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Comment by sorokod | Hacker News Reader

In "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" there is a story about a society that shipped out all its useless members (hairdressers and telephone sanitizers) off planet. If Douglas Adams was writing the book now he may have replaced sanitizers with influencers.

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In "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" there is a story about a society that shipped out all its useless members (hairdressers and telephone sanitizers) off planet.

Stanford is doing that with their new Redwood City "campus", an office park five miles from the main campus. No professors. No students. No researchers. No labs. All administrators. "Stanford units that will have at least some employees at Stanford Redwood City include Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; School of Medicine administration; Office of Development; University Human Resources; University Libraries; Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning; and Residential & Dining Enterprises."

"The first phase of construction at Stanford Redwood City will include four office buildings, indoor and outdoor dining areas and plazas, a child care center, a glass-atrium fitness center, a parking garage, a landscaped greenway, a 2.4-acre park and a sustainable central energy facility."

It's Stanford's version of a luxury center for influencers.

(As a Stanford alum, I consider this embarrassing.)

[1] https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu/

You could probably fire half of those people and no one would actually notice.

Genuine question--what would make this not embarrassing for you? Is it the separation from the main campus? How they are segmenting orgs?

It's the sheer number of administrators. Stanford has only 1,761 instructional employees, of which 834 are tenured faculty. The Redwood City facility will have 2,700 administrative employees in the first phase alone.

Maybe I'm not surprised by this because I work in higher ed, but that ratio of administrative staff vs faculty is not really anything to write home about. I work at a top 10 business school, and our staff/teaching ratio is about 5/1, and at schools like HBS or INSEAD in France, the ratio skews quite a bit higher.

> The story was that they would build three Ark ships. Into the A ship would go all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers. The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B ark would hold everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitisers. They sent the B ship off first, but of course the other two-thirds of the population stayed on the planet and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

> The ship was filled with [..] telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives and management consultants. [1]

Hmm, close enough.

[1] http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Sh...

I think you vastly underestimate "influencers". Just replace that term with advertisers, because that's exactly what it is. Everyone is looking for the new advertising paradigm? You're looking at it. People are ACTIVELY following these people, and enjoying it.

> I think you vastly underestimate "influencers". Just replace that term with advertisers

I think you are wrong, they are more rock stars or sports celebrities.

I don't quite follow your point.

Both rock stars and sports stars have some underlying talent/reason that they have fans. What makes these “influencers” so influential? I think this is finally my “I’m getting too old” moment.

Influencers are like second-rate Kardashians: famous for being famous.

I have a relative doing something with restaurants. Made some iOS app/ website and put pictures, 1-2 line reviews there and on sites like FB, instagram etc. With about couple of months of effort, he was able to mooch off 1000s of restaurant meals along with dozen of friends and family members. His total vocabulary about food is 'amazing', 'awesome', 'tasty', 'yummy' when using with spellcheck of course.

Except the lack of telephone sanitizers led to the downfall of the Golgafrinchans, whereas the loss of blogger wannabes from a society would not have provided such a plot point.

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