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Sergey Brin's Unretirement

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Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#241

Post by mr_mitm »

jasode wrote: post #234
jaapz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That is I guess the point the person you were replying to was trying to make. It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big part of your identity, when people spend most of their time at work or at home thinking about their work.

>For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That's only 1/2 of the dynamic. People also like to assign an identity to others . For example, if I say, "I'm semi-retired." ... the follow-up question is always "Oh, so what did you do before that?" ... which is polite coded-speak for, "Did you inherit money or what work did you do for money that put you in…

It's also a low risk topic that can generate lots of follow up questions. It's regular small talk. Also, people here seem to downplay it, but doesn't it tell you a lot about a person what they do roughly half of their waking time? What they chose to do with their life? Sure, you're not your job or your career, but it's also a very normal part about getting to know someone and I'm not sure equating it to some way of gauging success levels is necessarily to right way to think about it.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#242

Post by lovich »

alex1138 wrote: post #162
lovich wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very frustrating for the bot’s reinforcement function. This is another account created after widespread access to LLM was available to the public that is pushing a political view that is somewhat coherent until pressed and then it falls apart like all chat bots Maybe it’s a real person and I’m being an asshole here, but it’s hard to tell. The fact that is hard to tell if they are real or not means we need to com…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#243

Post by inglor_cz »

jasode wrote: post #234
jaapz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That is I guess the point the person you were replying to was trying to make. It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big part of your identity, when people spend most of their time at work or at home thinking about their work.

>For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That's only 1/2 of the dynamic. People also like to assign an identity to others . For example, if I say, "I'm semi-retired." ... the follow-up question is always "Oh, so what did you do before that?" ... which is polite coded-speak for, "Did you inherit money or what work did you do for money that put you in…

It is not just about assigning identity to others.

I am probing for topics of mutual interest, or topics that make other people passionate, to learn more about them generally.

In some people, this is completely orthogonal to their careers, but most of the time, there is an overlap. Like, I haven't yet met a railway engineer who wasn't a raging railway nerd at the same time.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#244

Post by throw101010 »

weinzierl wrote: post #202
marcus_holmes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a career break and was weirded out by the question of "how do I introduce myself?". So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " that suddenly having nothing to say there was strange. When people asked "what do you do?" I had no good answer, and that felt like I had no good identity. I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google. But…

> So used to saying "Hi, I'm Marcus, I'm IT Director of " [..] Risking a stereotype. In my experience from traveling the world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange looks. On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define themselves through their work primarily often do so…

In a business/formal context it would be normal to introduce yourself like this in the countries you've mentioned.

Do people introduce themselves like that in informal contexts in the USA? If so that's indeed a bit weird, and more a topic you would start talking about for small talk or if someone asked about it.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#245

Post by throw101010 »

blitzar wrote: post #195
scotty79 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people asked "what do you do?" "I mostly breathe. It's a bore but you gotta do it" "I meant for a living" "Same"

"waste management"

I'd say we moreso produce waste than manage it as humans. We seem actually pretty bad at managing it unfortunately.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#246

Post by skibidithink »

dv_dt wrote: post #199
skibidithink wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He saw AI as an existential threat to Google.

Enshittification of existing money making activities of Google independently of AI is also an existential threat. Parts of the threat are codependent on AI, but there is little reason to open the door wider as they have.

There are no obvious threats to AdWords (aside from LLM chatbots) and YouTube.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#247

Post by maest »

drewda wrote: post #62
LarsDu88 wrote: post #26

Sergey unretires, Gemini suddenly becomes the top LLM (for a week or two at least) Google has made some subtle moves that a lot of folks missed, possibly with Sergey's influence. Like hiring back Noam Shazeer, who practically invented the backbone of the technology. It's good to have folks with presumptions of being scientists actually run companies for once. That being said, I wish his ex-wife hadn't spent her milli…

It's not just millions. Shanahan received over a billion dollars when divorcing Brin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Shanahan Today's unscientific gutting of the CDC's childhood vaccine schedule is what is being accomplished with all that $GOOG money. It's honestly very disturbing and rather than discuss it as a matter of politics, I'll just say that as a parent I'll be following the AAP's vaccination recommend…

> even if their recommendations on baby sleep are impossible

If you put yourself in their shoes, you realise that you have to give advice for the 10-20th percentile parents (or worse) because you are giving the same advice to everyone.

The alternative would be to offer more complex advice such as "if X Y and Z then do A, if only X do B", but the perception is that's too difficult for people to follow.

So you end up making very defensive (and therefore onerous) recommendations.

An interesting fact is that, since the introduction of the "baby sleeps on their back, alone", SIDS has gone down, but flat heads have gone up. It's probably been a good tradeoff, but it's still a tradeoff.

Also, I've seen a second time mother refer to "don't cosleep" advice as "western nonsense" which I found funny because it puts things in perspective - vast swathes of the world think cosleeping with your child is safe, natural and normal.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#249

Post by trueismywork »

awendt wrote: post #135
senorqa wrote: post #114

> Sergey Brin’s lesson for the rest of us Is it? I know people who are really happy without doing much in their retirement. Probably because they weren't workaholics. To my mind, if one doesn't have hobbies during the working years, then they will struggle to find purpose when they retite.

This! People need to get a life. I wouldn't have any trouble keeping myself busy after retirement. I do not have nearly enough time for the things I really WANT to do beside work.

Why? Why can work noy be your retirement plan as well? I have benefitted a lot from professors who have kept teaching (voluntarily) till physically possible.

Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement

#250

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #190
cuttothechase wrote: post #47

Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…

I don't get this. Just find a coworking space and work on a FOSS project.

[deleted]
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