
When Jeff Bezos decided not to become a physicist [video] - ZhuanXia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFnV6EM-wzY
======
ken
Also known as:
[http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm](http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm)

In this case, Bezos saw firsthand how a brain teaser could be answered by
"seen something similar once before" much more easily than "worked on it on a
team for several hours". Isn't this exactly the sort of brain teaser that we
hate seeing in tech interviews?

This one was bad enough that Bezos _left the field_ , yet Amazon (like every
other software company) still asks these style of questions of its engineering
candidates.

~~~
zw123456
I love the Feynman Algo. I hold over 60 patents (not bragging) often times
colleagues will ask me if I can teach them to be innovative. After being asked
this question a number of times and giving it a lot of thought, the answer I
give now is the following:

"No, no one can teach you to be innovative or creative, you already are.
Humans are the most innovative creatures in the history of this planet,
innately, look at all we have created. All you need to do is to un-learn to
not be creative. We are all constantly taught, either in school, the military,
by our family or by our peers, our company we work for, whatever... to NOT be
creative; to in effect comport. First un-learn that. It will unleash your
creative/innovative abilities."

Jeff Bezos may not be a physicist but somewhere along his path he learned to
stop NOT being innovative.

~~~
candiodari
I think what Bezos says in the interview is funny, but also very directly
clarifies further what you're saying. The smartest guy at Princeton solved
this problem ...

Not because he was actually smart (ok, perhaps a good memory). Not because he
was able to do math really fast, or really accurate, or in his head. None of
that. NOT EVEN because he figured out this problem on the spot. That was quite
simply not it.

But because he had solved a metric fuckton of problems before, and then got
lucky.

I agree with your statement (just got one patent to my name though), but a
very important caveat is that you have to learn something (and preferably more
than 1 thing) thoroughly before unlearning it. And learning first and then
unlearning is vastly different from not learning it at all.

~~~
segmondy
The guy didn't get lucky, the guy has experience and has worked hard. The same
thing happens in software, the developer with extensive experience across many
areas, that has studied tons of different things is more likely to solve a
novel problem than the developer that is one dimensional and master of one
tool.

I often see people say things such as, "I have tons of experience with
language Y and framework Z and that's all that matters, who cares about trees,
graphs and all that ridiculous interview questions..." The big tech companies
are looking to innovate and lead, and that's why they ask these questions.

If someone is new to programming and begins by telling me what framework they
are considering learning, I often tell them to forget about the framework and
learn the language. The language is the foundation that frameworks are built
on. Algorithms & Data structures are the framework on which software is built
on.

The only time I frown upon such questions is if someone is testing you for
exact syntax of the language instead of making sure you understand the nature
and solution of the problem.

~~~
nvarsj
You pretty much argued the opposite of your point.

Asking algo and whiteboard questions completely ignores the "extensive
experience across many years". I can spend years gaining deep expertise in an
area, and that means absolutely nothing. All that matters is I practiced for 2
months white boarding algo questions under time pressure.

Or to put it another way. Spent 5 years getting a PhD? Who gives a f*ck. Can
you code a DP problem in 20 minutes? You're hired!

~~~
matz1
So you only need to spend 2 months practicing, and yet you refuse to put in
the effort ?

~~~
dkkdjfjdjjdj
I am sorry but this is insulting. You should practice what makes you better at
your job, not jump through hoops for someone else’s entertainment. So yes,
some of us, are logical enough to not join the hazing ritual. Just cause you
want to do it doesn’t mean others should.

~~~
matz1
Just think of it as part of the job. The trade off is minimal, while the
benefit is clear. If you still don't want to do it then its cool, less
competition for those who want.

~~~
nvarsj
My point was that the interview process is flawed. It's really just a proxy
for an IQ test (a gameable one). I think for a company like Google, it is
somewhat understandable - they have very mature processes, strict coding
guidelines, and overall very little choice in the tech you use. They are
hiring for a "smart cog" rather than "innovative/experienced engineer".

------
ZhuanXia
Everyone is jealous of someone. It is amusing to compare Bezos's awe at
Yasantha to that of many of his engineers towards him - or for that matter, my
awe of anyone who can pass Amazon's recruitment process.

See this except from a biography of Bezos:

>... To the amazement and irritation of employees, Bezos’s criticisms are
almost always on target. Bruce Jones, a former Amazon supply chain vice
president, describes leading a five-engineer team figuring out ways to make
the movement of workers in fulfillment centers more efficient. The group spent
nine months on the task, then presented their work to Bezos. “We had beautiful
documents, and everyone was really prepared,” Jones says. Bezos read the
paper, said, “You’re all wrong,” stood up, and started writing on the
whiteboard.

>“He had no background in control theory, no background in operating systems,”
Jones says. “He only had minimum experience in the distribution centers and
never spent weeks and months out on the line.” But Bezos laid out his argument
on the whiteboard, and “every stinking thing he put down was correct and
true,” Jones says. “It would be easier to stomach if we could prove he was
wrong, but we couldn’t. That was a typical interaction with Jeff. He had this
unbelievable ability to be incredibly intelligent about things he had nothing
to do with, and he was totally ruthless about communicating it.”

