You're taking the "best" part too literally. Obviously, smart people also work on other things, and adtech has not hoovered up 100% of the available talent. Thi

You're taking the "best" part too literally. Obviously, smart people also work on other things, and adtech has not hoovered up 100% of the available talent. Think about it as a normative statement: it's weird and not good that our society is organized so that working on something so inessential is a sensible choice for smart people. I'm a research scientist at a major hospital. The work itself is fascinating and important--we're figuring out--and fixing--the brain. At the same time, keeping this job is also a ridiculous luxury because of how low the salary is. An adtech job would easily increase my salary 4-5x; a friend from my department went to a FAANG company and makes literally 10x more than I do. If someone in my family got sick, I'm not sure I'd have any alternative but jumping ship to finance or adtech.