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Some people who don't identify as "high IQ" might get offended by this article, but I think the primary argument is valid. Many of our brightest and most ambiti

Some people who don't identify as "high IQ" might get offended by this article, but I think the primary argument is valid. Many of our brightest and most ambitious minds go into finance & consulting simply because it pays the most. If we want more innovation & progress in certain fields, the financial incentives need to be aligned. In the case of semiconductors, I'm guessing there needs to be some sort of government funding due to huge startup costs and marketplace dynamics.

hotpotamus 4y ago
What did the brightest and least ambitious do?
- h2odragon 4y ago
  Built a shack in the woods and raised dogs.
- fairity 4y ago
  At my alma mater (MIT), the bright and lazy people actually went into finance also. Not sure what it's like now, but 10 years ago, many hedge funds basically just gave IQ tests as their interview.
throwaway5959 4y ago
Who’s to say finance and consulting aren’t creating the most value?
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  have you seen the state of the world lately?
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    Nah I live in a carefully crafted bubble in west LA. Rest of the world kind of sucks when I leave it.
- diordiderot 4y ago
  If I pay you $10,000 to eat a bag of dog poop did you create $10,000 of 'value'
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Put it on youtube and probably will produce some entertainment value
- ttyprintk 4y ago
  I’ll say it. When Black Shoals won the Nobel prize and business people started seeing PDEs, the new physics and applied math grads they hired were five years away from restructuring mortgages into unsupportable securities. Very few were smart enough to predict the eventual problem. Maybe the only people who can justify the inflated compensation should be those who can prevent collapse?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    Some of the products didn’t pan out, sure. But what about all the products that did? Having deep and complex capital markets opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of building huge systems.
    - ttyprintk 4y ago
      Just the bailouts equated $229,000 for each of 6.5m Americans in finance. Just the drop in the stock market equated to the earnings of 75,000 quants averaging $7,800 per day for 45 years.
- hardlianotion 4y ago
  If you want to go that way, you'll have to define all your terms.
JonChesterfield 4y ago
Ages ago I had a slightly sad conversation with a manager in high tech mechanical engineering about this. We/they wanted good engineers but not enough to compete with the city over. Most of the expertise was very in-house, difficult to hire experienced people from other companies who would know the right things, so training up and retaining graduates was important. Hopefully that was a carefully reasoned choice. Employee compensation economics don't make much sense to me. There's some factor in favour of maximising headcount which argues for many people on low pay instead of few people on high pay. It's also considered _better_ to have your long term engineers occasionally notice the gap between their pay and the open market, leave, and then be replaced by new ones who cost what the open market predicted.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  MBA bozos trying to exploit every resource to the max including humans without thinking about long term consequences.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    If the management schools and managers they produced were that smart, you'd think they'd understand the cost of turnover.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      The incentives are set up so it doesn't matter. They don't lose if the company loses, if the product is shit, or if the engineers go through hell. How many people ever got fired for selling the future for a short term gain? (how many of the few who did, didn't just get another, better job because of more experience?)
jiggawatts 4y ago
I noticed this in fundamental physics research, which has been stripped bare of the best and brightest, as if a plague of locusts had gone through every university. Pretty much everyone who does really well in physics ends up as a quant or something similar because the pay starts at 10x what you get as a researcher and goes up from there into the stratosphere. The only people left behind are those that didn't-quite-make-it, or truly deeply love physics and simply don't want to get an extra zero on their pay-cheque.
- patrick451 4y ago
  And yet tenure track jobs are still fiercely competitive. Maybe all the folks applying to those jobs are just the dregs who couldn't cut it as a quant, but I doubt it. Point being, that despite the fact that you can make more money in industry, universities still have an oversupply of people (both professors and grad students) who are willing to work for peanuts.
ilyt 4y ago
Yeah but focus of repeating "high IQ" that article had heavily detracts from that point. It's really not that different for any skill that is hard (whether it is by requiring "smart" people or just ten years of practice to perfect the craft) to learn and niche enough that people normally don't choose that career path

hotpotamus 4y ago

What did the brightest and least ambitious do?

h2odragon 4y ago
Built a shack in the woods and raised dogs.
fairity 4y ago
At my alma mater (MIT), the bright and lazy people actually went into finance also. Not sure what it's like now, but 10 years ago, many hedge funds basically just gave IQ tests as their interview.

throwaway5959 4y ago

Who’s to say finance and consulting aren’t creating the most value?

KerrAvon 4y ago
have you seen the state of the world lately?
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  Nah I live in a carefully crafted bubble in west LA. Rest of the world kind of sucks when I leave it.
diordiderot 4y ago
If I pay you $10,000 to eat a bag of dog poop did you create $10,000 of 'value'
- ilyt 4y ago
  Put it on youtube and probably will produce some entertainment value
ttyprintk 4y ago
I’ll say it. When Black Shoals won the Nobel prize and business people started seeing PDEs, the new physics and applied math grads they hired were five years away from restructuring mortgages into unsupportable securities. Very few were smart enough to predict the eventual problem. Maybe the only people who can justify the inflated compensation should be those who can prevent collapse?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  Some of the products didn’t pan out, sure. But what about all the products that did? Having deep and complex capital markets opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of building huge systems.
  - ttyprintk 4y ago
    Just the bailouts equated $229,000 for each of 6.5m Americans in finance. Just the drop in the stock market equated to the earnings of 75,000 quants averaging $7,800 per day for 45 years.
hardlianotion 4y ago
If you want to go that way, you'll have to define all your terms.

JonChesterfield 4y ago

Ages ago I had a slightly sad conversation with a manager in high tech mechanical engineering about this. We/they wanted good engineers but not enough to compete with the city over. Most of the expertise was very in-house, difficult to hire experienced people from other companies who would know the right things, so training up and retaining graduates was important. Hopefully that was a carefully reasoned choice. Employee compensation economics don't make much sense to me. There's some factor in favour of maximising headcount which argues for many people on low pay instead of few people on high pay. It's also considered _better_ to have your long term engineers occasionally notice the gap between their pay and the open market, leave, and then be replaced by new ones who cost what the open market predicted.

colechristensen 4y ago
MBA bozos trying to exploit every resource to the max including humans without thinking about long term consequences.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  If the management schools and managers they produced were that smart, you'd think they'd understand the cost of turnover.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    The incentives are set up so it doesn't matter. They don't lose if the company loses, if the product is shit, or if the engineers go through hell. How many people ever got fired for selling the future for a short term gain? (how many of the few who did, didn't just get another, better job because of more experience?)

jiggawatts 4y ago

I noticed this in fundamental physics research, which has been stripped bare of the best and brightest, as if a plague of locusts had gone through every university. Pretty much everyone who does really well in physics ends up as a quant or something similar because the pay starts at 10x what you get as a researcher and goes up from there into the stratosphere. The only people left behind are those that didn't-quite-make-it, or truly deeply love physics and simply don't want to get an extra zero on their pay-cheque.

patrick451 4y ago
And yet tenure track jobs are still fiercely competitive. Maybe all the folks applying to those jobs are just the dregs who couldn't cut it as a quant, but I doubt it. Point being, that despite the fact that you can make more money in industry, universities still have an oversupply of people (both professors and grad students) who are willing to work for peanuts.

ilyt 4y ago

Yeah but focus of repeating "high IQ" that article had heavily detracts from that point. It's really not that different for any skill that is hard (whether it is by requiring "smart" people or just ten years of practice to perfect the craft) to learn and niche enough that people normally don't choose that career path