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"Mr. Zaremba said big tech companies were offering him two or three times what he believed his real market value was" Seems this fellow knows a whole lot more

"Mr. Zaremba said big tech companies were offering him two or three times what he believed his real market value was" Seems this fellow knows a whole lot more about computers than he does markets hahaha

jdavis703 9y ago
Sure, his statement contradicts the classical definition of market, but we all know markets can become divorced from reality during bubbles. I'm assuming that was his real point.
derefr 9y ago
He might be trying to say that there are enough people like him in the market that it really shouldn't be a seller's market; but those others are mostly undervalued/ignored, while his value has been artificially inflated because of the (incorrectly!) perceived rarity of his skills. This is the pattern that goes on all the time inside companies: constant attempts to hire talent from the outside, coupled with complete ignorance of the skills (perhaps developed post-hire) of their existing employees. I know more people than I can count who know everything required to be doing "data science" for a company, but—since they were hired to be maintenance dev-ops people—they will never be considered for "promotion into" a data-science role when there's a vacancy.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  Do they want to be doing data science though? Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    >Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it. This is some real crazy talk here. The idea that you should limit yourself to the particular set of knowledge you wish to make money off of is insane. There's almost no such thing as wasted learning, even if you're not interested in pursuing it for a career. Maybe it's a hobby, maybe you touch it in a tangential way for your normal work where a basic understanding brings value but is not necessary. This is the same attitude that undervalues previous experience and builds in favor of specific lingual or stack competence.
    - mehrdadn 9y ago
      >> Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it. > This is some real crazy talk here. The idea that you should limit yourself to the particular set of knowledge you wish to make money off of is insane. Crazy talk? That's what you get when you blatantly ignore half of what I said. In the previous sentence I quite literally asked if these want to be doing data science to begin with. If they don't have any interest in it, then it doesn't matter whether or not they know how to do it as far as the company is concerned; they're not going to be doing it either way. Nowhere did I ever suggest that it's somehow a good idea for people to be limiting themselves to a particular knowledge set.
- aje403 9y ago
  I think there are a lot of deep learning dilettentes, and a large number of them on HN, overestimating their abilities relative to the experts being hired by google. The guy who is stuck doing dev ops but can be doing data science is not the 1mm+ guy at google even though some of them find it hard to accept
  - derefr 9y ago
    True, but they probably are worth more to their own companies—especially mid-sized companies—than those companies realize. Whether or not the market would pay more for them, more money could certainly be being made off their backs (as with the “administrative assistant” roles at medium-sized companies that often end up substituting for much of the role of HR, PR copywriting, office management and often even team coordination. All for the cost of a secretary!+) Not harnessing these untapped assets you already possess is a failure for a company, in much the same way that not shaving cost centers or negotiating purchases would be. + Yes, I’m trying to hint here that one would be crazy to allow oneself to be exploited in this manner. If you truly have the ability to do these additional jobs, then you should be applying for roles that explicitly, rather than implicitly, use those skills, and offer compensation for them. Sadly—for the same reason many people find it hard to negotiate salary—many people won’t try for jobs that no one has told them they’re “allowed” to apply for.
    - aje403 9y ago
