11 ms·

I stopped reading this when I got to "Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a

by powera 13y ago

I stopped reading this when I got to "Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a sexting app?" - there was the cover article in Time Magazine not less than 2 weeks ago about these very engineers fixing healthcare.gov, and describing why they don't do it permanently (government procurement is awful and almost always unrelated to actual skill for websites, and the healthcare.gov site is generally described as incredibly badly written by the initial contractors). The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise.

Vervious 13y ago
> The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise. I'm curious what facts you're talking about. The very problems you point out about healthcare.gov support part of the author's argument - that today's tech environment rewards the creation of a sexting app over more groundbreaking work, and therefore youth do the former. From my perspective, at least, few of Silicon Valley's startups will have a lasting dent in the human world. Funding for spaceship technology is limited, more people are working on note-taking apps than cleaning the air, and the hype is all on Snapchat (which does have a huge valuation). The real issue is how we change it; change inevitably comes from youth. And if today's youth come out of college excited about sexting apps, I have little trust in a better future. That being said, I'm not in a position to say much, being a college student myself.
- fantnn 13y ago
  Government projects of x size require companies with a, b, c qualifications, such as size, income and other factors. I've worked for 2 such companies before, and it was a nightmare of micromanagement, changing requirements, and general feeling of "what I do isn't having an effect on the world." You clearly have never worked at such a place before or you'd understand.
- zanny 13y ago
  Then blame consumers and investors that fund sexting over space travel or cancer cures, because that is why all the entrepreneurs jump on it. If there were monetary demand for a cancer cure, and I mean real billions a year in venture capital into R&D on the subject, that nobody was using - you would see a dearth of sexting apps, at least for a while, while that VC funding is consumed. Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue.
  - Vervious 13y ago
    > Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue. I completely agree with you. I suppose that the angst comes from the idealism that always surrounded Silicon Valley, that we were here to build big things and change the world. And that arguably isn't happening right now, with the exception of the efforts of a few well-established companies.
  - aswanson 13y ago
    I can't help but be reminded of the quote: “You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”
    - smtddr 13y ago
      This hits home for me. It took a lot of courage for me to leave at&t when I did. It was my first job out of college, I just got saddled with a mortgage and was soon to be married to a lady who would be 100% dependent on me at first since I was bringing her to USA from Nigeria. When I told my soon-to-be-wife and the rest of my family that after nearly 6 years, I was leaving the well established corporation AT&T for a San Francisco start-up of less than 20 people.... they were not on board. This was back in 2007. Today, everything worked out. Outside of this debate about tech, in general people should avoid living simply to survive. You will regret it later when you're 60yrs old and realize all you've done with your live was... not die.
  - pron 13y ago
    Sure, but that's a culture problem. If you give people drugs, they get hooked and want more, so you sell them what they want and make a lot of money. "Dumb-tech" works like drugs. How can you stop consumers' addiction to those drugs without making them illegal? That's a hard question. But the thing we must remember is that something the market wants and pays a lot of money for is not always good for society – it is often harmful. You can easily turn most people into junkies; putting them all through rehab is hard (but worthwhile).
- dsernst 13y ago
  Not all youth wants to work on sexting apps. I'm 20 and working on a group problem-solving platform using a bug-tracking approach to address real world issues. And it's open-source :-) Would love to hear from anyone interested: http://maybethismatters.org http://maybethismatters.org
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Huh. Hold on. Let's go check the "Who's Hiring" monthly job listings here on Hacker News. Usually, when I read those, I see about 40% stupid-but-sexy bullshit, 40% dull but genuinely significant companies whose product does make life better for its users (for example: healthcare analytics companies), 15% awesome idealistic ventures, and the remaining 5% is either complete weird bullshit or the awesomest, coolest radical ventures I've ever seen.
michaelochurch 13y ago
You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are systemic problems with governments contracting out software. The substance/cool chasm is real (find my other post in this thread) and vicious.
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of meetings. The people I know that are in their twenties and trying to fix cancer are being met with the horrible baby boomer mentality about everything.
  - metaphorm 13y ago
    You have just exemplified the issue completely. Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".
    - angersock 13y ago
      Yeah, fuck that noise. "Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay. Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it. But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking is a pressing issue. EDIT: I'll be still more blunt--the people who gain the most from us "making the world a better place" are those with kids and a stake in society. You are trying to take advantage of us. You should've gotten us healthcare, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us a safety net, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us cheaper student loans, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us more affordable housing, but you fucked it up. So, no, I'm not going to help you beat cancer so you can spend an extra year with your kids (who are going to be bankrupt the rest of their lives because of your medical bills). EDIT2: You couldn't even manage to kick out the bastards in office who are running the alphabet-soup agencies that are ruining our country. There. There's your fucking legacy.
thewarrior 13y ago
I found the article to be a nice summary of the current Silicon Valley zeitgeist. Someone who has never really followed developments in technology can get a nice overview by reading this article.
jmsduran 13y ago
