29 ms·

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is

• galleywest200 2y ago
  All of those people you listed as examples were legally and duly appointed/hired for their roles and not given carte-blanche over agencies without oversight.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• makizar 2y ago
  source ?
• valbaca 2y ago
  Source? and what's the median? Also, that was during WW2 which would likely skew those #s (though I would actually expect to much older, as in not most-fit-military age)
  • tjhill 2y ago
    Richard Rhodes' introduction to Serber's "The Los Alamos Primer" suggests 24: > Despite this leavening of older men (Oppenheimer was thirty-eight), the group's average age was only twenty-four.
  • generj 2y ago
    The field being relatively new also heavily influenced the scientists being so young. The age of modern quantum mechanics started in 1925. Heisenberg received the Nobel Prize for his 1927 work on the uncertainty principle in 1932 at the age of 31. 10 years later the Manhattan Project started. There just weren’t that many older scientists with training in the field. Young PhDs were only a few years removed from the first discoveries that enabled nuclear physics to leap forward.
• rtpg 2y ago
  If you look at the Manhattan project org chart and take people randomly at the top, they're all at least in their 40s. "There are young people on the project" is a thing but at the end of the day things like the Manhattan Project are downstream of the will of an entire behemoth (at least in theory attempting to represent the will of the people), balancing various interests and ethical or moral questions that are usually downstream of some experience. They also have gone through the military chain of command... I didn't see Musk's confirmation hearing. OMB's head needs to be Senat confirmed, Musk is giving OMB orders and took over their e-mail addresses. Where's the hearing? Where's the confirmation?
  • whimsicalism 2y ago
    i feel that a lot of people are commenting without knowing a lot about the government. putting aside whether Trump is exceeding his statutory authority (he very well might be with this USAID stuff, he certainly has with his past XOs), you can have an executive branch position with access and managerial control without being confirmed. who confirms the White House Chief of Staff?
    • rtpg 2y ago
      The default is that congress has to confirm _all officers_ in the executive branch, and it's only by delegation through law that you get other behavior. That's my understanding at least. To my knowledge the Chief of Staff does not have the power to coerce other people to do things directly. Any "actual" coercion would have to go through someone like the President, right? And my dumb thought is if DOGE is going around telling OMB and Treasury what to do (and seemingly is willing to call the US Marshalls on people who stand in their way) and the head of the OMB requires senate confirmation... well what are we doing here? There's a bunch of nuance you can play at a micro level (for example, Musk messaging Trump to do a thing and Trump giving an OK), though in that case that's also newsworthy and important, because it properly associates who is responsible for what is going on! Right now we have somebody who seems to be running rampant doing whatever he wants, and this lack of explicit association with the rest of the executive make it unclear who is actually calling the shots here. And if Trump isn't calling the shots... again, where's the confirmation?
• zasz 2y ago
  That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Los-Alamos-age-statistics.jpg https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L... Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39 So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.
  • sberens 2y ago
    These are not the only 6 engineers working for DOGE, just the youngest. They have supervision as well.
    • UltraSane 2y ago
      They are all breaking the law.
      • sam345 2y ago
        Evidence? There is no evidence of that. Broad allegations that it is illegal doesn't cut it. Even Schumer is not making that claim. All he is doing is complaining. The executive branch has the power to police themselves it's not that difficult to understand that you can audit your own agency. There's nothing illegal going on.
        • sgarland 2y ago
          Schumer literally said what they’ve done to USAID is illegal. > …we know that unilaterally closing USAID is illegal. [0]: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/leader-schumer-floor-remarks-condemning-doge-and-the-trump-administrations-illegal-seizure-of-usaid-putting-american-security-at-risk https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/lea...
          • prvc 2y ago
            Which law, specifically?
• alfalfasprout 2y ago
  First, there's hardly any evidence that these are anywhere near "brilliant engineers" let alone 1%. Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. Some might be interesting, sure. But it's hardly relevant to operating in a complex organization. But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged access to sensitive data to folks without any kind of oversight. It's a total mess. It's hyperbolic to the n-th degree to call these "the best of nerds" as well.