      That’s correct, but the pragmatic reality of most companies and data science with respect to internal politics and other bullshit is that they’re not going to find that mobility even if they network internally
      - tomrod 9y ago
        Funny -- I actually see that as the single most important factor distinguishing folks making $1MM and $100k. There are plenty of overpaid geniuses, but really even more underpaid geniuses.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  I have 3 tests I use: 1) did you pass linear algebra? 2) show me some code you have written and deployed 3) here's Learn Python the Hard Way, start reading and come back with questions. In the modern era, I have not found anyone who can pass test 1 and doesn't know code (except for 1 mathematician who's like 70 and no one cares if he can write code, his ideas are so insanely good that other people write his code for him, despite their day jobs). These people execute and come back with challenging problems for me. Anyone who passes test 2 seems to be able to pick up whatever task I give them. I'm not entirely sure they understand what they're doing all the way down, so there's more review, but they can generally execute. Questions go back and forth. If I get to test 3, well, no one has come back with a question yet. What this tells me is there is plenty of signal in the culture that math and programming ability are valued. The people don't, ain't never gunna.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    I didn't think I knew anything about ML, yet I seem to have passed all three tests... b^)
    - edraferi 9y ago
      If you know linear algebra, machine learning is not much further to go. You can understand pretty much all the models by looking under the hood at the math. At that point it’s just experience to learn the rules of thumb that guide practical implementations.
      - vvanders 9y ago
        That was my experience building a simple morse code decoder. Actually spent more time fighting the spectograph resolution than the ML part. I also learned real quick that I don't want to do ML. It's all about data generation/sanitation/management which just doesn't click for me.
    - killjoywashere 9y ago
      But, grasshopper, you have not passed the third test. Where is your question?
hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
Perhaps a more charitable explanation: Mr. Zaremba has expert knowledge of statistical analysis and hence what his true value is (in terms of return on his salary, and in comparison to other equivalent candidates). The current market, though, is essentially in a "bubble" for AI candidates, and so is mispricing the actual value of this "asset".
ggg9990 9y ago
If Bill Gates takes a fancy to a $100,000 mountain cabin and the owner doesn’t want to sell, he could offer $10 million for it, but that doesn’t increase the market value of the cabin.
- dna_polymerase 9y ago
  So by what value is market-value determined then? If X is willing to pay Y the value is Y.
  - samlevine 9y ago
    In the context of real estate, what the remaining potential buyers are willing to pay after Bill Gates spends ten million on a hundred thousand dollar property.
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    Not at all. One buyer does not drive a market.
    - solotronics 9y ago
      cryptocurrency would like a word with you
- skybrian 9y ago
  Well, it might move it a bit, once word gets out and other people want a cabin too, like Bill Gates.
- ethbro 9y ago
  Depends on the fungibility of cabins. If the $100,000 cabin next to yours sells for $10 million, you'd better believe it's going to change your cabin's appraisal.
- dahart 9y ago
  Real-estate runs on comps, and the sellers of other houses in the neighborhood love to use the overvalued ones to boost their asking price. In my experience, homeowners always nosily follow their neighborhood sales hoping for overvalued prices because they bring up the going rate in the neighborhood. Plus, if Bill Gates buys a hours in your neighborhood, it's more or less guaranteed that the prices go up on name recognition alone.
hinkley 9y ago
If someone offered me three times what I think I’m worth I would assume something extremely illegal is going on. Like if you talk a ot this they will never find your body.
- rmateus 9y ago
  The problem with that heuristic is that nobody ever thinks he or she does not worth it.

