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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Oh no. I have long suspected this will happen Anandtech seems to have trouble getting editor to stay. And people are either leaving or becoming freelance. Andrei left not long ago. I am not even sure if they have a full time editor any more.

I think he is going to spend a lot more time on his Youtube Channel. OR,a possible scenario.... Would he be joining STH? I know he sometimes comes to HN :)

>and all I’ve wanted to do is lash out!

I am glad I am not the only one. And that is why I enjoy Anandtech and Ians writing so much. To educate the reader instead of being mislead by marketing and sloppy journalism that are only here for clicks.

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Good review sites suffer the same problem as government: from a financial standpoint, you cannot afford to pay people competitively vs their alternatives, for the skills you really want.

So it becomes a labor of love. But that only goes so far, for so long.

IMHO, in an industry like that, you have to be honest about what you're bringing to the table for employees in lieu of compensation: an opportunity for increased name recognition and networking in a public role, and the fun of being a public face!

But! You also have to continually deepen the bench with new prospects, because you know you're going to be continually hemorrhaging top tier talent to job switching.

Credit to AnandTech that people stay for as long as they do. 10+ years is damned impressive!

I remember joining the anandtech forums in the very early 2000's. I'm continually surprised how great a resource it's remained for over 20 years now. Certainly impressive!

Journalism is one particular problem. I expect most halfway decent tech journalists could head to many tech companies to do content marketing and make a lot more money--though they might well find the work less interesting.

Arguably, pay disparities in the industry exist more broadly even if you just restrict the conversation to developers/engineers. I suspect that the big tech companies are sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room at least in the US. Some people may not want to work for those companies and others, whether because of lack of skill, poor interviewing, or just bad luck, can't get an offer. But if someone can get in, it will be hard for a lot of other companies to match the comp.

Big tech SWE interviews seem to be just tests that are very poorly administered. With practice and some luck a large segment of the developer population can pass within a few years of really diligent effort. Some need a lot more practice than others though.

I don't know why they don't just administer real tests. Probably some kind of demographic or legal nightmare?

Well, for one thing, if it's a standardized test, it will be leaked even if there are a few different versions. "A few years of really diligent work" also seems a pretty high bar to improve odds of getting a job at a handful of companies.

Same techniques apply to many companies. And two hours a night for two years to get 100k in stock options that few can offer sounds like a good deal to me and many others.

If people are spending a few years to prepare, that’s probably enough time to self educate to actual competence.

Given enough optimization and no upper limit on prospective hire annoyance, any interview test series eventually evolves into an undergraduate degree program.

Preparing people for jobs with targeted education and a test? The horror!

The interviews are very approximate. Plenty of people get an offer, go to a startup, interview again for the exact same job with exact same interview, and get declined. Or they get an offer from 2 FAANG and miserably fail the phone screen on the 3rd. This is not what any statistically minded person would consider to be a solid measure of competence

Perhaps there's just different waves of 'good review' organizations in the space? I feel like the newer wave might be the youtuber realm of things, where things like Linus Tech Tips recently announced an expansion seeking industry professionals: https://youtu.be/pt3-6BsWlPk?t=669

I thought this was spot on so I quoted it, with credit, at the /r/hardware discussion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/svk7m4/dr_ian_cut...

> I have long suspected this will happen Anandtech seems to have trouble getting editor to stay

Wasn’t Ian associated with Anandtech for 10 years? That seems like a long enough in today’s world.

Also please note that working for Anandtech gives you a lot of profile and publicity. Other people in the industry may want to snap you up!

I know LTT is also starting a lab and talked about getting certain folks to join his team…

This was my 1st thought as well. Also, Linus said “think I can’t afford you? Try me”.

This may change later when he might realize (hop not) that these guys don't return enough on investment. But maybe LLT is the one who will be popular enough, who knows.

I think LTT has mostly figured out a sustainable model:

1. Make low(er) budget videos regularly that may not earn you a ton but keep the algorithm happy and the money flowing.

2. Every now and then, make a few high-budget videos that "pop", which expands your audience and keeps the regulars hooked.

If you check their channel right now, most of the daily videos are kind of boring/stupid YouTube bait - I even stopped watching their channel because of that! But if you check back every month, there's maybe two-three videos that are genuinely unique or interesting. So I think LTT wouldn't care about RoI from an expensive hire on a per-video/per-view basis - it would be worth it for them if they could use that hire to build a captive audience to watch their cheaper video.

> Anandtech seems to have trouble getting editor to stay.

I don't think we should necessarily celebrate people continuing to do the same thing over a long period of time. Humans like to grow and experience a variety of things. Change is good. You have 11 lifetimes:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-02

Perhaps but

1.) People can grow and change within a single organization, especially given that they're not spending a lot of time to learn a new place and

2.) We also shouldn't celebrate people because they jump around every 18 months when something isn't going quite their way or they've gotten bored.

Sure but in this case, the person was there 10 years, so (2) doesn't seem to apply.

Oh certainly, 10 years is a very respectable tenure with an organization. That's been around the point where, at a couple of prior jobs, I was definitely ready to move on.

my biological clock seems to be 4 or 5 years max in an organisation and about 10 years max in a given career (sw development is my third "career" so to speak, what I did before was completely unrelated; I'm already planning the next endeavour which is only tangentially related to "tech")

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