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> Arguably, capturing most of your country's top talent with absurd salaries and putting them to work on world-critical challenges like... how to generate more

> Arguably, capturing most of your country's top talent with absurd salaries and putting them to work on world-critical challenges like... how to generate more revenue from advertisement or... how to create as many "phone-addicts" as possible... could be quantified as producing tons and tons of negative value. And where is that happening? It's not happening in the US, China or Europe. The ad tech segment would be lucky to rank at the median on talent in the tech industry, much less the wider economy. What you're referring to is a myth, a slander that gets thrown around HN freely because it makes for a great, vicious soundbite to stab (primarily) the US with. It always goes entirely unsupported, nobody dares to even try to support the claim (because it's obviously false and won't stand up to even light scrutiny). The majority of the top US talent is working on ad tech? No, that's not actually happening. Not remotely close. The claim is off by far more than an order of magnitude. The best talent at Google are not even working on ad tech. Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Regeneron, Moderna, Biogen, Gilead, AbbVie, Abbott, Bristol-Myers, Eli Lilly, Illumina, Intuitive Surgical, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Cisco, Qualcomm, Micron, LAM, KLA, Applied Materials, SpaceX, Tesla, Caterpillar, Honeywell, DuPont, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, 3M, Boston Scientific, Stryker, Edwards Lifesciences, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Monsanto. That's a super short list that instantly destroys the claim and doesn't include the vast brilliance at work in US universities (which also outweighs the entire US ad tech industry all by itself). It also excludes the huge number of foreign industrial firms in the US filled full of brilliant persons that are also not concerned with ad tech. NASA has more elite minds in its employment than all of the US ad tech industry combined. There are probably more top minds working on just CRISPR right now in the US than in the entire ad tech field. Which is to say, the position of the ad tech field is drastically overstated. IBM is a debased giant, that has languished badly. And yet they have a top shelf quantum computing division. You think the best talent at IBM is working on ad tech? No. TI or Cisco's best talent is all dedicated to ad tech? No. The best engineering minds at Illinois Tool Works or John Deere, they're all working on ad tech? No. All the smartest minds at LAM, KLA and Applied Materials are working on ad tech? No. The great engineers at Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX or Caterpillar, they're all working on ad tech? Uh, no. The insurance industry has more top talent than the ad tech industry. The property/casualty segment all by itself is dramatically larger than the entire ad tech field, including all dollars spent on digital advertising in the US. Compensation != top talent. Otherwise all the smartest people in the world would be hedge fund managers and absolutely nobody would ever work for NASA or NSA. That's not actually how things work in reality.

yostrovs 5y ago
I know of a number of people that received PhDs in physics, who would have become proper scientists, that instead went to work for investment firms because they can do the math and know how to code. After a decade of student poverty, getting a $150,000 salary did amazing things to their minds and their inspirations. Not all have done this, but many have for sure, and this has caused a brain drain.
volta83 5y ago
> It's not happening in the US, China or Europe. T In Germany, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon compete for CS, electrical, and mech eng students with BMW, Daimler, Audi, Airbus, etc. These classical engineering companies can't compete with FAANG salaries here. The top of my class had offers from many of them, but they all ended up in FAANG, because the salaries were 2x what the others were offering, with larger room to grow. > The best talent at Google are not even working on ad tech. Improving web server performance, source control tools, etc. at, e.g., Facebook, is not "working on ad-tech" per se, but rather work on the infrastructure that supports ad tech. Arguably, working on "traffic in Google maps" is not working on "ad tech", but rather working on adding value to an app so that it can serve more ads, etc. > Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Regeneron, Moderna, Biogen, Gilead, AbbVie, Abbott, Bristol-Myers, Eli Lilly, Illumina, Intuitive Surgical, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Cisco, Qualcomm, Micron, LAM, KLA, Applied Materials, SpaceX, Tesla, Caterpillar, Honeywell, DuPont, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, 3M, Boston Scientific, Stryker, Edwards Lifesciences, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Monsanto. I work at FAANG. Many in my team are "aerospace engineer", "structural engineer", "civil engineer", "electrical engineer", "astrophysicist", "chemist", "mathematician", etc.. All top of their class, now doing CS, working "indirectly" on ad-tech. That does not mean that the companies above fail to attract good engineers. But most people in my team, including myself, had to choose between working at any of the top firms for engineering in our "field", or going to FAANG to do CS and work (directly or indirectly) on ad tech. One new hire recently was doubting between working here at FAANG or at SpaceX, and at the end, after being a bit burned out from their PhD, they decided they preferred to work at FAANG on ad-tech because: n-times more salary, for a fraction of the hours. > That's a super short list that instantly destroys the claim The claim is that normal companies can't compete with FAANG for top talent. I don't see how the fact that normal engineering companies can find engineers debunks that claim.

yostrovs 5y ago

I know of a number of people that received PhDs in physics, who would have become proper scientists, that instead went to work for investment firms because they can do the math and know how to code. After a decade of student poverty, getting a $150,000 salary did amazing things to their minds and their inspirations. Not all have done this, but many have for sure, and this has caused a brain drain.

volta83 5y ago

> It's not happening in the US, China or Europe. T In Germany, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon compete for CS, electrical, and mech eng students with BMW, Daimler, Audi, Airbus, etc. These classical engineering companies can't compete with FAANG salaries here. The top of my class had offers from many of them, but they all ended up in FAANG, because the salaries were 2x what the others were offering, with larger room to grow. > The best talent at Google are not even working on ad tech. Improving web server performance, source control tools, etc. at, e.g., Facebook, is not "working on ad-tech" per se, but rather work on the infrastructure that supports ad tech. Arguably, working on "traffic in Google maps" is not working on "ad tech", but rather working on adding value to an app so that it can serve more ads, etc. > Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Regeneron, Moderna, Biogen, Gilead, AbbVie, Abbott, Bristol-Myers, Eli Lilly, Illumina, Intuitive Surgical, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Cisco, Qualcomm, Micron, LAM, KLA, Applied Materials, SpaceX, Tesla, Caterpillar, Honeywell, DuPont, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing, 3M, Boston Scientific, Stryker, Edwards Lifesciences, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Monsanto. I work at FAANG. Many in my team are "aerospace engineer", "structural engineer", "civil engineer", "electrical engineer", "astrophysicist", "chemist", "mathematician", etc.. All top of their class, now doing CS, working "indirectly" on ad-tech. That does not mean that the companies above fail to attract good engineers. But most people in my team, including myself, had to choose between working at any of the top firms for engineering in our "field", or going to FAANG to do CS and work (directly or indirectly) on ad tech. One new hire recently was doubting between working here at FAANG or at SpaceX, and at the end, after being a bit burned out from their PhD, they decided they preferred to work at FAANG on ad-tech because: n-times more salary, for a fraction of the hours. > That's a super short list that instantly destroys the claim The claim is that normal companies can't compete with FAANG for top talent. I don't see how the fact that normal engineering companies can find engineers debunks that claim.