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I used to like watching his streams but he seems to have become somewhat unhinged in recent years. Perhaps he is believing too much about what people have said

I used to like watching his streams but he seems to have become somewhat unhinged in recent years. Perhaps he is believing too much about what people have said about him. The arrogance and aggrandizement was the turn-off for me. Well that and his belief, while at comma, that how fast you can code is the most important metric when assessing software engineers. Competition programming is fun to watch but a poor indicator of maturity or success. In many systems it doesn't matter how fast you arrive at an answer. Increasingly it becomes important to arrive at something close to the right answer and to be able to show your work and prove to others why it sufficient and suitable. Still good for a hot take though. I hope time off will help him cool down a bit. Programming all night in a do-or-die mode is fun and all until you get a bit older. For many people who lived this life they realize only too late that they didn't spend enough time making friends and building a community around themselves of genuine relationships. Update: I should also say that despite the weird god stuff and what-not; a decision to leave a company because it has changed and you're no longer a good fit is a HUGE decision and one that is often not made by founders. Massive props for that.

Fatnino 4y ago
"recent years"? This guy has always been like this, going all the way back to ios hacking days or even wii hacking days.
- agentultra 4y ago
  A certain amount of arrogance is cheeky and endearing. Then there's the kind where the talented musician in the band announces their departure and solo album. And starts talking about finding God and becoming a modern day Prometheus. I can't put my finger on when the transition happened but it was somewhere just before the Lex interview for me.
  - trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    He doesn't come off as particularly arrogant to me, more like a straightforward and direct type. I've yet to meet someone who's good at what they do who isn't convinced of themselves, so that's a given. A philosopher might argue you need this sort of mindset to be successful in the first place. However knowing that you're better at something than most other people doesn't equal arrogance when it's true. There are also a lot of arrogant people who know how to put on an act in public.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      > I've yet to meet someone who's good at what they do who isn't convinced of themselves, so that's a given. I don't think so. I know at least a couple of great engineers who were not so sure of themselves. They were just eager to try, over and over again. Both of them developed novel 3D engines. One formed a company over his engine, the other one taken on one of the best liquid simulation teams, head on, and gave them a good run for their money by being equal to the whole team by himself and his wife. I'm also on the same bandwagon. I'm not sure that I'll come up with a great solution before touching the keyboard. I'll only say it's a good solution after finishing it and comparing it with other available solutions (if there are any) or similar ones. I did great things, and I failed miserably too. In every case being not sure about myself allowed me to have a level head, and see through my solutions' shortcomings and iterate over them. The only thing I'm sure about myself is, I can give a shot, and iterate over it as time and my abilities allow. That's all.
- pa7ch 4y ago
  His playstation rap was on the video playlist for the Defcon ctf for many years.
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  I used to talk to him on one of those IRC networks for iOS hacking, forgot the name, but a good old friend of mine was involved in the scene, so I dropped in. He is definitely a skilled individual, but he lacks the key thing I think all true senior engineers need: humility. Without humility you're going to find yourself bikeshedding and wasting time and effort on things that may actually not be attainable within your lifetime with your current resources. I personally don't see AI getting anywhere any time soon. Just look at some of the really funny images some of the best AI available generates[0]. Subtle things like this show you that AI is really a UX around a piece of software that attempts to understand what you're asking for with less input than having enough buttons to generate EXACTLY what you're asking for (I'm thinking of photoshop in the case of text -> image). Some things in AI do impress me, but the fact its not far more pervasive in our every day (there are people who use voice assistants sure, but its not EVERY household doing it) lives tells me we still have a long way to go. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/technicallythetruth/comments/y26t6x/ai_asked_to_draw_salmon_swimming_in_river/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technicallythetruth/comments/y26t6x...
