
Steve Yegge quits Google in the middle of his speech [OSCON Data 2011] - kodisha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8
======
rkalla
That talk had a really inspiring energy to it.

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.

------
tom_b
So I'm not really an ask me anything type guy, but I work on a bioinformatics
team at an academic cancer research center. We have genomic sequencers and a
software stack running 24/7/365 plus your normal collection of IT and small
dev projects here.

If you have questions about what it's like to be a hacker in this type of
environment, post them here and I'll share what my experience is like.

BTW, I _completely_ wish I knew more stats and bioinformatics, so I probably
should purchase the Yegge book collection myself . . .

~~~
awj
I guess my biggest question is: in what way can programmers outside that
specific discipline pitch in and help out? Are there relevant open source
projects that could benefit from someone with a lot of programming experience
and a slightly-better-than-layman science background?

~~~
hirenj
Bioinformatician here: First of all, I think it's got to be clear that a lone
bioinformatician, or even a group of them isn't going to go about changing the
world. Essentially, when you sign up for this, you're still a cog in a
machine, albeit a slightly more altruistic machine.

Here's my pet peeve in bioinformatics - If there's one thing that's poorly
suited to science, it's the building of computational infrastructure. We're
talking basic stuff like databases, tools etc. Sure, anyone can knock out a
bit of code for a basic database, but the big problem is that there's no
incentive to have decent code, or maintain it so that it lasts any longer than
the person is in the lab, or has funding. So, what will be great is if
existing resources are cleaned up - data is normalised and pulled out so that
it is actually accessible for doing some kind of analysis on it.

If you want to do bigger work, do something actually novel, or that has any
biological relevance there's no getting around collecting your own data (e.g.
sequencing the crap out of a bunch of things). I'm in the process of trying to
get funding now for a project of mine to make that very leap now.

I'm sure someone working on next gen sequencing (the new hotness) can pipe up
with the big problems to be solved there.

~~~
enjalot
I know a professor who has a big grant to sequence a whole bunch of animals,
and will also do a high res CT scan of each specimen. He plans to make a
comprehensive site where scientists and school children can access the data
they are interested and learn more.

He even has money for a dev position for 4 years, I'm just worried that he
gets someone who slaps together a proprietary and incompatible site when this
would be a perfect chance to experiment with implementing some standard data
access APIs.

I've heard bioinformatics people complain about the lack of standards and
fragmented nature that comes from various small groups of scientists doing it
on their own.

If anyone is interested pm me and I'll put you in touch, he is in South
Carolina so he can't offer the salary and other perks of the Bay, but it's a
real chance to put good development energy into science.

------
boredandroid
He didn't quit Google. He just quit the project he was working on at Google. I
talked to him the day before and am quite sure that is what he meant.

------
abijlani
Let's stop focusing on the fact that he quit. And focus on WHY he quit. I'm
sure we all can relate with what he's saying at some level. He's talking about
tackling hard problems and not just low hanging fruit that might (emphasis on
might) make a buck. And most of all he's leading by example. I haven't seen
this much bravado from anyone in our industry in a long time.

~~~
AndrewTerry
While I applaud his motives for change, we should also focus on HOW he quit,
too.

IMHO, his boss deserves the professional courtesy of being told personally (be
it face to face, or by letter of resignation), rather than finding out via a
YouTube clip...

~~~
Create
downvote freely (but then don't laugh when watching Office Space).

If you have enough life experience, or read enough of Matt Groening, worst
case watch enough Office movies/series, then you could suspect that bosses can
be manipulative sociopaths, who do not deserve any professional courtesy.

BTW: most bosses don't fire f2f (Office Space), but with an indirection,
through Human Resources Services (or hire scumbags, likeUp in the Air) [and
then good luck, with your file].

I guess Steve had a reason to do this, and I respect him for having the guts
to stand up in such a public way against dirty careerist office background
politics, management decision support and calendaring theory.

Maybe this case doesn't fit, I have no clue (in my experience, it can be the
"right thing to do" in large organisations detached from true ethics). But if
Steve felt it this way, then it was this way (see Schopenhauer's most
influential work, The World as Will and Representation)

~~~
absconditus
Doing something for someone even though you believe that they do not deserve
it is part of being a better person.

~~~
Create
Try to explain the meaning of your sentence to a manipulative sociopath.

------
david927
Please change the title to:

 _Stevey gives up the being part of the chase for the superfluous (in money),
and calls for us to do something about the necessary_

No one needs a million dollars. No one. Why are we chasing it and dying of
heart disease -- heart disease we can cure if we start chasing that instead?

Our priorities are absolutely messed up and it's time we start realigning
them. This isn't a speech; this isn't a funny resignation. This is a clarion
call to join in. We can do so much better. We can achieve something valuable,
if we start to realize where true value lies.

Steve's in. I'm in. Who else around here is in?