  • crooked-v 2y ago
    > Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. And there's that one guy whose entire work history is as a summer camp counselor.
    • oblio 2y ago
      Who is that?
      • mminer237 2y ago
        He's talking about Edward Coristine, aka "bigballs", though it's not the only thing on his résumé: https://bsky.app/profile/jsweetli.bsky.social/post/3lh5hr3hsc22k https://bsky.app/profile/jsweetli.bsky.social/post/3lh5hr3hs...
  • mvkel 2y ago
    Sure, and there's a sprinter who can outrun Usain Bolt who just happened to become an accountant instead
  • jamala1 2y ago
    Probably still better than the non-technical people usually governing things.
    • d4mi3n 2y ago
• booleandilemma 2y ago
  I think it's really cool they have the Herculaneum Papyrii guy working for them! It's a shame Wired is behaving this way.
  • brazzy 2y ago
    [flagged]
• binary_slinger 2y ago
  > The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%. Wheres the evidence of their brilliance? A few projects in GitHub isn’t impressive. Seriously if they’re brilliant this is the perfect PR opportunity to highlight the highly talented people making a difference. But instead we have secrecy. I suspect the real reason for these choices is they needed people who are young and naive, will not ask too many questions, easy to manipulate, and coerced to work long for little pay.
  • an_guy 2y ago
    Wheres the evidence of them not being brilliant? Just because they have fewer github projects, they are not talented? Also please point to the last federal employee in IT sector who were highlighted for their "Talent and Brilliance".
    • maeil 2y ago
      Asking for people to prove the negative? I swear these posts are now being flooded by X types who only comment on these kinds of posts - and what a surprise, looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff, solely on politics - this level of reasoning used to be absent from here regardless of political inclination.
      • an_guy 2y ago
        Burden of proof lies on GP for his claims > looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff As opposed to yours, which is even more politically charged with clear bias and scarce technical posts? You must be an ideal HN user with "no bias" and "high reasoning" I assume...
        • maeil 2y ago
          Never mentioned "no bias" or "reasoning", great job making things up there. It's not about bias, it's about being a real, actual HN user instead of coming here with a particular goal. HackerNews, a tech/startup community. I have and continue to comment plenty on tech/startup stuff that interests me, as well as other random things that aren'tUS politics. The last few weeks in particular there's been a flood of US political posts so I've commented on those as well. Your history shows being here for a different reason, only engaging with that single topic.
• drawkward 2y ago
  So you are saying this is a team developing a tool to nuke the government?
• boringg 2y ago
  You cant compare manhattan project, NASA to a bunch of good software techs ripping apart the government. The first two projects required high levels of intelligence and new concepts. These guys are the modern equivalent of name any destructive revolutionary group looking for stuff they don't agree with. I don't however refute that you can be a brilliant mind and active contributor at any age. Just that these guys aren't anywhere close to the same page as our greatest minds.
  • sgarland 2y ago
    Not to mention, NASA famously has incredibly strict coding standards and guidelines [0]. I somehow doubt there’s anything along those lines at DOGE. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_10:_Rules_for_Developing_Safety-Critical_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_10:_Rules_for_Dev...
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• fermentation 2y ago
  They may be brilliant engineers, but they’re adults who’ve decided to become enemies of the state.
  • rufus_foreman 2y ago
    Wait, what?
    • rvz 2y ago
      [flagged]
• melbourne_mat 2y ago
  The great thing about young people is that they haven't had much time to develop a moral compass. I'd say that makes them perfect for the roles they've been given
  • epolanski 2y ago
    Interestingly, I see it the other way. Young people tend to be more ideological and ready to fight for what they care. The older you get, the more problems you have (bills, health, children, etc) the less you care imho.
    • c22 2y ago
      The older you get the more discerning you become around what is worth caring about.
      • tartoran 2y ago
        I think there's a middle ground. Very young people are inexperienced but old people are also manipulable too. Probably the most fruitful average ages for doing the right thing are between 40 and 65. I think there are a lot more exceptions for older people than younger ones.