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    I think I have to disagree with humility in engineering. There's a certain arrogance intrinsic to engineering, in that you have to be capable of believing you can find a better solution to a problem than literally every other person in history. Obviously it needs to be tempered in interactions with the outside world, but without that core idea, an engineer can't do their job effectively, like a surgeon who loses their nerve when it comes to taking lives in their hands.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      > There's a certain arrogance intrinsic to engineering... I don't agree. You can take pride in what you've accomplished, and you should do that, but you can be humble at the same time. Accepting there will be better individuals than you or better solutions than yours is both sobering and motivating to be and do better. When you accept that you're very smart, but not the smartest, you unlock the potential to be one of the the 10x-100x engineers others aspire. I'm a very motivated individual, and did some pretty impressive things back in the day, and I'm still capable of doing these things. However, I'm not the best, or won't be the best for long. This is how the world works. Being able to say thanks, and being able to say sorry goes a long way, and takes you beyond where unabashed arrogance takes you. Lastly, arrogance makes you fragile. Fragility is not good under stress, and under real world circumstances.
Rezwoodly 4y ago
Oh yeah. I've met more than a couple of engineers who spent their teens and twenties coding like that was the meaning to life, all suffer from deep regret, burnout, resentment, depression. They are better than average technically, but their social skills fail them. Which in a paid employment situation carries a lot of weight. I feel sorry for these guys
- alrlroipsp 4y ago
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Who is "we"? Unemployed code wizards?
    - alrlroipsp 4y ago
      We are "engineers who spent their teens and twenties coding like that was the meaning to life, all suffer from deep regret, burnout, resentment, depression". Who is you? Not a comedian?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pennaMan 4y ago
  >paid employment situation Just don't get yourself in such a situation and you'll do fine :)
  - Rezwoodly 4y ago
    Yeah, sure. It's super easy to avoid gainful employment. Based on this comment I can already tell you're a genius.
    - pennaMan 4y ago
      If you ignore corporate and social propaganda it tones the difficulty down a bit by having the right mindset. I've only been an employee at the start of my adult life for 3 years at a small software outsourcing agency. Been gaining a steady 20x the median salary for my city for the past 12 years since I've abandoned "employment". Can't say I'm particulary smart. I'm closer to Dumb and Dumber than Rainman. I just ignore opinions of other people or entities and go my own way.
deafpolygon 4y ago
> help him cool down a bit > geohot
loudmax 4y ago
The answer to a problem should be the right answer, and it should also avoid unnecessary complexity so someone looking into it can figure out what's going on. Avoiding unnecessary complexity sounds easy, but it often isn't. Banging out code as fast as you can is one of the surest ways to produce systems that are devilishly complicated and brittle.
3327 4y ago
jeffreyrogers 4y ago
Where does he say that how fast you can code is the most important metric?
- cyrux004 4y ago
  He doesnt. There are a ton of videos which says what he specifically looks for. from their hiring page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWTculMsTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWTculMsTY "motivation and intelligence"
- agentultra 4y ago
  From the top of https://comma.ai/jobs https://comma.ai/jobs: > Competitors > People who have done well at math competitions (USAMO, IMO, PUTNAM), competition programming (ACM, USACO, codejam, topcoder), science fairs (ISEF, STS), or capture the flag (DEFCON, secuinside, GITS). Those competitions don't just select for ability, they also select for quickness. We are in a very competitive space.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
> Programming all night in a do-or-die mode is fun and all until you get a bit older. For many people who lived this life they realize only too late that they didn't spend enough time making friends and building a community around themselves of genuine relationships. I feel like this is a false dichotomy that bad engineers tell themselves to justify not working hard at being a good engineer and instead screwing off. Believe it or not, you can actually be a world class engineer and have a healthy life, who would have known? Weird.
- dkural 4y ago
  Great engineers don't do all nighters frequently. Some of the best software engineers I've met (quantum computing for Amazon, ML for protein design, etc.), go to bed at reasonably early and get eight hours of sleep, exercise and eat regularly, and have downtime. My guess is this type of life discipline helps keep up productivity over the long term.
  - agentultra 4y ago
    It definitely does. In what few empirical studies on what makes programmers effective, sleep, is the primary contributing factor to low error rates [0][1]. Stress and overwork are probably close seconds. And some of these studies are cross-sectional across knowledge workers; iow, not just programmers. If you want to make it to your 40s and still be an effective IC you need to learn how to regulate yourself and follow a disciplined approach to work. Cognitive performance from chronic sleep deprivation takes years to show up. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.02544.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.02544.pdf
    - dkural 4y ago
      Thank you for the links! Much better than my anecdotal observations :)

