> engineering talent

That's the saddest part. A lot of talented people could be working on important problems, but instead they're trying to make people click on ads a tenth of a percent more, so they will buy Crest slightly more often than Colgate.

I guess it's no worse than going into finance: just another way for someone with talent and ambition to make a boatload of money while providing almost no value to society (and sometimes negative value). Still, one could hope that talented people would sacrifice a bit of lucre to do some good. The inventors of Arpanet don't have rocket companies, but I bet they're living comfortably.