      • butlike 2y ago
        To put your sentiment a different way: The older you get, the more you realize you're a surgeon who should potentially only 'cut once.'
• UltraSane 2y ago
  The age is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the fact that the engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project were all qualified and legally hired and authorized to do what they did. This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right to the federal payment system and no legal authority to stop any payments congress has approved.
  • catmanjan 2y ago
    Hilarious irony here, given that these qualified and legally hired people built the most morally reprehensible weapon in history
    • UltraSane 2y ago
      Likewise what Musk is doing is also morally reprehensible. It is the most unconstitutional power grab any US Citizen has tried is a very long time.
      • sam345 2y ago
        Please explain that to me? Where is the illegality and unconstitutionality? Agencies are part of the executive branch. This particularly agency was created by executive order. The executive branch can police itself. Just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it's illegal. What is illegal is USAID spending money that is violating the current president's executive order. Bringing that to light is not illegal. In fact it is the duty of the executive to make sure that his orders are being carried out.
        • sgarland 2y ago
          [flagged]
        • SmarsJerry 2y ago
          I dont know if people are lying and/or intentionally gaslighting. DOGE brings information to Trump, Trump acts on it. The illegal part is made up by their political opponents who have apparently being using governmental agencies use to influence other countries to also influence the US - that’s where they went wrong.
• not_a_bot_4sho 2y ago
  > Perhaps one reason startups work so well As a veteran of startups, this puzzles me. I assume it's a perception that successful startups are the majority of startups. (They are not.)
• nxobject 2y ago
  Good grief, don’t identify me and the rest of HN with then. I don’t want to be “us” with people in government who make a virtue out of being unaccountable solely because they’re successful engineers.
• courseofaction 2y ago
  They are violating many, many laws. They should be named.
  • natch 2y ago
    Yes, name the laws.
    • hypothesis 2y ago
      > The Privacy Act of 1974 generally, and the Internal Revenue Code with respect to taxpayer information, make it unlawful for Secretary Bessent to hand over access to the Bureau’s records on individuals to Elon Musk or other members of DOGE. Among numerous other laws listed in https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/1-Complaint-7.pdf https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/1-Complaint-7.pdf
      • nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • hypothesis 2y ago
          Are you really calling federal law passed by US Congress and signed by POTUS a rule? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_Act_of_1974 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_Act_of_1974
        • kelnos 2y ago
          What bad things? What criminals? You're making things up.
        • bloomingkales 2y ago
          Should we be downvoting this person? How can we speak with this person? Bro, we need to reason with you, keep coming back.
        • whateveracct 2y ago
• kamaal 2y ago
  >>Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. As some one who just turned 40. This does make sense. Perhaps the biggest deal about aging especially in the downswing is the countdown to death keeps getting closer as you go. You do tend to care less about things around you. Im beyond the point I would take offence on anything, but Im also beyond the point I would do something to impress somebody. There is no trying twice from here. Things either work with something/somebody or you move on to something/somebody that does/do. I definitely was more tenacious as a young man, with projects and relationships. I'd move heavens to make something work. Now they have work or something new is sought. As an aging person I care more about less noise, bullshit and more stability. Guys like me are needed for continuity of life. Whereas younger men are needed to bring about big leap frog changes. The world needs the young and old for both progress and sanity.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• RIMR 2y ago
  I don't care how smart they are. They are committing crimes in service to fascism. Speak for yourself in your use of the word "us".
• cozzyd 2y ago
  All the bigger shame they're illegally seizing government systems.
• doctorpangloss 2y ago
  They are all beneficiaries of affirmative action, for libertarians, in case you are wondering why these guys and not more competent or mercenary people, which are both abundant.
• farrarstan 2y ago
  [dead]
• stefap2 2y ago
  It is legal to make a federal government employee’s name, role, and salary publicly accessible because taxpayer-funded positions fall under the scope of public interest and open-records laws, which promote transparency and accountability in the use of government funds. You can find this information on official databases like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, which routinely publishes data about federal employees’ salaries and positions, as well as on other government websites that provide access to public records.
• ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  There were at least a couple of guys on the Manhattan project giving information to Russia as well.
• seanhunter 2y ago
  > Perhaps one reason startups work so well… If you take any individual startup its probability of success is very low. Most startups fail. There is a very extreme survivorship bias at work when people say startups work well or that particular tactics are why startups are great etc (pointing at a successful startup). Startups as a whole produce a lot of innovation because there is this extreme Darwinian process where the vast majority fail and a few succeed but you have a huge amount of risk-taking in parallel in a very compressed time frame. Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme. So by definition government is going to be slower-moving and more risk-averse. They are essentially paying to reduce the standard deviation of possible outcomes because they can’t afford the risk of the extreme negative tail.
  • kamaal 2y ago
    >>Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme. Im guessing they will eventually discover why bureaucracy even exists. That is to move slow enough to ensure big mistakes become impossible and provide stability for newer things to happen at their own pace. Im guessing any chaos inside bureaucracy for as little as a decade could cause a lost century to a country. The cost of stabilising, course correcting, recovering and then going on upwards could take decades.
    • wussboy 2y ago
      Civil society is a precious gift, one that is hard to build and easy to destroy.
  • niceice 2y ago
    Perhaps you don't realize how badly run the government is and how much of a problem that is in real terms. Education, physical and mental health, cost of living, healthcare, wealth inequality. They've all gotten worse the past few decades, would you agree? The NYT just reported that the federal government lost $236 billion to apparent fraud ("improper payments") in 2023 alone. The US GAO says "2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud" USAID literally set up fake AIDS prevention workshops to topple foreign governments https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/04/report-u-s-aid-used-hiv-program-in-cuba-to-foment-rebellion/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/0... This is a small sample of the extreme waste, fraud and abuse, while we have very serious issues here on the ground that are systematically ignored. For DECADES. Unaddressed. Fixing this is what the majority of voters voted for and are rightfully thrilled to see these brilliant young tech nerds untangle the beurocratic leviathon. There will be, and have been, mistakes, things deleted that shouldn't have been. Anything important and that the people actually want, will be added back in. DOGE was upfront about this process.
• drbojingle 2y ago
  Not just that but you CAN train people. It's possible for juniors to learn >.>
• jorvi 2y ago
  > This is who they are bullying and putting a target on. The best of us nerds. Wilfully choosing to work for DOGE/ current Musk certainly isn't "the best of us".
• austin-cheney 2y ago
  Government is not a startup just as pizza is not a vegetable, just as prison is not a vacation from a bad job. It’s more accurate and less toxic to compare molecular oxygen to carbon monoxide. False comparisons do more harm than good. Inexperienced people imposing disruptions due to lack of experience is why young people may succeed at startups but fail at establishing companies. Likewise, government is not a startup and you really don’t want government to fail.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• anonzzzies 2y ago
  Probably won't be interpreted as such but this is an honest question; I don't care about their age really but if they are so smart, why are they taking part of an illegal operation? Befehl ist befehl? That's not very smart is it? Or are they picked because they are young and gullible and easily manipulated yet brilliant in some other areas?
  • concordDance 2y ago
    As a non-American: What's illegal here? My understanding is this is DOGE getting some analysis software in place so they can find out where the money goes and start their cuts, which I understand there is an executive order for. And my understanding is that the executive does have the power to do that sort of audit. Where has my understanding gone wrong?
    • SamoyedFurFluff 2y ago
      Handling personal information of citizens is subject to a lot of laws and protections. You can’t just put whatever software installed by whomever.
    • anonzzzies 2y ago
      I am also a non-American so yes, I would like to see your question answered too. My understanding from online reading (... but we know how that goes ...) is that that executive order cannot be given without approval and that approval was not given. But would love to hear someone with more knowledge to chime in as all the left-ish to even moderate right media are shouting all of this is illegal and overstepping.
    • IMTDb 2y ago
      As a non-american, my feeling is that it’s just about who signs the order. If Biden creates a new program by executive order and puts a non elected person in charge, republicans will cry. If Trump does the same, democrats will yell. It’s just the polarisation of the debate that is higher than before.