~~~
VladRussian
>No one needs a million dollars. No one.

food, roof (with internet connection reaching under it), freedom. In Bay Area,
if you have a mortgage, it is half a mil bare minimum and even a million may
not take you far enough. There have been experiments to build societies with
decreased degree of connection between food, roof, freedom and money - somehow
it always went like this one
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-
dark....](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm)

And you can't build SpaceX without a bucket of millions (Copenhagen Orbitals
are beyond wonderful, yet they are in Virgin Galactic league at best, even in
their furthest plans. They show the possibilities for the future and at the
same time how far yet that future is)

~~~
david927
You're missing my point, Vlad. We're chasing _superfluous_ amounts of money,
instead of doing more important things.

------
wccrawford
Am I the only one that fails to be inspired by this? I think I'm not inspired
because it's something I've already thought about. We've always had the option
to go make money, or go try to fix the world... And whatever that brings us.

I am very clear on my chances of making big changes to the world: Almost nil.
Instead, I decided long ago that I'd do my best to make money and improve my
own life.

I'm not saying I don't do little things to help the environment, but there's
no chance that I'm going to be on the team that cures cancer. There are too
many people out there that are both smarter than me and more learned in the
topics needed. The best I could do would be to get in their way.

~~~
rdouble
No, you're not the only one. He's a bit naive if he thinks he's going to cure
cancer by quitting his job and reading some undergraduate math textbooks.
However misguided his plan may be, it's heartwarming that his wife agreed to
be his study buddy, instead of divorcing him.

~~~
jshen
"He's a bit naive if he thinks he's going to cure cancer by quitting his job
and reading some undergraduate math textbooks."

This is a rather obnoxious strawman.

------
mad44
while listening to the talk, I took notes. (Not exact notes, I probably
reworded several things, hopefully not twisting the meaning too much.) Here
they are, if you don't have time to watch the talk.

\----- 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.

~~~
jacoblyles
It feels hard to get into Bioinformatics without a PHD. I would love to tackle
problems in genetics, medicine, and etc. But I'm not going to commit 7 years
of my life to breaking into a highly regulated sector before I get to "Hello
World!".

Is there a hacker scene in Bioinformatics?

~~~
jianshen
My father is in the hospital right now and I feel the same frustration. A
family friend who is a professor of radiology mentioned that a major driver of
research in medical imaging comes from video game graphics work. He even
submitted a paper to siggraph around interpolating 3d space from 2d CT scans.
There are direct and indirect applications from the techie scene, it just
doesn't get the kind of press like consumer tech and the hacker scene tends to
be at universities and learning hospitals.

~~~
Create
[http://www.ted.com/talks/anders_ynnerman_visualizing_the_med...](http://www.ted.com/talks/anders_ynnerman_visualizing_the_medical_data_explosion.html)

------
dstein
More importantly he has revealed that Google will be adding cat picture
features to Google Plus. Facebook is in trouble.

------
orangecat
I'll watch this tonight, from the summaries I generally agree with him. I feel
the same way about brilliant math and physics people doing HFT for Goldman
Sachs. But I'd also point out that from a comparative advantage perspective,
it may be optimal to earn lots of money in a "useless" area and then donate
where it makes a difference. If you can earn $500k/year at a hedge fund and
give half of that to SENS, that's probably better than quitting your job to
learn molecular biology from scratch.

~~~
barrybe
Maybe, maybe not. It's a real challenge to hire the good software engineers,
but a good engineer can be extremely productive (the old 10x efficiency
thing). So, if you are one of the good ones, you can probably do a lot more
good with your skills than with money.

Put it another way, anybody can throw money at the problem (and a lot of
people do). But not many can write algorithms that efficiently work on
terabyte data sets.

------
wmat
Watch the whole talk. It's fantastic. And as a 40 year old, I completely
concur.

But what to do about it? Hmmmm.....time to go shopping for books, or search
for online courses.

~~~
wmat
MIT's OpenCourseware:

<http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/>

<http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/>

<http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/health-sciences-and-technology/>

~~~
david927
And to decide what to study, let's put it together here:

<http://digitalauteur.wikispaces.com>

------
conorh
At around 14:10 in the speech -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8&feature=player_detailpage#t=850s)

Also I'm not sure if he quit Google, or if he just quit the project he was
working on.

~~~
kodisha
Well I don't think that Google has anything similar to human genome project,
so I think he quit Google. But yes, it is a but unclear.

~~~
Create
They had something, I think it was a protein database search goog labs
project. It wasn't very popular, so I guess it didn't stick. btw 23me is close
enough, and is also misleading enough (in scientific value)...

