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Comment by _qulr | Hacker News Reader

> If Yellen wanted to sell out, she would have worked in industry

What do you think Yellen is going to do 4-8 years from now?

Janet Yellen is 74. I would expect that she would retire or do what she has done, teach or research. She was at the Brookings Institution after being Chairman of the Fed. I suppose she could have been a senior VP at Goldman Sachs if she had wanted to be, but apparently she didn't.

She left a top position at the Fed several years ago. If she didn't go into the private sector after that, it's unlikely that she has any desire to do so, ever.

She did go into the private sector. How are these paid speaking engagements not private sector?

She didn't take a job as a managing director where she actually has decision making power. That's what people mean by going into the private sector.

What she did was give glorified TED Talks to a group. It's a performance.

> What she did was give glorified TED Talks to a group. It's a performance.

Even more reason to think that it's "selling out" and not "real" work.

Retire, possibly get a boardship or hot the speaking circuit again. She'll be eighty, she's not going to get an industry position.

I would consider the speaking circuit to be an industry position. A very lucrative one.

The comment you replied to presented an industry position as the alternative to what she was doing, speaking. So if you're going to reframe those as equivalent, you should have stated that originally.

Would sitting on one or more boards not be an option for Hellen and would those not be industry positions?

I don't really consider a boardship an industry position.

Like, you have executives at some companies serving on boardships in unrelated industries. They aren't working two jobs.

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