      • 2y ago
• cheesemonster 2y ago
  [dead]
• cedws 2y ago
  Intelligence isn’t an indicator of ability to navigate huge bureaucracies.
• adrian_b 2y ago
  Those involved in the Manhattan Project who were young were doing scientific/technical work. When dealing with organizing and managing a great number of people or resources, I have never seen a young inexperienced human performing adequately, even remotely. Old age and presumed experience is not at all a guarantee that someone would be good in such roles, but from what I have seen, young age and the associated lack of relevant experience pretty much guarantees failure in such cases.
  • pizzafeelsright 2y ago
    Their project literally killed innocent people.
• _uxvx 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• simianparrot 2y ago
  It’s good to read a comment of sanity amidst all this instinctual bellyaching whenever T or E do anything. But in particular when a formerly well respected publication writes a hit piece like this… I used to scoff when people said “TDS” was a real thing, but having observed the same with Elon over the years and then listening to hours long talks between him and others, I realised “EDS” is clearly also a thing. And lo and behold: Listening to full long-form talks with Trump revealed a person wholly different to what media portrays. And as a disclaimer, no I don’t agree with everything they do or say. But they’re not the monsters the monsters in the media machinery spin them up to be either. The real monsters are those that purposefully trim and clip and stitch together falsehoods out of context, and then believe their own lies until they’re willing to throw other citizens under a figurative bus just because they work with or for “those people”.
  • chikere232 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • msie 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • simianparrot 2y ago
      “Elon is clearly a nazi” I mean… Yeah I’m not even going to bother.
      • stormfather 2y ago
        [flagged]
      • trealira 2y ago
        Promotes antisemites on Twitter, says Jews have been stoking anti-white racism and deserve no sympathy, did multiple Nazi salutes, and then went to Germany to support the AfD and say they need to stop feeling guilty for their Nazi past. Yeah, Elon is a Nazi.
      • 2y ago
• kelnos 2y ago
  They may be smart, and may have won awards, but Musk's techno-thugs are not "the best of us". At best, they're misguided and have fallen for Musk's charisma. At worst, they're actively supporting and abetting the subversion of our democratic government.
  • goldenManatee 2y ago
    Let us also consider just how badly this continues to paint tech and tech workers to the general public. To distrust technology such as all the AI hate we see online.
    • niceice 2y ago
      It's the opposite. This paints tech nerds as the heroes.
      • watwut 2y ago
        To fascists. The rest of us are retroactively apologizing to SJWs who were right the whole time and we did not believed to.
  • chikere232 2y ago
    > At best, they're misguided and have fallen for Musk's charisma. At worst, they're actively supporting and abetting the subversion of our democratic government. They can easily be both. They're definitely the latter
  • niceice 2y ago
    They are fixing our non-democratic government that has been wasting trillions of our tax dollars, while we have increased homelessness, physical and mental health crisis, and other problems that have been ignored for decades. The NYT just reported that the federal government lost $236 billion to apparent fraud ("improper payments") in 2023 alone. The US GAO says "2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud" What Musk is doing is what the majority voted for. To finally put an end the unbelievable waste, fraud and abuse. This is exactly what he said he would do and most Americans are relieved and see hope for the first time in a long time.
• teew 2y ago
  It's great that there are young, brilliant people in research and engineering and working for business ventures. It's also very cool you remember some who started out young in the past. Hasn't got much to do with the posted article though, as that is talking about the integrity of public policy versus actors personally beholden to unelected officials and their friends reaching into US-governance.
• crocowhile 2y ago
  It does not matter. None of that has to do with the requirements of the job which, BTW, should have zero executive power and only make recommendations to Congress, the institution that has power of the purse. Do you understand that this is just a constitutional crisis? I reckon musk ended up appointing kids because they also did not understand the political and ethical implications of all this.
