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Comment by tomxor | Hacker News Reader

> The thing with these fluffy observational posts is that it’s rarely if ever concrete

In a word, it's subjective.

As we move through life we humans enjoy extracting pithy and broad nuggets of wisdom from our experience as we introspect. Occasionally they are even generally true! But as I've grown a little less naive I've come to appreciate that most broad observations, as convincing as they may appear, are usually incredibly subjective - to the originator (among which I include myself) they make 100% sense, but devoid of the context from which they derived (as they are often presented) they are usually little more than noise.

It's the horrible gnarly truth of the world that we must become comfortable with to stop making these oversimplifications. </ armchair philosopher>

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It’s only a little subjective.

Getting a job at RenTech is easier than winning the Nobel or Turing, but harder than getting a job anywhere else.

Getting a job at hardass backend FAANG is easier than getting a job at RenTech, maybe about as hard as getting into an Ivy with undistinguished parents.

Hitting that top 1-3% performer at FAANG is harder than completing a PhD at Stanford or Cal, but easier than selling a YC startup for 500MM+.

People want it to be subjective so that 0,0 can be in sight of wherever they are, but I know damned well that I’d flunk a RenTech interview, and even more so that I’ll never win the Turing.

How did your team kick Googles ass at advertising. Any lessons you can share ?

There’s a bunch of technical auction theory and ML stuff that’s semi-germane, but mostly it was Sheryl breaking ranks with a wage-fixing cartel. Google and Apple and Pixar and a dozen other companies have been found guilty in court of various “no poach” arrangements and other wage suppression collusion, and so here comes Sheryl offering twice the TC and raising the hiring bar accordingly. FB in 2008-2012 was harder to get into than Harvard and paid better. So we were better, and the novelty of the situation created a camaraderie that had everyone sleeping at the office with the singular focus of putting Vic G out of a job.

There’s a lot of structural nuance and important details but it was an absurdly elite group of people who hadn’t been disillusioned yet and we forced Google’s jaws open wide enough that there are now 2 panopticon ads businesses instead of 1.

Antonio García Martínez wrote a great book about it called “Chaos Monkeys” if you’re a long-form reader.

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