
Snap’s Secret Weapon Speaks - wallflower
https://www.fastcompany.com/90382260/snaps-secret-weapon-speaks
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oska
A paraphrase of the html title might be better than the current submission
title, e.g.

An interview with Bobby Murphy, cofounder of Snap

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siquick
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click
ads, or automatically put pizza gifs on top of photos of pizzas”

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adventured
I see that premise repeated ad nauseum.

So the best minds of their generation aren't working on CRISPR? Immunotherapy
and gene therapy? Who are the engineers and scientists that work at Illumina
and Intuitive Surgical? Working at SpaceX or Blue Origin? Who were all those
relatively young people I saw cheering when the Falcon Heavy lifted off for
the first time? Right.

Who are all the engineers working on 397 other uses for AI not related to ads?
How about the thousands of engineers working on autonomous driving tech just
in the US? We have 40,000 people dying every year in driving accidents. So
those aren't the best minds, it's the people working on pizza gifs.

How about the scientists working on ways to replace our current approach to
raising livestock & consuming meat?

How about the people working at TerraPower or on improving wind tech? The
thousands of scientists & engineers working on improving battery tech just in
the US?

How about vertical & autonomous farming?

The tens of thousands of engineers working on building out countless valuable
cloud services that boost productivity or simplify technology for consumers
and businesses? Those aren't the best minds - working on building out and
realizing trillions of dollars in new business value and productivity gains -
no, you see, it's the pizza gif people; it's not the engineers that have
tripled the value of Adobe by bringing its most important products to the
cloud in a wildly successful fashion and expanding how many people can easily
use their products globally.

How about the thousands of engineers and scientists working in the
increasingly vast field of robotics? Whether consumer, business general or
industrial.

The people that work at Apple or Samsung or Applied Materials or TI or Taiwan
Semi on semiconductor tech? The people that work at ARM or nVidia or Intel or
AMD? Those aren't the best minds, it's the pizza gif people.

I call bullshit on the notion that the best minds are working on pizza gifs
and ad clicks. I don't believe it's even close to being true; I think it's
closer to being a comical overstatement that should be mocked aggressively.

I've thought about this a few times over the years, because it's a common
premise. Here's what I propose instead: the premise, which is widely repeated,
is actually a form of narcissism and undue self-aggrandizement. With some
healthy skepticism and given the very large counter examples available to us
(only a few of which I've mentioned), one might be prompted to question the
'best minds' premise entirely, because it seems to be non-sense right on the
surface (and it is). Here's what I think is actually the case: the so called
pizza gif people are more likely not the best minds of their generation, and
they're simultaneously also not working on anything very important. You see,
if, as a group, they subtly trumpet the premise that they're the best minds of
their generation and they're merely collectively squandering their potential
on pizza gifs, that's a far better comfort than the counter premise that I
just floated (they're not the best minds of their generation and they're not
working on anything important; ouch).

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stonogo
Adtech pays better than every single thing you're talking about here, except
for the instances where you talk about adtech players like Apple. Your
whataboutism doesn't change the basic premise, which is that adtech comes with
stronger incentives than other fields. Of the much-vaunted FAANG companies,
only Netflix doesn't run its own adtech platform (they stuck with good old-
fashioned product placement).

What you've done is read too much into an aphorism that is phrased in
reference to a well-known poem. It's implied to focus on the information
technology sector because it was originally said by a Facebook engineer and
quoted in an article about tech bubbles. It's a concise way of expressing
disagreement with the priorities of our industry, and nothing more than that.

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adventured
> Adtech pays better than every single thing you're talking about here

Which doesn't matter at all in regards to attracting the best minds. That's an
entirely bogus premise. What you're stating is core to what leads people to
incorrectly conclude the best minds must surely be working on ad clicks. It's
the difference between attracting highly accomplished, top 5% minds (great
income, went to a top school, great education results; surely must be among
the best minds; but isn't), and attracting the actual best minds.