~~~
beambot
How is 23andMe misleading in scientific value? They just published "Web-based
genome-wide association study identifies two novel loci and a substantial
genetic component for Parkinson’s disease" in PLOS Genetics:

[http://spittoon.23andme.com/2011/06/23/plos-genetics-
parkins...](http://spittoon.23andme.com/2011/06/23/plos-genetics-parkinsons-
discoveries/)

<http://www.plosgenetics.org/doi/pgen.1002141>

~~~
Create
correct me if I am wrong, but the debate which started at about and around [1]
didn't quite finish.

Would you trust the output of this chip, as it has been presented/used in the
paper [2]?

1.Katsanis, S.H., Javitt, G. & Hudson, K. A Case Study of Personalized
Medicine. Science 320, 53 -54 (2008).

2.Konstantinopoulos, P.A. et al. Integrated Analysis of Multiple Microarray
Datasets Identifies a Reproducible Survival Predictor in Ovarian Cancer. PLoS
ONE 6, e18202 (2011).

~~~
beambot
My robotics training hardly qualifies me to asses the output of their academic
research. However, I applaud their commitment to publishing results it top-
tier academic journals.

Off-handed comments (in a thread about Google) calling 23andMe's scientific
research "misleading" seems a bit snarky. Educated discussion has a place --
eg. in HN threads related to the company [1] or (especially) in the peer-
review process.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813270> (currently on HNs frontpage)

------
ZackOfAllTrades
Normally I lurk and don't vote. But this is worth people's time to watch.

------
kbutler
tl;dr Work on data mining and bioionformatics to change the world, rather than
just seeking money by doing trivial things.

Plus publicity stunt of quitting so you'll listen [at 14:15, sounded like
quitting a cat-photo-sharing project, rather than quitting Google].

Plus implication that bio is the only domain that is world-changing.

~~~
almightygod
I never heard him say "bio is only domain that is world-changing". But
unlocking the genome would have unequivocal implications on quality of life
and longevity for all of humanity, what is more important then improving
someone's life?

~~~
polyfractal
_sigh_

People thought we were "unlocking the genome" ten years ago with the Human
Genome Project. If that taught us anything, it is that biology is a lot more
complicated than simply parsing data. Biology is messy, complicated and breaks
every single one of its own rules. Repeatedly.

I'm not saying bioinformatics is unimportant or unnecessary, because it truly
is important. I'm simply tired of people (particularly famous people who are
grandstanding) boasting that XYZ will "cure cancer".

------
angrycoder
As someone who was originally a science major, then switched to comp sci, I
always get a romantic tingle when I hear about bioinformatics. Most of the
science I've learned is gone by now, but I am sure it still there somewhere.

What are the good starting points for learning about bioinformatics?

~~~
queensnake
amazon.com and university courses; what did you think? That there was an
inside, easy track that you could find by asking HN?

~~~
angrycoder
Yeah, that is what I was looking for, an 'easy track'. Not a recommendation
from someone in the field based on the fact that I am a programmer with a
science background.

Thanks.

------
bartonfink
I'm not sure I agree with his premise that, in order to change the world you
must work on a problem with "big data." I can't see how the energy crisis is
fundamentally data-driven, for example, and it's hard to say that you couldn't
change the world by working on that.

Regardless, best of luck to him wherever he winds up (within Google or
elsewhere)! And I hope he keeps writing!

~~~
pavpanchekha
I think he's implying that it requires the same basic computer science hacking
that is required for all of the "cat pictures" projects he points out. The
point isn't that we should choose between data-driven and not data-driven;
it's that we should choose between cat pictures and the human genome.

------
jganetsk
I have just talked to Steve. I have confirmed that he has not quit Google.

------
btrask
This past week, I decided to start working on a project to build a new type of
speech synthesizer. Did I know anything about acoustics or linguistics? No,
but I've been reading what I can find about them since then.

I used to have a philosophy of intentionally choosing easy, "overlooked"
problems. I figured I wasn't that smart, so I should just stick to the simple
stuff. The software I built was good and useful, but a lot of it is already
becoming obsolete. I want to make software that will last 50 years, not just
5.

This talk came at a great time for me, and it's strengthened my resolve. I'm
going to keep learning about speech synthesis and acoustics (which means a lot
of math and physics that I slept through in school), and hopefully I can push
the field forward a little bit.

------
cpeterso
I am reminded of Richard "Hamming code" Hamming's quote:

 _"What are the most important problems in your field? Are you working on one
of them? Why not?"_

------
spinchange
Watch it for the talk, not the sensationalism. It's a good talk.

------
p_h
I've had multiple math professors tell me to study as much math as I can while
I'm young, because once you're over 30 it's a lot harder to learn math. I'm in
my 20's so I'm not sure if this is true.

It also seems to me that the math you would learn in an O'Reilly book isn't in
depth enough to contribute to research.