Fatnino 4y ago

"recent years"? This guy has always been like this, going all the way back to ios hacking days or even wii hacking days.

agentultra 4y ago
A certain amount of arrogance is cheeky and endearing. Then there's the kind where the talented musician in the band announces their departure and solo album. And starts talking about finding God and becoming a modern day Prometheus. I can't put my finger on when the transition happened but it was somewhere just before the Lex interview for me.
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  He doesn't come off as particularly arrogant to me, more like a straightforward and direct type. I've yet to meet someone who's good at what they do who isn't convinced of themselves, so that's a given. A philosopher might argue you need this sort of mindset to be successful in the first place. However knowing that you're better at something than most other people doesn't equal arrogance when it's true. There are also a lot of arrogant people who know how to put on an act in public.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    > I've yet to meet someone who's good at what they do who isn't convinced of themselves, so that's a given. I don't think so. I know at least a couple of great engineers who were not so sure of themselves. They were just eager to try, over and over again. Both of them developed novel 3D engines. One formed a company over his engine, the other one taken on one of the best liquid simulation teams, head on, and gave them a good run for their money by being equal to the whole team by himself and his wife. I'm also on the same bandwagon. I'm not sure that I'll come up with a great solution before touching the keyboard. I'll only say it's a good solution after finishing it and comparing it with other available solutions (if there are any) or similar ones. I did great things, and I failed miserably too. In every case being not sure about myself allowed me to have a level head, and see through my solutions' shortcomings and iterate over them. The only thing I'm sure about myself is, I can give a shot, and iterate over it as time and my abilities allow. That's all.
pa7ch 4y ago
His playstation rap was on the video playlist for the Defcon ctf for many years.
giancarlostoro 4y ago
I used to talk to him on one of those IRC networks for iOS hacking, forgot the name, but a good old friend of mine was involved in the scene, so I dropped in. He is definitely a skilled individual, but he lacks the key thing I think all true senior engineers need: humility. Without humility you're going to find yourself bikeshedding and wasting time and effort on things that may actually not be attainable within your lifetime with your current resources. I personally don't see AI getting anywhere any time soon. Just look at some of the really funny images some of the best AI available generates[0]. Subtle things like this show you that AI is really a UX around a piece of software that attempts to understand what you're asking for with less input than having enough buttons to generate EXACTLY what you're asking for (I'm thinking of photoshop in the case of text -> image). Some things in AI do impress me, but the fact its not far more pervasive in our every day (there are people who use voice assistants sure, but its not EVERY household doing it) lives tells me we still have a long way to go. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/technicallythetruth/comments/y26t6x/ai_asked_to_draw_salmon_swimming_in_river/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technicallythetruth/comments/y26t6x...
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  I think I have to disagree with humility in engineering. There's a certain arrogance intrinsic to engineering, in that you have to be capable of believing you can find a better solution to a problem than literally every other person in history. Obviously it needs to be tempered in interactions with the outside world, but without that core idea, an engineer can't do their job effectively, like a surgeon who loses their nerve when it comes to taking lives in their hands.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    > There's a certain arrogance intrinsic to engineering... I don't agree. You can take pride in what you've accomplished, and you should do that, but you can be humble at the same time. Accepting there will be better individuals than you or better solutions than yours is both sobering and motivating to be and do better. When you accept that you're very smart, but not the smartest, you unlock the potential to be one of the the 10x-100x engineers others aspire. I'm a very motivated individual, and did some pretty impressive things back in the day, and I'm still capable of doing these things. However, I'm not the best, or won't be the best for long. This is how the world works. Being able to say thanks, and being able to say sorry goes a long way, and takes you beyond where unabashed arrogance takes you. Lastly, arrogance makes you fragile. Fragility is not good under stress, and under real world circumstances.

