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You really think a single engineer's marginal contribution to speed improvements of Google search results or engagement improvements in Facebook's newsfeed are

You really think a single engineer's marginal contribution to speed improvements of Google search results or engagement improvements in Facebook's newsfeed are of similar value to highly-technical life-saving treatment, delivered at scale in hospitals? Certainly, I could imagine the latter being devalued, at the physician level, if there were good automated alternatives. But, there aren't. Does your opinion hold of engineers working on Snap and Instagram?

lmm 9y ago
> You really think a single engineer's marginal contribution to speed improvements of Google search results or engagement improvements in Facebook's newsfeed are of similar value to highly-technical life-saving treatment, delivered at scale in hospitals? It's not "at scale" though if we're talking about a single doctor, is my point. Of course saving a life is more important than saving one person a tenth of a second or making them slightly happier - but if you do enough of the latter then it adds up to something just as important as the former. > Certainly, I could imagine the latter being devalued, at the physician level, if there were good automated alternatives. But, there aren't. There's a limit to how much impact one doctor can have. A "10x doctor" can't save that many more lives, because they only ever save lives on a 1:1 basis. > Does your opinion hold of engineers working on Snap and Instagram? Yes, to the extent that they're actually enhancing people's lives. I've known Snapchat bring a lot of happiness to people, in a very human, social-based way; I don't know Instagram well enough but I'd imagine it's similar. It's certainly possible for well-paid engineers to be producing things that negatively impact other people (e.g. "dark patterns" in UI), but I think that's very much the exception rather than the rule.

lmm 9y ago

> You really think a single engineer's marginal contribution to speed improvements of Google search results or engagement improvements in Facebook's newsfeed are of similar value to highly-technical life-saving treatment, delivered at scale in hospitals? It's not "at scale" though if we're talking about a single doctor, is my point. Of course saving a life is more important than saving one person a tenth of a second or making them slightly happier - but if you do enough of the latter then it adds up to something just as important as the former. > Certainly, I could imagine the latter being devalued, at the physician level, if there were good automated alternatives. But, there aren't. There's a limit to how much impact one doctor can have. A "10x doctor" can't save that many more lives, because they only ever save lives on a 1:1 basis. > Does your opinion hold of engineers working on Snap and Instagram? Yes, to the extent that they're actually enhancing people's lives. I've known Snapchat bring a lot of happiness to people, in a very human, social-based way; I don't know Instagram well enough but I'd imagine it's similar. It's certainly possible for well-paid engineers to be producing things that negatively impact other people (e.g. "dark patterns" in UI), but I think that's very much the exception rather than the rule.