9 ms·

Top talent... selling advertising... for a news aggregator. Sigh.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Nobody will ever be happy. If someone says hey I can't pay top of market but we're doing something groundbreaking, they are talked about like they are a bunch of scammers. If someone is paying top salary but doing something mundane, it's "sigh."
- donovanm 9y ago
  No approach will ever make everyone happy, but some people would be happy with those deals. It's only natural to want to work on interesting problems and be paid well & I don't think there's anything wrong with striving for that. In an ideal world we'd only work on what is the most interesting to us with no concern for money. In the real world there is an unfortunate flaw where we need money in order to survive. Lots of companies have an even worse issue when trying to recruit where the work is boring and the pay is average.
- cafebeen 9y ago
  i think you mean, there will always be at least one person who is unhappy.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Because in a better world, the "top salary" would go to those doing "something groudbreaking". As it is, the pay structures in society are totally inverted compared to social value they provide. In particular, the system is set up to give highest rewards to those who work on scamming other people.
eberkund 9y ago
You say that like it is some basic task that any idiot with a computer science degree would be able to code up in a couple of weekends. Hey, maybe it is! But that just means the competition is even more fierce so it takes a lot to stand out. Like many things, it's not achieving the 95% that makes you successful but that extra 5% on top of all the other guys that makes the difference.
- avemg 9y ago
  I suppose his comment was vague enough to interpret it however you want. To me, he's lamenting top talent being paid top dollar to work on better ways to get people to buy tchotchkes.
  - zo1 9y ago
    The original comment was quite lean, I'm not surprised we're all reading it differently.
adventured 9y ago
"Toutiao is on pace to pull in about $2.5 billion in revenue this year, largely from advertising." If the media landscape isn't well organized across such a large society, or particularly when you have a massive new audience to introduce to news systems (China has gained what, 600 million new regular Internet users in the last seven years?), there's an amplified benefit to aggregation / managing all of that information. Which explains the seemingly crazy $2.5 billion in revenue. Doing that service well, is every bit as valuable as something like Twitter or YouTube. It's about communicating valuable information to an extremely large audience. Why shouldn't that be quite valuable? It only seems trivial because the eg US and European media landscapes are well established / entrenched, the audience is stagnant (there's little to no growth in the news business in the US or Europe) and the consumers are relatively experienced at mass societal consumption. Consider the value of portals to early US Internet adopters for one example of how this concept works. Why were AOL, Yahoo, Netscape's portal, and numerous other portal-like services, so frequently used and valuable back then (but no longer)?
- hasenj 9y ago
  I think the sigh is about top talent being used for ads instead of something more fundamental to the advancement of technology, such as AI for things more significant like vision and language translation, etc.
  - adventured 9y ago
    What's more valuable than building a top notch system for delivering news (and everything that tends to go with that) to a billion people? A very large number of engineers were dedicated to building out the radio and television technology platforms over decades. Was it all just to deliver ads? Trivial then right? Well that's what paid for a lot of it. It delivered community, it delivered news, it delivered entertainment, it connected people to the rest of their nation.
    - hasenj 9y ago
      Delivering news is a solved problem.
orarbel1 9y ago
"Top talent... selling advertising... for a news aggregator. Sigh" Google? Facebook?
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Also $TWTR, in some sense, as a 1-to-N medium.
- kibwen 9y ago
  Channeling that old quote: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."
  - jaredklewis 9y ago
    Channeling a reaction I once heard to that old quote: "Well better than what the best minds of the last generation did: devise more powerful ways to kill communists."
    - quickthrower2 9y ago
      Ads kill communism.
      - SomeStupidShit 9y ago
        Much better than killing communists.
      - popopobobobo 9y ago
        AIDS kills communism and everybody else
        sctb 9y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. If you'd like to comment civilly and substantively, you can email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll unban the account if we believe you will. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sdfgelgh43oito3 9y ago
news aggregation, and the selective targeting of individuals for advertising might just be the most powerful social influence today. Wins elections even...
- moneytalks 9y ago
  Yes and that's what's so depressing about it. As engineers, wouldn't it be cool if the most valuable thing we could do was building tools that are inherently valuable instead of valuable because of the tool's ability to connect users with someone who wants to buy their attention? You know, build some software that doesn't make you feel like a pimp.
  - fiblye 9y ago
    Your first problem there is monetizing it. If nobody can pay for it, nobody is going to get together to make it.
    - saimiam 9y ago
      I've posted this on HN before but we at Datajoy are trying to solve the problem of consuming without paying which lets ad platforms treat us as the product: https://datajoy.us/fupm.html https://datajoy.us/fupm.html. Use it, block ads, pay for content...sleep better?
    - omphalos 9y ago
      Money isn't the only motivation someone can have. People write lots of open source code for free, for example.
      - astura 9y ago
        A lot of open source work is professional paid work.
        alexanderstears 9y ago
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Yeah but a $2.5 billion in revenue news aggregator. The revenue makes a bit of a difference, or a lot of it. >> Toutiao is on pace to pull in about $2.5 billion in revenue this year, largely from advertising. It was just valued at more than $20 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, roughly the same as Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Nobody will ever be happy. If someone says hey I can't pay top of market but we're doing something groundbreaking, they are talked about like they are a bunch of scammers. If someone is paying top salary but doing something mundane, it's "sigh."