~~~
b_emery
Im in my 40s and still learning plenty of math. I think it's more a function
of focused practice than age. I've also seen several profs doing good work
well into their 80's so I dont know what your profs are talking about!

------
thornad
Everyone should work on the problems that are close to their heart, that they
have a passion for. He says something similar in the begining but then he
confesses he's gonna do exactly the opposite. this is major bulshit and I
would not take this guy advice even if he payed me a million. Because he
himself is not following it. And even if he did, it is bullshit. You should
work on what YOU find important. Not on what someone else decided somewhere
else. YOU have intuitive intelligence that knows what's important and what you
and ONLY YOU have a UNIQUE talent for (because you are unique).

------
kenjackson
You want to change the world for the better? Be respectful of others you
interact with on a day to day basis as a start. Steve should have given his
boss heads up on this.

------
thom
c.f. <http://boingboing.net/2011/07/14/far.html>, which tempers some of my
optimism for seeing really big problems solved with really big computers and
datasets.

------
T_S_
Can anybody see the books on his dining room table (at 13:49)? I think I
spotted Concrete Mathematics at the bottom, Duda and Hart, and Hastie,
Tibshirani and Friedman. Good places to start.

What would your list be for Steve?

------
hollerith
Anyone care to post a summary of the OP (a 15-minute video)?

~~~
jm4
I normally don't like video links, but this one is worth watching.

Anyway...

He starts by talking about how he joined Google because he believed they
really wanted to change the world. They are basically the only ones fighting
for Net Neutrality, etc. He said Amazon had a similar culture when he was
there. He goes on to talk about scaling and how it might be the biggest
problem for a lot of companies. Basically, everyone is working on some kind of
scaling problem and it's usually for a stupid "cat picture project" (social
networking). Later in life, you realize there are more important things
(specifically, health related in the video), but it's too late because these
tasks require math, stats and domain-specific knowledge. We are mostly lacking
the domain-specific knowledge. He talks about how you may wish you could go
back in time to tell your younger self to do something more meaningful. He
challenges everyone to learn something new and make a difference. With about a
minute to go he's puts his money where his mouth is and quits his job.

------
avgarrison
After we solve all of the hard problems in the world, can we go back to
looking at cat pictures?

------
rektide
He looks so different than OSCON 2007: [http://blip.tv/oreilly-open-source-
convention/oscon-2007-ste...](http://blip.tv/oreilly-open-source-
convention/oscon-2007-steve-yegge-323761)

------
ryan-allen
Wow, he really did. How this isn't on the front page, I don't know. It should
be!

~~~
david927
This video is purposely being kept off the front page. Number 8 has 7 points,
1 hour ago. This has 20 points for the same time frame and is now 40 and
dropping.

~~~
cletus
There is definitely something weird going on.

7\. MS-DOS is 30 years old today (extremetech.com)

44 points by ukdm 3 hours ago | flag | 11 comments

8\. Bring your half-baked idea to the Half-Bakery (halfbakery.com)

54 points by rfreytag 4 hours ago | flag | 11 comments

And this...

22\. Steve Yegge quits Google in the middle of his speech [OSCON Data 2011]
(youtube.com)

162 points by kodisha 3 hours ago | flag | 35 comments

WTH?

EDIT: 323 votes in 5 hours... highest I've seen it as a #21, currently #22.

~~~
Timothee
I would think that people flagging the story is weighing it down. If the talk
is good, why would it be flagged? Maybe because the title of the submission is
kind of sensationalistic relative to the talk. The talk is about working more
on solving important problems, less on making cat picture sharing easy and
fun, and it's not so much about him leaving his job, though it does illustrate
his intentions.

~~~
david927
It would have to have been a huge number of flag votes -- too many to be a
reasonable explanatoin. My guess is that it was moderated down. Which leaves
the big question of _why_?

Is it because the YC portfolio is heavy on cat picture startups and light on
startups that do something important?

------
yanw
Bad hive-mind; _Hacker News fires Steve Yegge_ : [http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-st...](http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-steve-yegge.html)

~~~
blahedo
tl;dr: He didn't quit Google (just his current project, sort of).

------
yanw
He only quit the 'cat picture' project he is still on the GOOG's payroll.

It's an inspiring notion if you're into that sort of thing, a bit unfair to
his would be colleagues though.

------
shareme
Folks he has not quit Google..post Title is incorrect

------
jsavimbi
While we debate the merits of Mr. Yegge's principled talk at OSCON Data 2011
and the potential ramifications that a sudden shift in priorities would cause
in the developer universe, #imisswhen is trending from my local cat-picture
dissemination outfit.

Personally, I believe we've done enough for humanity already.

------
zavulon
What an ass.

~~~
zavulon
I will take those downvotes with pride. I bet none of you ever managed any
people.