I don't blame people choosing to work in other business areas rather than putting their efforts in fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc. Why? Because it's honestly very hard work, often with little recognition and less pay. People trying to innovate or 'disrupt' these fields are up against deep rooted political institutions, large corporations with millions to spend on lobbying efforts, and a broken legal/patent system that favors those who exploit its many loopholes. That said, I have great respect for people who devote their time and effort for the greater good.
- caycep 13y ago
  Especially with the way academic science / biotech is run. Some reasons off the top of my head: -Curing cancer (i.e. biotech/biomedical research) often requires a lot of startup overhead. Engineering training is hard, and I am sure there are a lot of expensive hardware and laboratory equipment, as well as similar levels of bureaucracies and personalities to deal with. But a similar startup training path in bio requires - wet labs, animal labs, and associated support (including feeding, caring, ethics oversight which is important but adds additional time and effort to everything). The medical angle adds both additional regulatory, ethics, and safety considerations, as well as political egos from MD's, hospital admins, university chairmen, etc. -Pay: in the commercial/private sector, I am sure things are probably a little better, but with more strings. But you can choose to fight in the VC funding space, for bigger pots of money, vs. jumping into the right for NIH R01s, R21s where the politics and competition are brutal. The basics are not dissimilar - VCs like founders with track records and ideally a minimum viable product or proof of concept, NIH grant reviewers like proposals from established labs (who have a lot of money and data already). Just that it seems the pot is a lot tighter for people trying to get money from the government. The DoD maybe better in this regard. -Culture: Are you going to be a founder or early employee, with equity and potential for higher raises? Or are you going to be a postdoc making $40-60k for the next decade of your life? That being said, I do know people do it, i.e. the "Craig Venter model". They don't tend to get a lot of press, though, and they often exit to big pharma or big devices (medtronic...)
- api 13y ago
  "fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc." I think a big part of it is less pay. Important things pay very little compared to frivolous metoo.io apps and social advertising and whatever. Capitalism is a greedy optimizer. When it finds a local maximum it goes all in. It does not explore the fitness landscape.
pseut 13y ago
So you stopped because of a rhetorical question?
badman_ting 13y ago
It's funny how that line of thinking should boil down to "capitalism, or at least the way we are practicing it, misallocates resources", but the thought-buck always stops with the smart people. There's no "well, I the incentives must say these people should work on sexting apps, and they are acting rationally, I wonder why the incentives are that way?", it's just "Ugh! You're smart! Stop it with the sexting and start with the curing!" An expression of outrage and disgust with no follow-up -- someone else should work for the good of the world, I'm just a regular person trying to feed my family.
- michaelt 13y ago
  People who believe incentives are destiny tend not to take jobs writing for the New York Times. It's not like journalists enjoy high pay or great job security. Maybe the author of this piece believes "I don't do X for the money, I do X to make the world a better place / for the love of X". Many people in the arts, education, charities, research etc act as if they believe this. Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.
  - bertil 13y ago
    There is a third, and far more likely option: they applied, and were rejected. Recruitment process are terrible through out, and world-changing institutions are no exception. Let me know when I can fix cancer or neurological disease: I know how well enough to make a significant contribution. While I wait, three head-hunters have called about that virtual good start-up… Also: (b) is far more likely than (a).
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    >Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it. Yet another third option: the people with opportunity to change the world do have the desire, but are working on something else at the moment. It's a sad fact that the world has an extreme shortage of people with both competence and idealism, because our social system has a strange urge to exterminate idealism at all costs[1]. [1] -- http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide
tungwaiyip 13y ago
The subtitle reads "In start-up land, the young barely talk to the old (and vice versa)". WTF do the author get this observation from? Looks like an unsubstantiated assumption to me. Other than an making an allegation, there is no reference to this through out the very long article.
xivzgrev 13y ago
Yup i stopped at same point. I'd add a point. It's also because young people don't fully grasp the cost / benefit analysis - they don't know the pain, and they don't know how to develop & implement the solution. I might have a cool idea to cure cancer, but it'd be a difficult search to even figure out if it's been done before: lot of learning to do. Whereas a quick scan of app store and talking with a few buddies tells me if my idea for a sexting app has been done.
nathanvanfleet 13y ago
I think you should give the whole article a chance. It's about the dichotomy of tech industry and has more solid point of view if you read it the way through
krschultz 13y ago
Approximately 2296 days ago I started reflexively down voting anyone that starts a comment with 'I stopped reading this when X ...'. If you didn't finish the article, then I don't think you are qualified to judge whether or not the author has a point.
- bicknergseng 13y ago
  Did you stop reading the comment at 'I stopped reading this when X ...'? Meta irony!
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jljljl 13y ago
    They never said they stopped reading. Maybe you didn't read the parent post :)
randy 13y ago
I'm one of the engineers working on fixing healthcare.gov with a whole bunch of other Silicon Valley engineers. See relevant Time article and Hacker News discussion a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442 There are certainly problems here, but that's why it's even more important to have talented people (especially engineers or SREs) come help. If you know anybody who'd like to help on a temporary rotation or permanently, please point them to: jobs@hcgov.us
- judk 13y ago
  Since the SRE dream team fixed healthcare.gov so quickly, it seems it must have been mostly done decently well, but lacking a bit in QA and followthrough. Or do you think you could have put a web/db system in place from a cold start just about as fast?

