Steve Yegge quits Google in the middle of his speech [OSCON Data 2011]

----- Google, "where I work right now", they are doing great work to attempt to change the work. At least more than other companies.

I work on compilers. I like to work on big data, learn about data mining. Because even for compilers work I need to do large data analysis, and face tremendous scaling problems.

Hollywood blockbusters summer 2011: why is this slide here? These summer movies are all crap, because corporates are greedy, they are incremental, not trying to shoot for real quality, real game changers. They chase money.

Except for "auteurs": people making money while keeping principle. E.g, Pixar. They show their passion, make every one look bad, but make money as well. Apple is also a great example.

Social networks; this is what I work on at Google :-( (lolcatz pictures on the slide). Is this principled? This is fun, and making money. But not principled? Is there anyone in this crowd not working on social networks? This is a hype. Why is everyone working on this? This is money chasing.

You are interested in social networks but when you are 60 you will be interested in your health. But then it is too late. You will wish we had solved these fundamental health problems when you are 60. These are hard problems that require math statistics and big data.

Human genome project: This will be an inflection point in human history. It is also a data-mining project. Reverse engineer the source code (genome) with respect to how treatments work/are-effective. The people who can solve it, data mining people, are working on crap problems, lolcatz social networks :-(

We need to change this culture. In this new culture: everyone is a mathematician. But how do we learn math and science? challeng to O'reilly publish books on math for developers. But, they already do. They have severeal stat and bioinformatics books. These books aren't selling. :-( They are trying to change the world, but we are not helping. Developer popular topics are javascript ipad, php, etc. :-(

Let's affect a culture change. short-term: infrastructure and scaling medium-term: math, data mining, bioinformatics long-term: important problems

I had a midlife crisis instantly after rehearshing this speech once. I am not following my own advice. I had started work on math every evening. And I am officially quitting that social network job at Google. (Is he also quitting Google?)

This way I will be ready when we are in a position to face those important problems in five years.

You don't have to cure cancer; that's absurdly binary and based on fame. You can do less sensational things like invent a device that improves patients' lives using modern robotics and sensors. You can design a system for Alzheimer's patients that incorporates your knowledge of big data sets. I can't dream of all the things to improve, but your domain knowledge is probably tremendously useful in all kinds of fields.

When it started I thought Yegge sounded nervous and jittery and seemed a little intense, like he had a chip on his shoulder and I thought "Oh boy, I hope he doesn't do a melt-down".

Then as the talk progressed, I realized he was just excited/nervous and that's how he talks.

He gradually hit his stride and the message that his talk was meant to convey slowly started to take shape for me... and it's a hell of a positive message.

It is a call-to-arms to give a damn and use our powers for the advancement of everyone. To stop spending out free time working on icanhascheezeburger SMS alert apps and pickup a book on mathematics, bioinfomatics, data mining and other hard topics and start learning.

It is a call to arms to send yourself back to school (in a sense) that don't be afraid to start learning about other topics that have always seemed interesting to you but maybe you figured were outside of your area of effect, e.g. "I'm a server guy, I'll never do anything interesting in 3D visualization!"

It is also a call to arms to make money and effect change with principle; like a Google or an Amazon.

You don't need to scrape every last piece of skin off of your customers hide in order to post big quarterly profits to be successful. You can develop positive relationships with your customers, employees and the world around you and STILL make the money necessary to continue growing an innovating.

The "quitting" part of the talk is unimportant, it was just his way of illuminating his point. The value is in his message.