Of the smartest people I know, one became a university professor, one works at DeepMind, one at Amazon, two work at local small companies with comparatively low compensation but a healthy atmosphere and good work-life balance, and one left tech to do their own thing in the education field.
Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
21–30 of 62 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#22The smartest person I know personally works at Stripe...
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#23On the East Coast. None of them stayed in the Bay Area very long.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#24I've bounced around a few companies, and all the smartest people I know are in the semiconductor industry. Some of them - self-proclaimed hardware engineers - would write better code than what I've seen come out of lifelong software devs. They have crazy deep, specialised knowledge on so many fields it boggles the mind.
There's no real divide between startups and corporations in terms of talents from what I perceived. The industry was in general seething with talent.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#25The smartest person I know who's in his 50's is now an alcoholic - made and lost a fortune.
He's still worth an easy 20 million dollars, but is way too driven and edgy to just shut up and retire.
I read a thin line separates genius from madness.
His entire life has exemplified this.
It's profoundly sad to see him - his genius is a curse.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#26The smartest person I know turned down a position as CEO of one of the largest companies in the world to become CEO of a smaller and more independent oriented competitor and is apparently loving their job.
In terms of developers, it's typically been the opposite. That the best developers I know had previously worked at larger firms, but don't anymore.
I suspect part of being smart in general comes with the realization that there's more to life than a job's status and salary, and prioritizing those other things is a wise thing to do. So having picked up competency at large companies when younger but moving away from them later on trends to correlate with the smarter people I know.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#27[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#28Microsoft
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#29Doctors
After my last bunch of medical issues, I lost confidence in this field almost entirely.
Doctors (or at least most of them) are not critical thinkers. They simply repeat the knowledge they have seen in textbooks or in other patients. As soon as what you have is out of the common path, you are on your own. I had to do my own research to figure out the cause of my symptoms and bring those to my doctors that agreed with my research.
Re: Ask HN: Where do the smartest people you know work?
#30The notion that all the smart people work for 5 companies seems...not all that smart.
> all of the smartest people I know
Is it your thought that the post and “I know” part translates to all smart people? Perhaps the original post was edited?