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Thus the reason I hang up on startup recruiters the moment they say "A peter thiel funded start-up". I'm not sure what is a sadder waste of this amazing braint

Thus the reason I hang up on startup recruiters the moment they say "A peter thiel funded start-up". I'm not sure what is a sadder waste of this amazing braintrust we have in the United States today, all of the advertising start-ups, or sociopathic dreck like Palantir.

Aelinsaar 10y ago
You should see huge sectors of the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries, you'd weep.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Howso? Both of those involve actual research, which is to say, trying the impossible and unknown, to discover the possible and knowable. Though I'm also aware that there's a tremendous difference between chasing markets, which gives you drugs such as Viagra, or lifetime (type-II) diabetes management, rather than, say, wiping out tropical disease or promoting diet which would avoid diabetes in the first place. But what did you have in mind?
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    Chasing markets, while antibiotic resistance grows for one.
manigandham 10y ago
This is the wrong attitude - there is no "waste" of braintrust. Innovation doesnt work like that, it comes from all over by people working on what they want to work on. What's wrong with advertising startups? Some of the most valuable companies on this planet are advertising companies because it's an essential part of success for any business.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  Most people in most startups are not "working on what they want to work on" they are working on what their boss wants them to work on. Heck, I would wager that >50% of startup employees are not even doing the work they think is most important for the success of the startup. They are doing the work their boss (who by definition is further removed from the facts) thinks is most important. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if >50% of startup employees are doing work they know is not important for the success of the startup. That's what happens when you run a command and control organization. You lose >50% of your output, in exchange for guaranteed alignment of whatever is leftover. As long as you pay people <50% of what they are worth you can still make money.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    What? The point is that you can't force people into or away from certain industries. There's nothing wrong with advertising startups as the parent poster seems to think. How much freedom you have within a company, the power structure and the actual composition of the work is a completely different discussion.
  - jgalt212 10y ago
    > Most people in most startups are not "working on what they want to work on" they are working on what their boss wants them to work on. That's a rather naive statement. should be: s/startups/organizations/g
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      Most of my employment experience is within startups, so I am just making claims about what I know.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    "their boss (who by definition is further removed from the facts)" While I agree that poor leadership is common, I strongly beg to differ with the reasoning that leadership is removed from the facts. Friend - 'Engineering' is not 'the facts', or not usually. Customers, business opportunities, markets, investors - these are usually the 'facts' in a business, and sometimes it means doing things that don't seem obvious to a coder. I've never seen something great come to fruition that involved a linear progress from 'need' to 'product'. It's usually messy, and involves all sorts of actors. For example, hacking together a 'throw away' something to impress a customer or to ensure they believe in the capacity of the company would likely been seen as a 'waste' from an ops perspective, but it's certainly not if the business situation calls for it. Sometimes the facts are in the code, but this is much less often than one would realize. That said, Palantir is a little scammy. They're just CGI or Accenture by another name.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  You are kind of begging the question with your second paragraph. You argue that advertising is valuable because it's essential, but advertising is only essential because of its own existence. That doesn't make it valuable to society's broader goals.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Advertising is a zero-sum game. Advancements only improve the product, there is little/no change in spending from the point of view of society.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      I might venture to say it's negative sum, because the need to advertise in order to compete diverts resources away from positive sum activities (R&D).
      - solipsism 10y ago
        "zero sum" doesn't mean "zero net benefit". It's about competition, not utility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
        nitrogen 10y ago
        I know, I'm saying that one company'd ad spend negates their competitor's, and vice versa, so the more everyone spends, the more everyone loses. That is non-zero-sum, in the negative direction.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    > society's broader goals. What are these exactly? Society is a summation of it's people and the success of the ventures they start are a big part of that. > You argue that advertising is valuable because it's essential, but advertising is only essential because of its own existence. What's that even mean? Lookup the definition of marketing and you'll see that connecting product information to consumers is needed to actually sell anything, and advertising is the distribution of this message. It's not only valuable, it's critical and necessary for business success. You might not like being interrupted by ads (especially today's incarnation of ads online) but that is entirely separate from the concept of advertising itself. Saying that advertising isn't valuable is a gross misunderstanding of what advertising actually is.
- somenomadicguy 10y ago
  I guess I look at waste because of the motivation. The only motivator in the Silicon Valley, in the end, is greed. Even if it begins with wanting to change the world, or wanting to work on cool challenges, $3k/month rent inevitably leads to "omfg, gonna be homeless, gotta make lots of money". My time in refugee camps teaching Syrian music to Syrian refugees had more of an impact on the world than any of the companies where I've worked. When you were a little boy, did you ever say "Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to sell banner ads?"
seizethecheese 10y ago
Ad Hominem attacks like this add very little value to the discussion.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  That's not an ad hominem attack, it's a statement based on reputation. Ad hominem, properly, is based on an irrelevant characteristic of the person being attacked. "I won't work for a Peter Thiel startup because he wears white shoes after Labour Day", or "... because he mixes stripes and solids". Stating that he's got a track record of founding and backing ventures with a net-negative social value, or which simply waste talent, is absolutely spot on.
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    >founding and backing ventures with a net-negative social value According to his Wikipage, the major things he's done: Paypal, Facebook, Y Combinator, and a couple investment/VC/Angel ventures. None of these are net-negative social value in my opinion, or at least not any more so than virtually any other big business on the planet. He's also backed an impressive number of philanthropic endeavors. Your comment comes across as someone's angry at Thiel because of the Gawker lawsuit and/or Trump endorsement.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      The factual value of whether or a relevant comparison is justified or not is open to question. That would turn the attack into an unjustified one. But not ad hom. I'm not convinced of PayPal and Facebook's net social value. They're quite mixed, though I'll allow transformative.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