Yasantha is an interesting fellow, with contributions in wireless networking,
AI, chip design and various other fields.

In this article Yasantha describes Bezos's legendary work ethic[1].

>Yasantha described how students once dared each other to complete a computer
science assignment in a single line of coding. “Finally, I gave up and did
this in 10 or so lines of code,” he added, “But I remember Jeff working
through all night, in pursuit of the most compact solution, and turned in a
two-line solution that was probably the shortest anyone could do…”

>“It goes to prove that Jeff is tenacious, and will not give up like most of
us would when presented with a challenge,” he said.

>“He sets his goals and sticks to them. I think that’s a quality that has made
him who he is,” Yasantha added.

Think what it meant for someone such as him to give up on his dream to be a
theoretical physicist.

Despite his tenaciousness he was forced to conclude there were levels of
abstraction he could not reach through hard work.

[1] [http://www.dailynews.lk/2018/09/22/local/163321/lankan-
solve...](http://www.dailynews.lk/2018/09/22/local/163321/lankan-solved-math-
problem-amazon-founder)

~~~
goldcd
I don't want to stroke the Bezos ego more than necessary - but he's not dumb.
Geniuses don't get rich by just being geniuses (think of Tesla holed up
towards the end in a shitty hotel). What you need is a smart person who can
recognize other people can be smarter - and they need help, that you can
provide. I mean this without a trace of sarcasm - it's a bit of ego with a bit
of humility (whilst ensuring you retain the stock) I've always plugged Bezos
into the Edison mold.

~~~
meowface
No need to hedge your praise. Bezos is pretty close to a modern Edison (along
with Edison's questionable ethical choices).

------
adventured
Reminds me of the story that Paul Allen recounted about Bill Gates going off
to Harvard rather pumped up about his abilities relating to math (Gates has
said he considered wanting to teach math as a profession when he was in high
school) and then realizing he wasn't good enough at it to keep up with the
elite math students there. That to keep up with them you'd need to be among
the best in the field and even if he was good, he wasn't math-genius level
good.

------
anonytrary
It's better to fail fast than to waste 5 years getting a PhD you don't really
need. I've had a lot of professors who started out pursuing theoretical
physics in grad school, but quickly switched to experimental physics after
realizing that they were simply not the right material for theory. I was
always surprised to hear it, because I regarded those professors as very
bright. It is very humbling.

------
wtmt
Tangentially, I wonder how the world would be if Jeff Bezos had become a
theoretical physicist and hadn't founded Amazon. Perhaps he could've done just
good-good instead of good-bad (tilting more and more to the bad side). Would
someone else then have founded an Amazon-like company? That seems highly
unlikely since even now, nobody else seems close to it on the combination of
technology, retail, reach, growth and influence.

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callesgg
What a great little story.

I would definetly like to be better at telling stories like this.

When I try to tell stories I always end up on irellevant tangents. That have
almost nothing to do with the main point. Or I get stuck in some detail and
forget what I was talking about.

~~~
tdhz77
I agree, he really sells it when he says “Yasantha” starred at the problem.
Every sentence is clear and concise. It moves the story without adding
anything extra. My story would still be going on — I would have hit on all of
the major food groups; DMCA, Freemium model, and Publishing rights.

~~~
burger_moon
The key to being a good story teller, is telling the same story over and over
again, refining it and removing any fluff from the story. This is what
separates great comedians from just ok comedians as well. They're telling a
story that has been refined in front of an audience to land just right.

------
criddell
This is off topic, but are there any physicists working today that are the
modern day version of a Feynman, Einstein, Dirac, Wheeler, Bethe, Bohr,
etc...?

I've been reading James Gleick's _Genius_ and it was a question I had when
reading about 23 year old Richard Feynman.

~~~
0xcafecafe
Ed Witten?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten)

~~~
cambalache
Well, Witten is Einstein/Bohr caliber. Feynman was not.

~~~
perl4ever
Why do you say that?

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m0zg
Looks like that other guy is not a "great theoretical physicist" now either:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasantha-rajakarunanayake-
aa2356...](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasantha-rajakarunanayake-aa23568/)

~~~
theontheone
he made many contributions to other parts of science (wireless,
communications), though, that I doubt bezos would be able to so the point
still stands.

~~~
m0zg
I think you're short changing Bezos. From everything I heard, the dude is as
sharp as a tack.

------
lars-b2018
Had Bezos continued in the theoretical physics direction, I am sure he would
of been successful and productive in the field. He would of got the math.
Great theoreticians have imaginations that are able to come up with ideas that
have "fit". The mathematics help you get there, and help you understand the
problem, but the imagination and creative thinking skills are crucial. Bezos
has this ability - Amazon's success I think demonstrates this very well.

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isostatic
"The face book (which was an actual paper book at that time)"

I love that line.

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arisAlexis
actually Bezos doesn't say what the titles says. I like factual titles

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goldcd
We are going to pick on the size of that tie-knot right?

