7 ms·

Don't forget the smartest chemists, working for shampoo companies (or worse). As was pointed out in Idiocracy.

axaxs 8y ago
Sorry to reply here but i figure it's as good a place as any... how did this happen? 30 or so years ago ATT and Xerox were paying smart people to gather and invent things, more or less. And they did, a lot of key things. Now, they work for Google or Facebook, and are essentially useless to the world. Seems a bit sad to me, it would be nice to have another tech company that let their employees shoot for the moon (please don't mention the silo'd self driving tech or spacex).
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I'm not a massive fan of Google or Facebook, but both companies invent lots of things. I recall seeing a demo a couple of years ago from someone at Google working on stabilising video by aligning all of the frames. The end result is a completely smooth animation of video, with all of the camera shake taken out (at the cost of reduced size of picture). I just noticed that Gopro is selling a camera with those features. I don't know if they are licensing the technology from Google, or if they did it themselves, but like I said, Google is working on stuff like that. For Facebook, React is innovative! It's not rocket science, but it solves a huge number of problems. It's not like AT&T and Xerox were hiring thousands upon thousands of inventors. Xerox was a photocopy company and they pretty much stuck to that (hence their downfall). I don't know exactly how many people worked at PARC, but it wasn't massively huge at any time. AT&T was an evil monopolistic company that also had a good research division. However, the research division was not its main function. You could compare it to Microsoft now (there are incredibly brilliant people working there right now). Trust me, it's not worse than it was before.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    Before web came along, Telcos is where the scale related engineering problems were. The other places were companies like IBM, and Xerox who had to do new things to stay relevant.
- gurumeditations 8y ago
  With tech so highly developed, the market advantage goes from who can build the next great thing to who can have the biggest most profitable user farm.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  I mean. They're still there making fine stuff for me to use. I love the Google Photos app. Maximum UX. I can search for photos by person, place, time, or type ("receipts San francisco"). I can translate by pointing Google Translate at a thing and having it be in English on the thing. Wicked shit. Nah. I love these guys.
- tguedes 8y ago
  You're saying Google or Facebook has not invented anything new? Do you even pay attention to the tech industry?
  - axaxs 8y ago
    Something more groundbreaking than say, the transistor, unix, the laser, the concept of GUI? No, I think not...

Sorry to reply here but i figure it's as good a place as any... how did this happen? 30 or so years ago ATT and Xerox were paying smart people to gather and invent things, more or less. And they did, a lot of key things. Now, they work for Google or Facebook, and are essentially useless to the world. Seems a bit sad to me, it would be nice to have another tech company that let their employees shoot for the moon (please don't mention the silo'd self driving tech or spacex).

mikekchar 8y ago
I'm not a massive fan of Google or Facebook, but both companies invent lots of things. I recall seeing a demo a couple of years ago from someone at Google working on stabilising video by aligning all of the frames. The end result is a completely smooth animation of video, with all of the camera shake taken out (at the cost of reduced size of picture). I just noticed that Gopro is selling a camera with those features. I don't know if they are licensing the technology from Google, or if they did it themselves, but like I said, Google is working on stuff like that. For Facebook, React is innovative! It's not rocket science, but it solves a huge number of problems. It's not like AT&T and Xerox were hiring thousands upon thousands of inventors. Xerox was a photocopy company and they pretty much stuck to that (hence their downfall). I don't know exactly how many people worked at PARC, but it wasn't massively huge at any time. AT&T was an evil monopolistic company that also had a good research division. However, the research division was not its main function. You could compare it to Microsoft now (there are incredibly brilliant people working there right now). Trust me, it's not worse than it was before.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Before web came along, Telcos is where the scale related engineering problems were. The other places were companies like IBM, and Xerox who had to do new things to stay relevant.
gurumeditations 8y ago
With tech so highly developed, the market advantage goes from who can build the next great thing to who can have the biggest most profitable user farm.
scarejunba 8y ago
I mean. They're still there making fine stuff for me to use. I love the Google Photos app. Maximum UX. I can search for photos by person, place, time, or type ("receipts San francisco"). I can translate by pointing Google Translate at a thing and having it be in English on the thing. Wicked shit. Nah. I love these guys.
tguedes 8y ago
You're saying Google or Facebook has not invented anything new? Do you even pay attention to the tech industry?
- axaxs 8y ago
  Something more groundbreaking than say, the transistor, unix, the laser, the concept of GUI? No, I think not...