by powera 13y ago

Vervious 13y ago

> The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise. I'm curious what facts you're talking about. The very problems you point out about healthcare.gov support part of the author's argument - that today's tech environment rewards the creation of a sexting app over more groundbreaking work, and therefore youth do the former. From my perspective, at least, few of Silicon Valley's startups will have a lasting dent in the human world. Funding for spaceship technology is limited, more people are working on note-taking apps than cleaning the air, and the hype is all on Snapchat (which does have a huge valuation). The real issue is how we change it; change inevitably comes from youth. And if today's youth come out of college excited about sexting apps, I have little trust in a better future. That being said, I'm not in a position to say much, being a college student myself.

fantnn 13y ago
Government projects of x size require companies with a, b, c qualifications, such as size, income and other factors. I've worked for 2 such companies before, and it was a nightmare of micromanagement, changing requirements, and general feeling of "what I do isn't having an effect on the world." You clearly have never worked at such a place before or you'd understand.
zanny 13y ago
Then blame consumers and investors that fund sexting over space travel or cancer cures, because that is why all the entrepreneurs jump on it. If there were monetary demand for a cancer cure, and I mean real billions a year in venture capital into R&D on the subject, that nobody was using - you would see a dearth of sexting apps, at least for a while, while that VC funding is consumed. Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue.
- Vervious 13y ago
  > Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue. I completely agree with you. I suppose that the angst comes from the idealism that always surrounded Silicon Valley, that we were here to build big things and change the world. And that arguably isn't happening right now, with the exception of the efforts of a few well-established companies.
- aswanson 13y ago
  I can't help but be reminded of the quote: “You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”
  - smtddr 13y ago
    This hits home for me. It took a lot of courage for me to leave at&t when I did. It was my first job out of college, I just got saddled with a mortgage and was soon to be married to a lady who would be 100% dependent on me at first since I was bringing her to USA from Nigeria. When I told my soon-to-be-wife and the rest of my family that after nearly 6 years, I was leaving the well established corporation AT&T for a San Francisco start-up of less than 20 people.... they were not on board. This was back in 2007. Today, everything worked out. Outside of this debate about tech, in general people should avoid living simply to survive. You will regret it later when you're 60yrs old and realize all you've done with your live was... not die.
- pron 13y ago
  Sure, but that's a culture problem. If you give people drugs, they get hooked and want more, so you sell them what they want and make a lot of money. "Dumb-tech" works like drugs. How can you stop consumers' addiction to those drugs without making them illegal? That's a hard question. But the thing we must remember is that something the market wants and pays a lot of money for is not always good for society – it is often harmful. You can easily turn most people into junkies; putting them all through rehab is hard (but worthwhile).
dsernst 13y ago
Not all youth wants to work on sexting apps. I'm 20 and working on a group problem-solving platform using a bug-tracking approach to address real world issues. And it's open-source :-) Would love to hear from anyone interested: http://maybethismatters.org http://maybethismatters.org
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Huh. Hold on. Let's go check the "Who's Hiring" monthly job listings here on Hacker News. Usually, when I read those, I see about 40% stupid-but-sexy bullshit, 40% dull but genuinely significant companies whose product does make life better for its users (for example: healthcare analytics companies), 15% awesome idealistic ventures, and the remaining 5% is either complete weird bullshit or the awesomest, coolest radical ventures I've ever seen.

michaelochurch 13y ago

