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If you took a job like that, were you really one of the best minds of your generation?
by tomcam 4y ago
If you took a job like that, were you really one of the best minds of your generation?
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoIt goes both ways. If you win the lottery starting a company at the right time, are you really the best mind of the generation or just lucky?
- WalterBright 4y agoSomebody in a garage today is working on a business that will be worth billions within 5 years, and we'll all kick ourselves with "why didn't we think of that!"
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoRight, but for everyone of those people, there are 1,000 other people just as smart also working on good ideas that are going nowhere fast. I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing or neither. But I think the "why didn't I think of that guy" is mostly luck. Lots of people are smart and work hard and don't really get anywhere.
- skeeter2020 4y agoSmart and Work Hard are only two of the 5+ components needed for success, of which Luck, Opportunity and Timing also belong. I'm sure there's more.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoWhat is timing beside luck?
- jimbokun 4y agoThe founders had a good bit of luck, but then hired a lot of super smart people fresh out of college.
- throw_pm23 4y agoAnecdotally, of the five-ten people I knew throughout the years who ended up at Facebook, all had a very specific personality-trait. Those that I knew who went to Google/Amazon/etc. were more diverse personalities: ambitious, interested in hard problems, wanting a good life, etc. Those going to Facebook though, I'm not sure I can put it in a polite way. Let me just say, in different times and different places I could imagine them joining a certain type of organization.
- goldenchrome 4y agoIt sounds like you had an interesting observation but it’s not clear to me. Can you state it more plainly? What kind of organization? I have also noticed FBers have a certain kind of personality. Vaguely utopian but removed from reality with a heavy emphasis on hedonism.
- olivermarks 4y ago@goldenchrome - Facebook: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. Italian philosopher & Minister of Public Education under Mussolini Giovanni Gentile, who was arguably the architect of 1930's Italian fascism.
- throw_pm23 4y agoSorry for sounding cryptic, it is hard to pin down exactly, but I somehow see Zuckerberg himself kind of like that; maybe someone who likes technical problems, but sees human relations in a kind of formulaic way, and oblivious to ethical consequences of technical work, not interested in the classics or humanities.
- protastus 4y ago> oblivious to ethical consequences of technical work He was told about the consequences pretty much from day 1. I don't think anyone at Facebook (especially not Zuckerberg) gets to be oblivious.
- forkwhilefork 4y agoWho are you to judge? Maybe they needed to support sick kids or parents. Arrogant and ignorant statement.
- tomcam 4y agoGreat point. It was a question not a statement but I like your perspective a lot. Thank you.
- ketzo 4y agoI mean, by almost any measure, some of the most brilliant programmers of the past 20 years have worked in ads at Google and Facebook, yes.
- jimbokun 4y agoSounds like you are trying to equate “intelligent” with “wise and good”. FAANG unquestionably soaked up a lot of highly intelligent people, and built a lot of clever stuff and solved a lot of challenging technical problems. To a worthwhile end, maybe not so much.