest should stick to engineering and finance where they can have a bigger impact. Many of the best and brightest stay in academia, but at t

by jkyle 11y ago

> The best and brightest should stick to engineering and finance where they can have a bigger impact. Many of the best and brightest stay in academia, but at the university level. Many others go into engineering and finance, but make no real lasting impact mostly working on the day to day tasks of making the cogs turn. Currently many of the smartest engineers in silicon valley have dedicated their careers to selling targeted ads. In the scheme of things, I'd be hard pressed placing selling X more power drills a year or "yet another CRUD app" over building the foundation of a quality education system.

aianus 11y ago
Yes, but a quality education system requires thousands of people who can each only affect ~20-100 people a year. It's not an efficient use of the 'best and brightest'. Meanwhile 55 engineers at WhatsApp can write software used daily by 700m people. Or a handful of financiers can find a new way to securitize debt, lowering interest rates for 100m borrowers.
- lemming 11y ago
  Or a handful of financiers can find a new way to securitize debt, lowering interest rates for 100m borrowers. Or they could find a new way to ignore investment risk in the interest of naked greed, causing suffering for millions all over the globe.
  - aianus 11y ago
    Yep, the flip side to having a massive impact is that you also have a massive impact when you're wrong. You'd still want the 'best and brightest' in those positions than not.
- zurn 11y ago
  Those engineers won the lottery. The prize was many people switching to a marginally nicer chat app. If you're looking to make the world a better place, choosing engineering based on this result isn't really an obvious choice.
  - aianus 11y ago
    No, but it's also not obvious that having a profound impact on 1000 people is better than having a small impact on a billion people.
    - zurn 11y ago
      You mean, having an one-in-10-million chance of having a small impact on a billion people.
      - aianus 11y ago
        You could get a job at Facebook tomorrow and have a small impact on a billion people. I'm not referring to the founders exclusively...
        zurn 11y ago
        You're moving the goalposts now! To examine the equation in the "work for an existing SV tech giant" case: a hugely smaller impact on people than what the WhatsApp engineers had. And getting a job at Facebook or another similarly impactful place is still at ~ 1:100000 odds for the world's 20 million software engineers. Only this time you'll have even less confidence that you're actually making things better and not worse. At least in the WhatsApp case they made Facebook have $19 billion less money in the end. And if they're really out to make the world a better place they can spend that in some Bill Gates-esque way. I guess we'll see about that.
- sanoli 11y ago
  What are you talking about? So what if WhatsApp is used by half a billion people? Good for the engineers, I guess? How is my third world country so much better off with WhatsApp than with the crappier alternative, vs. my third world country if it could attract its best and brightest into becoming teachers? I could see no better future for my country than some way to get and keep great teachers.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > with WhatsApp than with the crappier alternative The crappier alternative(s) would have to be written by an engineer too. Anyways, I think you're missing my point: there aren't enough exceptional 'best and brightest' to do everything. You want the 'best and brightest' to have maximum leverage as individuals over the world and that means politics, finance, and engineering, not teaching.
- jkyle 11y ago
  > Meanwhile 55 engineers at WhatsApp can write software used daily by 700m people. First, arguably, the engineers at what's app quite possibly might not be the best or brightest. Not saying they're aren't very good, but that's not necessarily what drives an app like WhatsApp into popularity. Second, even if it's assumed that the WhatsApp engineers are literally the best 55 engineers in their field bar none they only represent a minuscule fraction of a pool of many, many talented individuals. In other words, there's room for WhatsApp (and all the other comparable unicorns) and the teaching profession. The overwhelming majority of very talented engineers are not impacting 700 million users. And as I mentioned, many are impacting them only insofar as what they see in their google sidebar. . . which I'm not sure is very socially impactful.

by jkyle 11y ago

aianus 11y ago

Yes, but a quality education system requires thousands of people who can each only affect ~20-100 people a year. It's not an efficient use of the 'best and brightest'. Meanwhile 55 engineers at WhatsApp can write software used daily by 700m people. Or a handful of financiers can find a new way to securitize debt, lowering interest rates for 100m borrowers.

lemming 11y ago
Or a handful of financiers can find a new way to securitize debt, lowering interest rates for 100m borrowers. Or they could find a new way to ignore investment risk in the interest of naked greed, causing suffering for millions all over the globe.
- aianus 11y ago
  Yep, the flip side to having a massive impact is that you also have a massive impact when you're wrong. You'd still want the 'best and brightest' in those positions than not.
zurn 11y ago
Those engineers won the lottery. The prize was many people switching to a marginally nicer chat app. If you're looking to make the world a better place, choosing engineering based on this result isn't really an obvious choice.
- aianus 11y ago
  No, but it's also not obvious that having a profound impact on 1000 people is better than having a small impact on a billion people.
  - zurn 11y ago
    You mean, having an one-in-10-million chance of having a small impact on a billion people.
    - aianus 11y ago
      You could get a job at Facebook tomorrow and have a small impact on a billion people. I'm not referring to the founders exclusively...
      - zurn 11y ago
        You're moving the goalposts now! To examine the equation in the "work for an existing SV tech giant" case: a hugely smaller impact on people than what the WhatsApp engineers had. And getting a job at Facebook or another similarly impactful place is still at ~ 1:100000 odds for the world's 20 million software engineers. Only this time you'll have even less confidence that you're actually making things better and not worse. At least in the WhatsApp case they made Facebook have $19 billion less money in the end. And if they're really out to make the world a better place they can spend that in some Bill Gates-esque way. I guess we'll see about that.
sanoli 11y ago
What are you talking about? So what if WhatsApp is used by half a billion people? Good for the engineers, I guess? How is my third world country so much better off with WhatsApp than with the crappier alternative, vs. my third world country if it could attract its best and brightest into becoming teachers? I could see no better future for my country than some way to get and keep great teachers.
- aianus 11y ago
  > with WhatsApp than with the crappier alternative The crappier alternative(s) would have to be written by an engineer too. Anyways, I think you're missing my point: there aren't enough exceptional 'best and brightest' to do everything. You want the 'best and brightest' to have maximum leverage as individuals over the world and that means politics, finance, and engineering, not teaching.
jkyle 11y ago
> Meanwhile 55 engineers at WhatsApp can write software used daily by 700m people. First, arguably, the engineers at what's app quite possibly might not be the best or brightest. Not saying they're aren't very good, but that's not necessarily what drives an app like WhatsApp into popularity. Second, even if it's assumed that the WhatsApp engineers are literally the best 55 engineers in their field bar none they only represent a minuscule fraction of a pool of many, many talented individuals. In other words, there's room for WhatsApp (and all the other comparable unicorns) and the teaching profession. The overwhelming majority of very talented engineers are not impacting 700 million users. And as I mentioned, many are impacting them only insofar as what they see in their google sidebar. . . which I'm not sure is very socially impactful.