You should see huge sectors of the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries, you'd weep.

dredmorbius 10y ago
Howso? Both of those involve actual research, which is to say, trying the impossible and unknown, to discover the possible and knowable. Though I'm also aware that there's a tremendous difference between chasing markets, which gives you drugs such as Viagra, or lifetime (type-II) diabetes management, rather than, say, wiping out tropical disease or promoting diet which would avoid diabetes in the first place. But what did you have in mind?
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  Chasing markets, while antibiotic resistance grows for one.

manigandham 10y ago

This is the wrong attitude - there is no "waste" of braintrust. Innovation doesnt work like that, it comes from all over by people working on what they want to work on. What's wrong with advertising startups? Some of the most valuable companies on this planet are advertising companies because it's an essential part of success for any business.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
Most people in most startups are not "working on what they want to work on" they are working on what their boss wants them to work on. Heck, I would wager that >50% of startup employees are not even doing the work they think is most important for the success of the startup. They are doing the work their boss (who by definition is further removed from the facts) thinks is most important. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if >50% of startup employees are doing work they know is not important for the success of the startup. That's what happens when you run a command and control organization. You lose >50% of your output, in exchange for guaranteed alignment of whatever is leftover. As long as you pay people <50% of what they are worth you can still make money.
- manigandham 10y ago
  What? The point is that you can't force people into or away from certain industries. There's nothing wrong with advertising startups as the parent poster seems to think. How much freedom you have within a company, the power structure and the actual composition of the work is a completely different discussion.
- jgalt212 10y ago
  > Most people in most startups are not "working on what they want to work on" they are working on what their boss wants them to work on. That's a rather naive statement. should be: s/startups/organizations/g
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    Most of my employment experience is within startups, so I am just making claims about what I know.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "their boss (who by definition is further removed from the facts)" While I agree that poor leadership is common, I strongly beg to differ with the reasoning that leadership is removed from the facts. Friend - 'Engineering' is not 'the facts', or not usually. Customers, business opportunities, markets, investors - these are usually the 'facts' in a business, and sometimes it means doing things that don't seem obvious to a coder. I've never seen something great come to fruition that involved a linear progress from 'need' to 'product'. It's usually messy, and involves all sorts of actors. For example, hacking together a 'throw away' something to impress a customer or to ensure they believe in the capacity of the company would likely been seen as a 'waste' from an ops perspective, but it's certainly not if the business situation calls for it. Sometimes the facts are in the code, but this is much less often than one would realize. That said, Palantir is a little scammy. They're just CGI or Accenture by another name.
nitrogen 10y ago
You are kind of begging the question with your second paragraph. You argue that advertising is valuable because it's essential, but advertising is only essential because of its own existence. That doesn't make it valuable to society's broader goals.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Advertising is a zero-sum game. Advancements only improve the product, there is little/no change in spending from the point of view of society.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    I might venture to say it's negative sum, because the need to advertise in order to compete diverts resources away from positive sum activities (R&D).
    - solipsism 10y ago
      "zero sum" doesn't mean "zero net benefit". It's about competition, not utility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
      - nitrogen 10y ago
        I know, I'm saying that one company'd ad spend negates their competitor's, and vice versa, so the more everyone spends, the more everyone loses. That is non-zero-sum, in the negative direction.
- manigandham 10y ago
  > society's broader goals. What are these exactly? Society is a summation of it's people and the success of the ventures they start are a big part of that. > You argue that advertising is valuable because it's essential, but advertising is only essential because of its own existence. What's that even mean? Lookup the definition of marketing and you'll see that connecting product information to consumers is needed to actually sell anything, and advertising is the distribution of this message. It's not only valuable, it's critical and necessary for business success. You might not like being interrupted by ads (especially today's incarnation of ads online) but that is entirely separate from the concept of advertising itself. Saying that advertising isn't valuable is a gross misunderstanding of what advertising actually is.
somenomadicguy 10y ago
I guess I look at waste because of the motivation. The only motivator in the Silicon Valley, in the end, is greed. Even if it begins with wanting to change the world, or wanting to work on cool challenges, $3k/month rent inevitably leads to "omfg, gonna be homeless, gotta make lots of money". My time in refugee camps teaching Syrian music to Syrian refugees had more of an impact on the world than any of the companies where I've worked. When you were a little boy, did you ever say "Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to sell banner ads?"

seizethecheese 10y ago

Ad Hominem attacks like this add very little value to the discussion.

dredmorbius 10y ago
That's not an ad hominem attack, it's a statement based on reputation. Ad hominem, properly, is based on an irrelevant characteristic of the person being attacked. "I won't work for a Peter Thiel startup because he wears white shoes after Labour Day", or "... because he mixes stripes and solids". Stating that he's got a track record of founding and backing ventures with a net-negative social value, or which simply waste talent, is absolutely spot on.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  >founding and backing ventures with a net-negative social value According to his Wikipage, the major things he's done: Paypal, Facebook, Y Combinator, and a couple investment/VC/Angel ventures. None of these are net-negative social value in my opinion, or at least not any more so than virtually any other big business on the planet. He's also backed an impressive number of philanthropic endeavors. Your comment comes across as someone's angry at Thiel because of the Gawker lawsuit and/or Trump endorsement.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The factual value of whether or a relevant comparison is justified or not is open to question. That would turn the attack into an unjustified one. But not ad hom. I'm not convinced of PayPal and Facebook's net social value. They're quite mixed, though I'll allow transformative.