You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are systemic problems with governments contracting out software. The substance/cool chasm is real (find my other post in this thread) and vicious.

3pt14159 13y ago
Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of meetings. The people I know that are in their twenties and trying to fix cancer are being met with the horrible baby boomer mentality about everything.
- metaphorm 13y ago
  You have just exemplified the issue completely. Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".
  - angersock 13y ago
    Yeah, fuck that noise. "Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay. Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it. But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking is a pressing issue. EDIT: I'll be still more blunt--the people who gain the most from us "making the world a better place" are those with kids and a stake in society. You are trying to take advantage of us. You should've gotten us healthcare, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us a safety net, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us cheaper student loans, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us more affordable housing, but you fucked it up. So, no, I'm not going to help you beat cancer so you can spend an extra year with your kids (who are going to be bankrupt the rest of their lives because of your medical bills). EDIT2: You couldn't even manage to kick out the bastards in office who are running the alphabet-soup agencies that are ruining our country. There. There's your fucking legacy.

thewarrior 13y ago

I found the article to be a nice summary of the current Silicon Valley zeitgeist. Someone who has never really followed developments in technology can get a nice overview by reading this article.

jmsduran 13y ago

I don't blame people choosing to work in other business areas rather than putting their efforts in fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc. Why? Because it's honestly very hard work, often with little recognition and less pay. People trying to innovate or 'disrupt' these fields are up against deep rooted political institutions, large corporations with millions to spend on lobbying efforts, and a broken legal/patent system that favors those who exploit its many loopholes. That said, I have great respect for people who devote their time and effort for the greater good.

caycep 13y ago
Especially with the way academic science / biotech is run. Some reasons off the top of my head: -Curing cancer (i.e. biotech/biomedical research) often requires a lot of startup overhead. Engineering training is hard, and I am sure there are a lot of expensive hardware and laboratory equipment, as well as similar levels of bureaucracies and personalities to deal with. But a similar startup training path in bio requires - wet labs, animal labs, and associated support (including feeding, caring, ethics oversight which is important but adds additional time and effort to everything). The medical angle adds both additional regulatory, ethics, and safety considerations, as well as political egos from MD's, hospital admins, university chairmen, etc. -Pay: in the commercial/private sector, I am sure things are probably a little better, but with more strings. But you can choose to fight in the VC funding space, for bigger pots of money, vs. jumping into the right for NIH R01s, R21s where the politics and competition are brutal. The basics are not dissimilar - VCs like founders with track records and ideally a minimum viable product or proof of concept, NIH grant reviewers like proposals from established labs (who have a lot of money and data already). Just that it seems the pot is a lot tighter for people trying to get money from the government. The DoD maybe better in this regard. -Culture: Are you going to be a founder or early employee, with equity and potential for higher raises? Or are you going to be a postdoc making $40-60k for the next decade of your life? That being said, I do know people do it, i.e. the "Craig Venter model". They don't tend to get a lot of press, though, and they often exit to big pharma or big devices (medtronic...)
api 13y ago
"fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc." I think a big part of it is less pay. Important things pay very little compared to frivolous metoo.io apps and social advertising and whatever. Capitalism is a greedy optimizer. When it finds a local maximum it goes all in. It does not explore the fitness landscape.

