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

The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 1001 posts

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#921

Post by uni_rule »

WJW wrote: post #865
niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

> one reason startups work so well Since when do startups "work well"? Some startups work well, but famously >90% of them fail. Imagine if 9 out of every 10 fires was just left alone because the fire brigade was replaced by a startup, or if 9 out 10 bridges fell down within a few years. Startups are just one of many models of running things, but they are not appropriate for everything.

Treating the government like a startup is gambling, the difference is startups are intentionally disposable while a Nation State... it's a fucking Nation State.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#922

Post by uni_rule »

JKolios wrote: post #847
niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

> Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. So, who's the VC that will fund the 4-9 failed governments we'll have to go through until we get a unicorn?

Maybe we'll get a solid Somaliland in the ensuing chaos after this current unmanaged Chapter 11 leads to a messy Chapter 7.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#924

Post by moby »

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

There's some real irony here.

What I'm hearing from my friends - many of whom have helped build and scale some of the most successful tech companies on the planet - is that no engineer is an exceptional one without a modicum of ethics and wisdom.

These seem to be in short supply at DOGE.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#925

Post by sieabahlpark »

moby wrote: post #924
niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

There's some real irony here. What I'm hearing from my friends - many of whom have helped build and scale some of the most successful tech companies on the planet - is that no engineer is an exceptional one without a modicum of ethics and wisdom. These seem to be in short supply at DOGE.

[dead]

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#926

Post by Pat_Murph »

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

Don't startups fail at a very high rate though?

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#928

Post by butlike »

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

You work on a team named after a meme.

Such rhyme. Much knowledge. Wow.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#929

Post by tqi »

niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

Smart is not the same thing as qualified. None of these qualifications you've listed have anything to do with running a government agency.

People around here love to talk about the Dunning–Kruger effect, but seem to be of the mistaken belief that it is about smart vs dumb people rather than people with domain expertise vs people without.

Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

#930

Post by butlike »

zasz wrote: post #497
niceice wrote: post #440

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…

That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L... Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39 So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.

'senior' is only a 6 character prefix that can be attached to any name/position as an accolade. It means nothing out-of-context.

Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making? I feel like the history books show it's emphatically indecisive.

Post reply on HN