> A lot of smart people I know work a startups, but all of the smartest people I know work at FAANG/MAMAA
A lot of smart people I know work at FAANG/MAMAA, but many of the smartest people I know founded startups.
Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
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Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#12The smartest software engineers I know work on open-source software.
The smartest PEOPLE I know aren't software engineers at all.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#13The smartest people I know left tech. No, this isn't sarcasm or a joke. I do wonder if there's some sort of inverse correlation between intelligence and ability to thrive under corporate bureaucracy.
Monetizing everything in the tech sector makes doing anything in the sphere a chore, and furthers the decline of innovation at the largest levels due to the incisiveness need to appease shareholders, or corporate suit jockeys.
Someone else touched it on it briefly, the smartest people in tech are usually in OpenSource. DEFCON comes to mind when I'm asked "whos the smartest people I know"
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#14Doctors
As someone with a wife in the business, I would taper your expectations. I don't doubt many are smart, but personality wise, they're incredibly lacking. I will say the majority of the doctors from other countries are shinning examples and don't get enough praise for their ability to act quickly, especially those who hail from countries that suffer turmoil regularly.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#15It wouldn't be either, really. The smartest people I've worked with are usually not engineers at all. I started my career working on classified defense and intelligence projects and the research scientists driving new capabilities are still the only people I've ever encountered in any line of work doing things that I legitimately felt it would take me a decade to understand. Think for instance of everything Claude Shannon did while he was at Bell Labs.
Of the two, though, obviously larger companies are more likely to even be able to fund truly novel research compared to a startup. There's only so much you can do under the constraint that anything you build has to be a component of a usable product you can plausibly sell to a defined market in the next six months.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#16[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#17Don’t know many smart people. I’ve interacted with some, followed others, but admittedly I’m not sure where most of them work. Offhand one person I know works at some small noname company working in niche industry they enjoy. Not sure of much more detail than that. I’m familiar with the area of work of others, but am unaware of the professional status. Frankly I got the impression a few of them were either independent contractors who bounced around or otherwise not working traditional jobs.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#18I know a few who probably doesn’t realize how smart they actually are.
Smartest one I known so far works at a corp and is often moved between teams for new projects. Second smartest person I know works at a tiny startup and enjoys life and as chill as Buddha. The third smartest person I know doesn’t do tech anymore, was promoted to higher level management and left tech because he made immense f*ku money and is mostly travelling these days.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#19The notion that all the smart people work for 5 companies seems...not all that smart.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#20The smartest people I know left tech. No, this isn't sarcasm or a joke. I do wonder if there's some sort of inverse correlation between intelligence and ability to thrive under corporate bureaucracy.
Did they leave only tech or the corporate world in general?