Rezwoodly 4y ago

Oh yeah. I've met more than a couple of engineers who spent their teens and twenties coding like that was the meaning to life, all suffer from deep regret, burnout, resentment, depression. They are better than average technically, but their social skills fail them. Which in a paid employment situation carries a lot of weight. I feel sorry for these guys

alrlroipsp 4y ago
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Who is "we"? Unemployed code wizards?
  - alrlroipsp 4y ago
    We are "engineers who spent their teens and twenties coding like that was the meaning to life, all suffer from deep regret, burnout, resentment, depression". Who is you? Not a comedian?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pennaMan 4y ago
>paid employment situation Just don't get yourself in such a situation and you'll do fine :)
- Rezwoodly 4y ago
  Yeah, sure. It's super easy to avoid gainful employment. Based on this comment I can already tell you're a genius.
  - pennaMan 4y ago
    If you ignore corporate and social propaganda it tones the difficulty down a bit by having the right mindset. I've only been an employee at the start of my adult life for 3 years at a small software outsourcing agency. Been gaining a steady 20x the median salary for my city for the past 12 years since I've abandoned "employment". Can't say I'm particulary smart. I'm closer to Dumb and Dumber than Rainman. I just ignore opinions of other people or entities and go my own way.

deafpolygon 4y ago

> help him cool down a bit > geohot

loudmax 4y ago

The answer to a problem should be the right answer, and it should also avoid unnecessary complexity so someone looking into it can figure out what's going on. Avoiding unnecessary complexity sounds easy, but it often isn't. Banging out code as fast as you can is one of the surest ways to produce systems that are devilishly complicated and brittle.

3327 4y ago

jeffreyrogers 4y ago

Where does he say that how fast you can code is the most important metric?

cyrux004 4y ago
He doesnt. There are a ton of videos which says what he specifically looks for. from their hiring page https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWTculMsTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWTculMsTY "motivation and intelligence"
agentultra 4y ago
From the top of https://comma.ai/jobs https://comma.ai/jobs: > Competitors > People who have done well at math competitions (USAMO, IMO, PUTNAM), competition programming (ACM, USACO, codejam, topcoder), science fairs (ISEF, STS), or capture the flag (DEFCON, secuinside, GITS). Those competitions don't just select for ability, they also select for quickness. We are in a very competitive space.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

> Programming all night in a do-or-die mode is fun and all until you get a bit older. For many people who lived this life they realize only too late that they didn't spend enough time making friends and building a community around themselves of genuine relationships. I feel like this is a false dichotomy that bad engineers tell themselves to justify not working hard at being a good engineer and instead screwing off. Believe it or not, you can actually be a world class engineer and have a healthy life, who would have known? Weird.

dkural 4y ago
Great engineers don't do all nighters frequently. Some of the best software engineers I've met (quantum computing for Amazon, ML for protein design, etc.), go to bed at reasonably early and get eight hours of sleep, exercise and eat regularly, and have downtime. My guess is this type of life discipline helps keep up productivity over the long term.
- agentultra 4y ago
  It definitely does. In what few empirical studies on what makes programmers effective, sleep, is the primary contributing factor to low error rates [0][1]. Stress and overwork are probably close seconds. And some of these studies are cross-sectional across knowledge workers; iow, not just programmers. If you want to make it to your 40s and still be an effective IC you need to learn how to regulate yourself and follow a disciplined approach to work. Cognitive performance from chronic sleep deprivation takes years to show up. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656292/ [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.02544.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.02544.pdf
  - dkural 4y ago
    Thank you for the links! Much better than my anecdotal observations :)