• chikere232 2y ago
  If they're helping overthrow democracy and the rule of law, they are not the best of us nerds. Naming and shaming them is good. No one forced them to take this job. With the skills you list they could have done any number of good or neutral things instead.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• amarcheschi 2y ago
  Putting a target on? They're dismantling the gears that make America run smoothly, and you say putting a target on? This is the point where people should start taking into consideration violent actions
• msie 2y ago
  I would be weary of nerds taking care of this nation after all I've seen in the tech industry. AirBNB, Uber, Juicero, WeWork, Theranos, Tesla, crypto...
  • pesus 2y ago
    Agreed. I used to scoff at the hate "techbros" received, but at this point the industry has done more than enough damage to deserve that derision. This is by far the biggest escalation, though.
• pavlov 2y ago
  Wernher von Braun was a brilliant young engineer, one of the best minds of his generation. At age 25 he joined a patriotic party that was full of curiosity and creativity, disrupting the stale status quo of his home country. For the next eight years he did groundbreaking work in developing rockets. In 1945 he and his youthful engineering team were actively recruited to continue their work for another country with great ambitions in space. A tremendous success for his personal career, even though the party he served fell a bit short of their goals. He was clearly "the best of us nerds". Never mind that his genius was built on slave labor and oppression. He disrupted some governments, made good money and got to work on awesome rockets! That’s what counts in life.
  • tschwimmer 2y ago
    This has shades of Robin Williams’ bar rant in Good Will Hunting.
  • almostdeadguy 2y ago
    Haha I think the irony here will fly over some heads, this is great though.
  • otras 2y ago
    "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun. Tom Lehrer - Wernher von Braun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
• goldenManatee 2y ago
  No you’re supporting treasonous actions and you must be taught and discouraged from such actions that violate the will of the people in favor of expeditiousness. Your views are a danger to a stably growing society.
• saagarjha 2y ago
  I figure more 25 year old nerds who dismantle the US government ought to be bullied. Signed, a 25 year old nerd. (While I'm at it, there's nothing special about age here. Plenty of 25 year olds are actually doing productive things for humanity. But many 40 year olds are doing it too. The difference is that they are competent and empathetic, not random guys who Elon happens to like.)
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• andyjohnson0 2y ago
  > The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%. Their youth and technical ability isn't the problem. What are problems are their inexperience and recklessness and evident lack of awareness. Government and the administrative state are serious undertakings. Move Fast and Break Things is extraordinarily dangerous in this context.
  • nxobject 2y ago
    “Move Fast and Break Things” really does only apply to the scenario where you have to clean up your own messes.
• JKolios 2y ago
  > Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. So, who's the VC that will fund the 4-9 failed governments we'll have to go through until we get a unicorn?
  • uni_rule 2y ago
    Maybe we'll get a solid Somaliland in the ensuing chaos after this current unmanaged Chapter 11 leads to a messy Chapter 7.
• deleted 2y ago
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• samirillian 2y ago
  The “problem” with youth isn’t intelligence, it’s that early twenties you are at your most confidently ideological and you’re most willing to break things. I bet the average age of a terrorist is pretty low too. The danger of the vision is the power of the vision, fix what’s broken in the bureaucracy, it’s not being fascist it’s just easier to ask forgiveness than permission! We’ll see!
• WJW 2y ago
  > one reason startups work so well Since when do startups "work well"? Some startups work well, but famously >90% of them fail. Imagine if 9 out of every 10 fires was just left alone because the fire brigade was replaced by a startup, or if 9 out 10 bridges fell down within a few years. Startups are just one of many models of running things, but they are not appropriate for everything.
  • uni_rule 2y ago
    Treating the government like a startup is gambling, the difference is startups are intentionally disposable while a Nation State... it's a fucking Nation State.
• djaychela 2y ago
  >Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status quo. Counterpoint - they don't have the wisdom and experience in the domain they are working in that older, wiser heads do. I've seen a LOT of stuff from both 'tech bros' and programmers who are new to a domain where it's clear they are 100% confident they are right, despite consensus to the contrary. And when their plans are implemented, all the things they didn't think about come into play - such as Tesla service which is terrible. These people may all be brilliant engineers. But not all problems are engineering problems, and while these people may be able to engineer a system to reduce costs drastically, they may not understand where to cut costs and where efficiency can actually be achieved. Don't forget that most of the new tech economy that people harp on about (Uber, Amazon, Tesla spring to mind) is built on the erosion of workers' rights and lowest-common-denominator treatment wherever possible.