Conceptually if you were right, someone like Feng Zhang would have been
working for Google or Facebook on ad clicks, rather than at Broad on changing
the world of biotech via CRISPR. JB Straubel would have been at Twitter trying
to figure out how to improve their ad system. Craig Venter would have been
starting an ad network instead of cracking the human genome at Celera. Rodney
Brooks would be working on mobile ads instead of robotics. Gwynne Shotwell
would be running some ad division within Snap or Google. And so on.

The best minds are more often capable of both making enough money and pursuing
what they want to do - pursing what they're most interested in. Many of them
throughout history have chosen to nearly entirely neglect the money aspect in
fact. Maximizing for money (and not life satisfaction) via eg working in
adtech, is precisely what a best mind would not commonly do, and exactly what
a highly accomplished top 5% type mind would do (something you see routinely,
eg the mid or mid-upper management corporate types; highly accomplished, top
schools, high incomes; also not the best minds).

> Your whataboutism doesn't change the basic premise, which is that adtech
> comes with stronger incentives than other fields

Please point out the whataboutism in what I said. I've pointed out an obvious
flaw in the common claim about what the best minds are focused on.

> What you've done is read too much into an aphorism that is phrased in
> reference to a well-known poem.

I disagree. It's floated persistently and has been for many years as a serious
generalized statement - a lament - about what the best minds are working on
(ad clicks, not flying cars).

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stonogo
> Which doesn't matter at all in regards to attracting the best minds.

The idea that genius is unaffected by money is wonderfully principled but
completely indefensible, especially since all of your examples gained
significant material wealth in the process of winning your approval. Again
I'll note your apparent unwillingness to factor in the context of the quote,
which specifically is from and about the information technology sector anyway.
Finally your anecdotal approach to demonstrating via example suffers from a
massive contamination by confirmation bias -- e.g. for all you know the finest
minds ARE working on adtech, but nobody's made a Wikipedia page about the
fineness of their minds. In other words, your argument restricts itself to the
set of people who employ public relations staff.

> Please point out the whataboutism in what I said.

Your entire post was whataboutism. I don't know how to teach you to see that.
I apologize.

> It's floated persistently and has been for many years as a serious
> generalized statement - a lament - about what the best minds are working on
> (ad clicks, not flying cars).

It is a lament, and taken in its original context if you please, you might
even notice it's true. A "ha ha only serious" joke in computer science
research goes something like "if you want to get funding, look at what the
field was researching twenty years ago, and put that in a grant proposal."
Progress in the fundamentals of computer science has slowed to a crawl, and
the incentives appear to be set to ensure the status remains firmly quo for
some time to come.

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chasontherobot
What a puff piece. Obviously paid for by Snapchat, with every single image in
the article coming from them and the interviewer lobbing softball after
softball.

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CPLX
> What a puff piece

Absolutely

> Obviously paid for

That’s not obvious at all, in fact you’re making a pretty severe ethical
accusation against specific people and it’s almost certainly untrue.

I wish people could understand the difference.

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abacadaba
Aww thats so adorable, he thinks journalists write this crap. When the PR firm
writes the piece, fast company gets free content. It's a win win, that's how
these things work.

I have no evidence for this specific case, but assuming this until proven
otherwise isn't a bad default strategy.

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CPLX
I have extensive experience in journalism and media, what you're saying is
just factually incorrect.

Business publications like FastCompany run uncritical puff pieces all the
time. There's similar content in in-flight magazines, on many blogs, on
various TV profile segments and much more. You're free to decide if you enjoy
reading light, superficial, and purposefully positive stuff like that. Often
the writers and the subjects of the writing run in the same circles, are even
friendly. The content is often predictable and boring.

I'm not a huge fan of the genre either.

But it's still journalism. There's a difference between paid placements and
journalism and it's a distinction I believe is important.

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late2part
I don't know this secret weapon, but from people I know at Snap, I've heard it
suggested they succeeded in spite of him and the CEO.

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yetagainst
Another website that is broken on Firefox.

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clouddrover
I'm on Firefox 69 beta. It worked fine for me. And Reader View works too.

