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Ask HN: What are the smartest people you know working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the smartest people you know working on?

#71

Post by jackgolding »

eloff wrote: post #56
btrettel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at a job that pays way too much money to even consider anything else. I've seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere, and I don't understand it. While I can't speak for others, there are many jobs I probably wouldn't take regardless of how much they paid. These jobs often harm society or are bad for other reasons (lack of autonomy, burnout, etc.). Most jobs I'm qualified for pay me enough that I'm happy. Once I reach…

I think everyone has a price. Offer me enough and I'll reluctantly optimize advertising click through working with a 20 year old code base written in PHP with no tests and the only comments being the sarcastic rants of the anguished souls crushed before me.

yep and the problem with this is its a lot harder to move from 100k down to 50k a year than what people think.

Re: Ask HN: What are the smartest people you know working on?

#72

Post by DoctorOetker »

flossball wrote: post #23

If I was douchie enough - I am working on p2p internetless cryptocurrency transfers and distributed ID. Otherwise it would be antiphishing, improved open source debuggers, and RISCV implementations.

I am interested in your idea on offline cryptocurrency, how would that work?

Also the distributed ID.

Where can I read your thoughts?

Re: Ask HN: What are the smartest people you know working on?

#73

Post by rajacombinator »

nexus2045 wrote: post #24

High frequency trading. Built enough of a nest egg (probably < 5MM) at age of 30 and will go off to pursue his own goals. Before you think that "talent was wasted on a zero-sum game", keep in mind that the rest of my peers in the same age group are likely to be working even more inconsequential desk jobs while paying off mortgages for the rest of their lives.

Working for himself or for a fund? Just curious if there's really room in that space for 1-5mm with all the big fish in the water. Feel free to ping me offline if up for it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the smartest people you know working on?

#74

Post by criddell »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #60
aphextron wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Getting people to click on advertisements. Came here to post the same, as I take a break from getting people to click on advertisements, at a job that pays way too much money to even consider anything else. It's pretty damn depressing that the brightest minds of our generation have been sucked up by these companies that really do nothing but further meaningless consumerism. When people ask what I do, I say I work at…

I think it depends on what you’re promoting. I run an ad agency and we do mostly Facebook ads, but we only take clients that do something positive with their work. If you’re promoting people or causes that you believe in, it’s rewarding work. I know people though that just push random products on users and they hate it. For me, it’s all a matter of perspective and purpose.

I don't have a big problem with ads on broadcast television or billboards or in magazines. But I don't see how you can feel good about what you do if it requires harnessing the surveillance apparatus of Facebook. Even if you are promoting something positive, doing so on the back of a company like Facebook just feels wrong.

Re: Ask HN: What are the smartest people you know working on?

#77

Post by BjoernKW »

Some currently spend a lot of their time on servicing and properly orchestrating Docker and related infrastructure (the actual product they're working on, mark you, isn't Docker-related ...).

On a much more positive note though a particularly smart person I know works on speech recognition software that uses linguistic features in order to assess communication skills and to some extent psychological properties (in an anonymous, privacy-compliant fashion) such as current predisposition for depression (which can manifest in features like pitch, voice melody and prosody).

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