• DrScientist 2y ago
  You need a mix of naive enthusiasm and grizzled experience. It feels a bit like that famous Joel on Software post - when faced with an existing code base - it looks over complex and you can't understand it - so you decide to re-write - only to discover during the process why it's so complex in the first place. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... Sure it's important to challenge the status quo - but it's really important to approach it with humility and to seek to understand why things are the way they are, not just to assume you know it all.
• bjourne 2y ago
  The Cultural Revolution was led by China's smartest students too.
• guax 2y ago
  Even If I take everything you said here to the T, being brilliant in making tech startups does not AT ALL mean they'll be brilliant understanding government processes and structures. This over arrogance of us techies thinking because we're good with computers we're the best at everything is what people are annoyed and, justifiably critical of. You're going to be responsible to assess and dismantle a government agency with thousands of employees and billions in budget being in your twenties with ZERO gov experience is indeed a huge red flag and not merely putting a target because they're young. We've all met incredibly accomplished people who are not to be trusted with sharp objects. Expertise in one area does not translate to another easily.
• Juliate 2y ago
  Well, even if they are, brilliance isn't everything in a human... And it shows.
• turtlesdown11 2y ago
  When the very first sentence of your premise is false, why read the rest?
• 52-6F-62 2y ago
  LOL. I’m some sort of off-brand late comer Scots Canadian so my opinion is essentially alien and invalid to people like you but I’ve got to ask: Why does the incestuous name dropping qualify anyone especially? Peter Thiel is expressly trying to (and vocally so) speed run everything into the apocolypse and is very worried about the anti christ (apparently). He’s also running a massive surveillance dragnet and wants power and money above all. Again, his words. How in the global fuck does working for or being awarded by a person with those ambitions qualify anyone for anything? You may as well have said they attend church every sunday as their qualification. If you said, well he has spent 10 years developing high availability systems and invented novel algorithms or implementations for managing high volume data flows or something then maybe there would be something to talk about. But I’ve seen baby faced juniors elevated to senior and management roles and bungle them SO badly that it alienated all the actual engineering talent again and again because they were little more than virtual blood boys. It sounds more like this latter scenario is the most likely. Its just all goddamned hype men and their blood boys up and down this grotesque beast of what was once an industry. With those words you don’t work in an industry, you serve a new segment of technolords and their only goal is to eat everything.
• mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  All those credentials and yet they lack the wisdom to see what is really happening. Maybe that had something to do with why they were chosen?
• deleted 2y ago
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• moby 2y ago
  There's some real irony here. What I'm hearing from my friends - many of whom have helped build and scale some of the most successful tech companies on the planet - is that no engineer is an exceptional one without a modicum of ethics and wisdom. These seem to be in short supply at DOGE.
  • sieabahlpark 2y ago
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• Pat_Murph 2y ago
  Don't startups fail at a very high rate though?
• butlike 2y ago
  You work on a team named after a meme. Such rhyme. Much knowledge. Wow.
• tqi 2y ago
  Smart is not the same thing as qualified. None of these qualifications you've listed have anything to do with running a government agency. People around here love to talk about the Dunning–Kruger effect, but seem to be of the mistaken belief that it is about smart vs dumb people rather than people with domain expertise vs people without.
• craftsman 2y ago
  Let's see their Pull Requests. Then you won't need to make assertions about their ability. We can have public accountability in the light of day.
• nujabe 2y ago
  > Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. The youngest scientist or engineer was Richard Feynman who was 27 years old at the time. Average age of scientists/engineers on the Manhattan Project was closer to 37. 25 sounds so absurd I don’t know how you didn’t double check your sources. The rest of your post makes some claims about NASA but stopped reading as it has to be BS as well.
• amitrip 2y ago
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