pseut 13y ago

So you stopped because of a rhetorical question?

badman_ting 13y ago

It's funny how that line of thinking should boil down to "capitalism, or at least the way we are practicing it, misallocates resources", but the thought-buck always stops with the smart people. There's no "well, I the incentives must say these people should work on sexting apps, and they are acting rationally, I wonder why the incentives are that way?", it's just "Ugh! You're smart! Stop it with the sexting and start with the curing!" An expression of outrage and disgust with no follow-up -- someone else should work for the good of the world, I'm just a regular person trying to feed my family.

michaelt 13y ago
People who believe incentives are destiny tend not to take jobs writing for the New York Times. It's not like journalists enjoy high pay or great job security. Maybe the author of this piece believes "I don't do X for the money, I do X to make the world a better place / for the love of X". Many people in the arts, education, charities, research etc act as if they believe this. Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.
- bertil 13y ago
  There is a third, and far more likely option: they applied, and were rejected. Recruitment process are terrible through out, and world-changing institutions are no exception. Let me know when I can fix cancer or neurological disease: I know how well enough to make a significant contribution. While I wait, three head-hunters have called about that virtual good start-up… Also: (b) is far more likely than (a).
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it. Yet another third option: the people with opportunity to change the world do have the desire, but are working on something else at the moment. It's a sad fact that the world has an extreme shortage of people with both competence and idealism, because our social system has a strange urge to exterminate idealism at all costs[1]. [1] -- http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide

tungwaiyip 13y ago

The subtitle reads "In start-up land, the young barely talk to the old (and vice versa)". WTF do the author get this observation from? Looks like an unsubstantiated assumption to me. Other than an making an allegation, there is no reference to this through out the very long article.

xivzgrev 13y ago

Yup i stopped at same point. I'd add a point. It's also because young people don't fully grasp the cost / benefit analysis - they don't know the pain, and they don't know how to develop & implement the solution. I might have a cool idea to cure cancer, but it'd be a difficult search to even figure out if it's been done before: lot of learning to do. Whereas a quick scan of app store and talking with a few buddies tells me if my idea for a sexting app has been done.

nathanvanfleet 13y ago

I think you should give the whole article a chance. It's about the dichotomy of tech industry and has more solid point of view if you read it the way through

krschultz 13y ago

Approximately 2296 days ago I started reflexively down voting anyone that starts a comment with 'I stopped reading this when X ...'. If you didn't finish the article, then I don't think you are qualified to judge whether or not the author has a point.

bicknergseng 13y ago
Did you stop reading the comment at 'I stopped reading this when X ...'? Meta irony!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jljljl 13y ago
  They never said they stopped reading. Maybe you didn't read the parent post :)

randy 13y ago

I'm one of the engineers working on fixing healthcare.gov with a whole bunch of other Silicon Valley engineers. See relevant Time article and Hacker News discussion a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442 There are certainly problems here, but that's why it's even more important to have talented people (especially engineers or SREs) come help. If you know anybody who'd like to help on a temporary rotation or permanently, please point them to: jobs@hcgov.us

judk 13y ago
Since the SRE dream team fixed healthcare.gov so quickly, it seems it must have been mostly done decently well, but lacking a bit in QA and followthrough. Or do you think you could have put a web/db system in place from a cold start just about as fast?