Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 181 posts

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#41

Post by screenoridesagb »

zhynn wrote: post #31
Whitespace wrote: post #6

I respect the work that he's done and the contributions he's given to humanity but for once I would like to see something by Stephen Wolfram that didn't involve at least 50% of the content being a form of self-aggrandizement. I find that everything I try to consume from him contains his autobiography interspersed in the giant wall of text. This video is exquisitely cringeworthy.

blah blah (which I did in 1988) blah blah (which I completed in 1992). He has no collaborators. He gives no credit to others. He just relentlessly names things after himself, takes singular credit for everything, and name-drops other famous scientists he bumped into. I genuinely find the wolfram physics project interesting, but the behavior of wolfram himself sets off all my bullshit alarms. I suspect that it will be…

[dead]

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#42

Post by martinky24 »

dachworker wrote: post #32

Here's a question. Why isn't Wolfram Research considered a sexy employer? They have cool research and technical problems and cool software. I looked a bit into it but I could only see them hiring in 3rd world countries, and only contractors. So are they a bad employer or what gives?

- They pay like shit (compared to "sexy employers")

- Headquartered in Champaign, Illinois (not a bad town, but not sexy)

- As "cool" as their software is, not a lot of people use it. Python is eating their lunch, ESPECIALLY outside of academia. Although, they're losing ground in academia as well

- Stephen Wolfram isn't a charismatic leader who is fun to work for. There's no shortage of stories of him short circuiting in meetings and treating employees disrespectfully.

- They're not doing quite as much cutting edge stuff (that matters, at least) these days. Their AI/ML suite isn't that interesting, numpy/scipy does a lot of numerical stuff better, Matlab does a lot of stuff (like digital signal processing, for example) better. And Python, being free and open source, is a better prototyping language for most stuff. Symbolic computing is probably the one place it is actually a leader in... but for so many applications in the real world (engineering, r&d, real-time algorithms, etc) symbolic computing simply isn't needed.

As you hint at, they can attract some talent because there are opportunities to work on some niche stuff that's hard to work on elsewhere. But that's a minority of roles at the company.

Source: Used to work there.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#43

Post by namirez »

dachworker wrote: post #32

Here's a question. Why isn't Wolfram Research considered a sexy employer? They have cool research and technical problems and cool software. I looked a bit into it but I could only see them hiring in 3rd world countries, and only contractors. So are they a bad employer or what gives?

I had a friend who worked there. A very smart Ivy League-educated math PhD. He was very critical of the work culture at Wolfram Research. Apparently in his experience Stephen Wolfram treated people badly.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#44

Post by aleph_minus_one »

namirez wrote: post #43
dachworker wrote: post #32

Here's a question. Why isn't Wolfram Research considered a sexy employer? They have cool research and technical problems and cool software. I looked a bit into it but I could only see them hiring in 3rd world countries, and only contractors. So are they a bad employer or what gives?

I had a friend who worked there. A very smart Ivy League-educated math PhD. He was very critical of the work culture at Wolfram Research. Apparently in his experience Stephen Wolfram treated people badly.

> Apparently in his experience Stephen Wolfram treated people badly.

Are you able/allowed to provide more details?

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#45

Post by dachworker »

danpalmer wrote: post #39
dachworker wrote: post #32

Here's a question. Why isn't Wolfram Research considered a sexy employer? They have cool research and technical problems and cool software. I looked a bit into it but I could only see them hiring in 3rd world countries, and only contractors. So are they a bad employer or what gives?

I think they're very traditional – I don't think software or engineering is their edge, and I suspect they outsource a lot of that to cheaper locations – they seem themselves as being more research focused. Their Glassdoor reviews used to be a bit dodgy too, nothing you wouldn't be able to guess after watching 10 minutes of any video of you-know-who though. They are also just small, only a few hundred people if I rem…

Wait, isn't software their product? Or are you distinguishing between their infrastructural and their math/science libraries?

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#46

Post by rdtsc »

I remember buying his A New Kind of Science book before it was available for free. It was interesting to read, and it was good enough to impress a college kid like me back then. But now, looking back, I wonder what fields of science has it advanced? It's been more than 20 years already, and with a title like that, we'd expect a completely upturned physics, biology, and other disciplines based on it.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#47

Post by dachworker »

martinky24 wrote: post #42
dachworker wrote: post #32

Here's a question. Why isn't Wolfram Research considered a sexy employer? They have cool research and technical problems and cool software. I looked a bit into it but I could only see them hiring in 3rd world countries, and only contractors. So are they a bad employer or what gives?

- They pay like shit (compared to "sexy employers") - Headquartered in Champaign, Illinois (not a bad town, but not sexy) - As "cool" as their software is, not a lot of people use it. Python is eating their lunch, ESPECIALLY outside of academia. Although, they're losing ground in academia as well - Stephen Wolfram isn't a charismatic leader who is fun to work for. There's no shortage of stories of him short circuitin…

Thanks for the insight. I used to be a mathematician and looked a bit into working as a numerical mathematician on numerical or optimization software. What I noticed is that salaries do tend to be significantly lower than FAANG. Maybe that's because it is a niche and there aren't lots of employers around doing that sort of work.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#48

Post by xdavidliu »

jack_riminton wrote: post #9

Somehow people who are most convinced of their genius are the least interesting to me. Contrast with Roger Penrose and you couldn't meet a more humble, interesting and interested conversationalist

Don Knuth and Preet Bharara too. I had an advisor in undergrad in plasma physics named Roscoe White who was also quite humble and brilliant.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#49

Post by namirez »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #44
namirez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a friend who worked there. A very smart Ivy League-educated math PhD. He was very critical of the work culture at Wolfram Research. Apparently in his experience Stephen Wolfram treated people badly.

> Apparently in his experience Stephen Wolfram treated people badly. Are you able/allowed to provide more details?

I’m a bit apprehensive since I don’t know SW personally, but what my friend described sounded like a borderline abusive behavior. Basically he treated people like they were stupid and shouted at them when they made mistakes.

Re: Stephen Wolfram – 4-Hour Conversational Documentary on My Entire Arc of Life [video]

#50

Post by xaellison »

Scientific American I think did a balanced article about this character: https://web.archive.org/web/20231231040033/https://www.scien...

My favorite quotes:

when provided with some of the responses from other physicists regarding his work, Wolfram is singularly unenthused. “I’m disappointed by the naivete of the questions that you’re communicating,” he grumbles. “I deserve better.”

“There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories,” the late physicist Freeman Dyson told Newsweek back in 2002. “Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.”

Post reply on HN