jdavis703 9y ago

Sure, his statement contradicts the classical definition of market, but we all know markets can become divorced from reality during bubbles. I'm assuming that was his real point.

derefr 9y ago

He might be trying to say that there are enough people like him in the market that it really shouldn't be a seller's market; but those others are mostly undervalued/ignored, while his value has been artificially inflated because of the (incorrectly!) perceived rarity of his skills. This is the pattern that goes on all the time inside companies: constant attempts to hire talent from the outside, coupled with complete ignorance of the skills (perhaps developed post-hire) of their existing employees. I know more people than I can count who know everything required to be doing "data science" for a company, but—since they were hired to be maintenance dev-ops people—they will never be considered for "promotion into" a data-science role when there's a vacancy.

mehrdadn 9y ago
Do they want to be doing data science though? Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  >Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it. This is some real crazy talk here. The idea that you should limit yourself to the particular set of knowledge you wish to make money off of is insane. There's almost no such thing as wasted learning, even if you're not interested in pursuing it for a career. Maybe it's a hobby, maybe you touch it in a tangential way for your normal work where a basic understanding brings value but is not necessary. This is the same attitude that undervalues previous experience and builds in favor of specific lingual or stack competence.
  - mehrdadn 9y ago
    >> Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it. > This is some real crazy talk here. The idea that you should limit yourself to the particular set of knowledge you wish to make money off of is insane. Crazy talk? That's what you get when you blatantly ignore half of what I said. In the previous sentence I quite literally asked if these want to be doing data science to begin with. If they don't have any interest in it, then it doesn't matter whether or not they know how to do it as far as the company is concerned; they're not going to be doing it either way. Nowhere did I ever suggest that it's somehow a good idea for people to be limiting themselves to a particular knowledge set.
aje403 9y ago
I think there are a lot of deep learning dilettentes, and a large number of them on HN, overestimating their abilities relative to the experts being hired by google. The guy who is stuck doing dev ops but can be doing data science is not the 1mm+ guy at google even though some of them find it hard to accept
- derefr 9y ago
  True, but they probably are worth more to their own companies—especially mid-sized companies—than those companies realize. Whether or not the market would pay more for them, more money could certainly be being made off their backs (as with the “administrative assistant” roles at medium-sized companies that often end up substituting for much of the role of HR, PR copywriting, office management and often even team coordination. All for the cost of a secretary!+) Not harnessing these untapped assets you already possess is a failure for a company, in much the same way that not shaving cost centers or negotiating purchases would be. + Yes, I’m trying to hint here that one would be crazy to allow oneself to be exploited in this manner. If you truly have the ability to do these additional jobs, then you should be applying for roles that explicitly, rather than implicitly, use those skills, and offer compensation for them. Sadly—for the same reason many people find it hard to negotiate salary—many people won’t try for jobs that no one has told them they’re “allowed” to apply for.
  - aje403 9y ago
    That’s correct, but the pragmatic reality of most companies and data science with respect to internal politics and other bullshit is that they’re not going to find that mobility even if they network internally
    - tomrod 9y ago
      Funny -- I actually see that as the single most important factor distinguishing folks making $1MM and $100k. There are plenty of overpaid geniuses, but really even more underpaid geniuses.
killjoywashere 9y ago
I have 3 tests I use: 1) did you pass linear algebra? 2) show me some code you have written and deployed 3) here's Learn Python the Hard Way, start reading and come back with questions. In the modern era, I have not found anyone who can pass test 1 and doesn't know code (except for 1 mathematician who's like 70 and no one cares if he can write code, his ideas are so insanely good that other people write his code for him, despite their day jobs). These people execute and come back with challenging problems for me. Anyone who passes test 2 seems to be able to pick up whatever task I give them. I'm not entirely sure they understand what they're doing all the way down, so there's more review, but they can generally execute. Questions go back and forth. If I get to test 3, well, no one has come back with a question yet. What this tells me is there is plenty of signal in the culture that math and programming ability are valued. The people don't, ain't never gunna.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I didn't think I knew anything about ML, yet I seem to have passed all three tests... b^)
  - edraferi 9y ago
    If you know linear algebra, machine learning is not much further to go. You can understand pretty much all the models by looking under the hood at the math. At that point it’s just experience to learn the rules of thumb that guide practical implementations.
    - vvanders 9y ago
      That was my experience building a simple morse code decoder. Actually spent more time fighting the spectograph resolution than the ML part. I also learned real quick that I don't want to do ML. It's all about data generation/sanitation/management which just doesn't click for me.
  - killjoywashere 9y ago
    But, grasshopper, you have not passed the third test. Where is your question?

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago

Perhaps a more charitable explanation: Mr. Zaremba has expert knowledge of statistical analysis and hence what his true value is (in terms of return on his salary, and in comparison to other equivalent candidates). The current market, though, is essentially in a "bubble" for AI candidates, and so is mispricing the actual value of this "asset".

ggg9990 9y ago

If Bill Gates takes a fancy to a $100,000 mountain cabin and the owner doesn’t want to sell, he could offer $10 million for it, but that doesn’t increase the market value of the cabin.

dna_polymerase 9y ago
So by what value is market-value determined then? If X is willing to pay Y the value is Y.
- samlevine 9y ago
  In the context of real estate, what the remaining potential buyers are willing to pay after Bill Gates spends ten million on a hundred thousand dollar property.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Not at all. One buyer does not drive a market.
  - solotronics 9y ago
    cryptocurrency would like a word with you
skybrian 9y ago
Well, it might move it a bit, once word gets out and other people want a cabin too, like Bill Gates.
ethbro 9y ago
Depends on the fungibility of cabins. If the $100,000 cabin next to yours sells for $10 million, you'd better believe it's going to change your cabin's appraisal.
dahart 9y ago
Real-estate runs on comps, and the sellers of other houses in the neighborhood love to use the overvalued ones to boost their asking price. In my experience, homeowners always nosily follow their neighborhood sales hoping for overvalued prices because they bring up the going rate in the neighborhood. Plus, if Bill Gates buys a hours in your neighborhood, it's more or less guaranteed that the prices go up on name recognition alone.

hinkley 9y ago

If someone offered me three times what I think I’m worth I would assume something extremely illegal is going on. Like if you talk a ot this they will never find your body.

rmateus 9y ago
The problem with that heuristic is that nobody ever thinks he or she does not worth it.