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Comment by amichail | Hacker News Reader

"I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens', which is a pretty exciting thing."

He took a job without having any idea what he will be doing? And why would that be an exciting thing?

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He took a job without having any idea what he will be doing?

Facebook will likely give him the latitude to write his own job description and recruit his own team. The end result hopefully will be something that he enjoys, and that benefits Facebook and its users.

I think that's what google did when they let him work on google wave, didn't work quite well. Let's hope it does work better this time.

Wave was a horrible implementation of a decent idea. For the longest time it felt like they did absolutely no work on the wave project (at least not from the users perspective).

I think the main problem with wave was that it wasn't solving any problems it was just mashing up a lot of features in to one application and never recovered from performance issues.

> I think the main problem with wave was that it wasn't > solving any problems it was just mashing up a lot > of features in to one application.

Kinda sounds like Facebook to me. They seem to be handling growth / performance well though.

Google Wave was a great idea but making it standalone application was the mistake, IMO. I am pretty sure the ideas Google Wave generated will be implemented on the right application someday. Facebook might be the platform for Lars to implement his pet project (Wave).

Some people need structure to get things done. Other people find structure limits their ability to do things. The latter usually happens because their imagination exceeds the imagination of those who create the structure.

But why is he so confident that he would be working on something of particular interest to him?

Because they are explicitly inviting him to come hang out and work on anything that is of interest to him?

Because they've probably discussed the possibilities beforehand...

It's like two CS guys who both have an interest in solving big problems efficiently. They have ideas. They talk to each other about their ideas. They really love working on their ideas. One of them gets a ton of research money so he asks the other to come work with him in the new lab allowing him to work on his ideas as he wants.

It's also well known that many Googlers love their 20% personal (pet) project time and this job description sounds like it took that 20% and juiced it to 100%.

That's not what was said though.

True. However, you did ask specifically why this would be an exciting job title. This is my interpretation on why this job title is actually "kick ass."

Some people do amazing things no matter where they are or what problems they face.

It's a lot like privately funded research.

That's really nothing but a standard technical fellowship job description. It exists at many, if not most, large-scale tech companies, although it's not the sort of position that shows up in classified ads.

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