donovanm 9y ago
No approach will ever make everyone happy, but some people would be happy with those deals. It's only natural to want to work on interesting problems and be paid well & I don't think there's anything wrong with striving for that. In an ideal world we'd only work on what is the most interesting to us with no concern for money. In the real world there is an unfortunate flaw where we need money in order to survive. Lots of companies have an even worse issue when trying to recruit where the work is boring and the pay is average.
cafebeen 9y ago
i think you mean, there will always be at least one person who is unhappy.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Because in a better world, the "top salary" would go to those doing "something groudbreaking". As it is, the pay structures in society are totally inverted compared to social value they provide. In particular, the system is set up to give highest rewards to those who work on scamming other people.

eberkund 9y ago

You say that like it is some basic task that any idiot with a computer science degree would be able to code up in a couple of weekends. Hey, maybe it is! But that just means the competition is even more fierce so it takes a lot to stand out. Like many things, it's not achieving the 95% that makes you successful but that extra 5% on top of all the other guys that makes the difference.

avemg 9y ago
I suppose his comment was vague enough to interpret it however you want. To me, he's lamenting top talent being paid top dollar to work on better ways to get people to buy tchotchkes.
- zo1 9y ago
  The original comment was quite lean, I'm not surprised we're all reading it differently.

adventured 9y ago

"Toutiao is on pace to pull in about $2.5 billion in revenue this year, largely from advertising." If the media landscape isn't well organized across such a large society, or particularly when you have a massive new audience to introduce to news systems (China has gained what, 600 million new regular Internet users in the last seven years?), there's an amplified benefit to aggregation / managing all of that information. Which explains the seemingly crazy $2.5 billion in revenue. Doing that service well, is every bit as valuable as something like Twitter or YouTube. It's about communicating valuable information to an extremely large audience. Why shouldn't that be quite valuable? It only seems trivial because the eg US and European media landscapes are well established / entrenched, the audience is stagnant (there's little to no growth in the news business in the US or Europe) and the consumers are relatively experienced at mass societal consumption. Consider the value of portals to early US Internet adopters for one example of how this concept works. Why were AOL, Yahoo, Netscape's portal, and numerous other portal-like services, so frequently used and valuable back then (but no longer)?

hasenj 9y ago
I think the sigh is about top talent being used for ads instead of something more fundamental to the advancement of technology, such as AI for things more significant like vision and language translation, etc.
- adventured 9y ago
  What's more valuable than building a top notch system for delivering news (and everything that tends to go with that) to a billion people? A very large number of engineers were dedicated to building out the radio and television technology platforms over decades. Was it all just to deliver ads? Trivial then right? Well that's what paid for a lot of it. It delivered community, it delivered news, it delivered entertainment, it connected people to the rest of their nation.
  - hasenj 9y ago
    Delivering news is a solved problem.

orarbel1 9y ago

"Top talent... selling advertising... for a news aggregator. Sigh" Google? Facebook?

hkmurakami 9y ago
Also $TWTR, in some sense, as a 1-to-N medium.
kibwen 9y ago
Channeling that old quote: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."
- jaredklewis 9y ago
  Channeling a reaction I once heard to that old quote: "Well better than what the best minds of the last generation did: devise more powerful ways to kill communists."
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    Ads kill communism.
    - SomeStupidShit 9y ago
      Much better than killing communists.
    - popopobobobo 9y ago
      AIDS kills communism and everybody else
      - sctb 9y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the guidelines. If you'd like to comment civilly and substantively, you can email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll unban the account if we believe you will. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sdfgelgh43oito3 9y ago

news aggregation, and the selective targeting of individuals for advertising might just be the most powerful social influence today. Wins elections even...

moneytalks 9y ago
Yes and that's what's so depressing about it. As engineers, wouldn't it be cool if the most valuable thing we could do was building tools that are inherently valuable instead of valuable because of the tool's ability to connect users with someone who wants to buy their attention? You know, build some software that doesn't make you feel like a pimp.
- fiblye 9y ago
  Your first problem there is monetizing it. If nobody can pay for it, nobody is going to get together to make it.
  - saimiam 9y ago
    I've posted this on HN before but we at Datajoy are trying to solve the problem of consuming without paying which lets ad platforms treat us as the product: https://datajoy.us/fupm.html https://datajoy.us/fupm.html. Use it, block ads, pay for content...sleep better?
  - omphalos 9y ago
    Money isn't the only motivation someone can have. People write lots of open source code for free, for example.
    - astura 9y ago
      A lot of open source work is professional paid work.
      - alexanderstears 9y ago

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Yeah but a $2.5 billion in revenue news aggregator. The revenue makes a bit of a difference, or a lot of it. >> Toutiao is on pace to pull in about $2.5 billion in revenue this year, largely from advertising. It was just valued at more than $20 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, roughly the same as Elon Musk's SpaceX.