Hacker News Reader

Comment by powera | Hacker News Reader

I stopped reading this when I got to "Why do these smart, quantitatively trained engineers, who could help cure cancer or fix healthcare.gov, want to work for a sexting app?" - there was the cover article in Time Magazine not less than 2 weeks ago about these very engineers fixing healthcare.gov, and describing why they don't do it permanently (government procurement is awful and almost always unrelated to actual skill for websites, and the healthcare.gov site is generally described as incredibly badly written by the initial contractors).

The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise.

View on HN

It's funny how that line of thinking should boil down to "capitalism, or at least the way we are practicing it, misallocates resources", but the thought-buck always stops with the smart people. There's no "well, I the incentives must say these people should work on sexting apps, and they are acting rationally, I wonder why the incentives are that way?", it's just "Ugh! You're smart! Stop it with the sexting and start with the curing!"

An expression of outrage and disgust with no follow-up -- someone else should work for the good of the world, I'm just a regular person trying to feed my family.

People who believe incentives are destiny tend not to take jobs writing for the New York Times. It's not like journalists enjoy high pay or great job security.

Maybe the author of this piece believes "I don't do X for the money, I do X to make the world a better place / for the love of X". Many people in the arts, education, charities, research etc act as if they believe this.

Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.

There is a third, and far more likely option: they applied, and were rejected. Recruitment process are terrible through out, and world-changing institutions are no exception. Let me know when I can fix cancer or neurological disease: I know how well enough to make a significant contribution. While I wait, three head-hunters have called about that virtual good start-up…

Also: (b) is far more likely than (a).

>Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.

Yet another third option: the people with opportunity to change the world do have the desire, but are working on something else at the moment.

It's a sad fact that the world has an extreme shortage of people with both competence and idealism, because our social system has a strange urge to exterminate idealism at all costs[1].

[1] -- http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide

The author does not have a job writing for the NY Times. He is a graduate student at Columbia University, with an internship scheduled for this summer with Uber.

Smart people are rational and cleverness is combined with ambition you find calculated risk. As long as you're willing to risk your youth for filthy amounts of money you're being rational since you'll still have a respectable resume and those unsexy jobs will always be there waiting.

Large portions of our culture have a mental block about thinking that capitalism might be doing the wrong thing. Or rather, they simplistically equate "capitalism" with "freedom", fail to acknowledge that capitalism imposes its own imperative (namely: return-on-investment) on society, and thus end up wondering why these intelligent, free individuals haven't chosen to engage in noble, moral work. Since the presumption of "freedom" cannot be questioned (by noting that the capitalist imperative and the incentive structures flowing from it have a compelling power all their own), only one possible conclusion remains: all those intelligent, free individuals are just not very noble people, actually.

These people then proceed to sulk in a corner at the general suckitude of our species while voting for more capitalism.

You seem to have confused the econospeak-meaning of "rational" with its usual English meaning. It's rational to prefer meaningful work.

Approximately 2296 days ago I started reflexively down voting anyone that starts a comment with 'I stopped reading this when X ...'.

If you didn't finish the article, then I don't think you are qualified to judge whether or not the author has a point.

Did you stop reading the comment at 'I stopped reading this when X ...'?

Meta irony!

They never said they stopped reading. Maybe you didn't read the parent post :)

> The whole article reads like a narrative that is grabbing random anecdotes to support a point, even when the facts say otherwise.

I'm curious what facts you're talking about. The very problems you point out about healthcare.gov support part of the author's argument - that today's tech environment rewards the creation of a sexting app over more groundbreaking work, and therefore youth do the former.

From my perspective, at least, few of Silicon Valley's startups will have a lasting dent in the human world. Funding for spaceship technology is limited, more people are working on note-taking apps than cleaning the air, and the hype is all on Snapchat (which does have a huge valuation).

The real issue is how we change it; change inevitably comes from youth. And if today's youth come out of college excited about sexting apps, I have little trust in a better future. That being said, I'm not in a position to say much, being a college student myself.

Then blame consumers and investors that fund sexting over space travel or cancer cures, because that is why all the entrepreneurs jump on it. If there were monetary demand for a cancer cure, and I mean real billions a year in venture capital into R&D on the subject, that nobody was using - you would see a dearth of sexting apps, at least for a while, while that VC funding is consumed.

Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue.

I can't help but be reminded of the quote: “You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”

This hits home for me.

It took a lot of courage for me to leave at&t when I did. It was my first job out of college, I just got saddled with a mortgage and was soon to be married to a lady who would be 100% dependent on me at first since I was bringing her to USA from Nigeria. When I told my soon-to-be-wife and the rest of my family that after nearly 6 years, I was leaving the well established corporation AT&T for a San Francisco start-up of less than 20 people.... they were not on board. This was back in 2007. Today, everything worked out.

Outside of this debate about tech, in general people should avoid living simply to survive. You will regret it later when you're 60yrs old and realize all you've done with your live was... not die.

> Effort goes where the money is, because your legacy is a long term problem, and your ability to eat is todays issue.

I completely agree with you. I suppose that the angst comes from the idealism that always surrounded Silicon Valley, that we were here to build big things and change the world. And that arguably isn't happening right now, with the exception of the efforts of a few well-established companies.

Sure, but that's a culture problem. If you give people drugs, they get hooked and want more, so you sell them what they want and make a lot of money. "Dumb-tech" works like drugs. How can you stop consumers' addiction to those drugs without making them illegal? That's a hard question. But the thing we must remember is that something the market wants and pays a lot of money for is not always good for society – it is often harmful. You can easily turn most people into junkies; putting them all through rehab is hard (but worthwhile).

Not all youth wants to work on sexting apps. I'm 20 and working on a group problem-solving platform using a bug-tracking approach to address real world issues. And it's open-source :-)

Would love to hear from anyone interested: http://maybethismatters.org

Huh. Hold on. Let's go check the "Who's Hiring" monthly job listings here on Hacker News. Usually, when I read those, I see about 40% stupid-but-sexy bullshit, 40% dull but genuinely significant companies whose product does make life better for its users (for example: healthcare analytics companies), 15% awesome idealistic ventures, and the remaining 5% is either complete weird bullshit or the awesomest, coolest radical ventures I've ever seen.

I'm one of the engineers working on fixing healthcare.gov with a whole bunch of other Silicon Valley engineers. See relevant Time article and Hacker News discussion a couple of weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312442

There are certainly problems here, but that's why it's even more important to have talented people (especially engineers or SREs) come help. If you know anybody who'd like to help on a temporary rotation or permanently, please point them to:

jobs@hcgov.us

Since the SRE dream team fixed healthcare.gov so quickly, it seems it must have been mostly done decently well, but lacking a bit in QA and followthrough. Or do you think you could have put a web/db system in place from a cold start just about as fast?

I don't blame people choosing to work in other business areas rather than putting their efforts in fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc.

Why? Because it's honestly very hard work, often with little recognition and less pay. People trying to innovate or 'disrupt' these fields are up against deep rooted political institutions, large corporations with millions to spend on lobbying efforts, and a broken legal/patent system that favors those who exploit its many loopholes.

That said, I have great respect for people who devote their time and effort for the greater good.

Especially with the way academic science / biotech is run. Some reasons off the top of my head:

-Curing cancer (i.e. biotech/biomedical research) often requires a lot of startup overhead. Engineering training is hard, and I am sure there are a lot of expensive hardware and laboratory equipment, as well as similar levels of bureaucracies and personalities to deal with. But a similar startup training path in bio requires - wet labs, animal labs, and associated support (including feeding, caring, ethics oversight which is important but adds additional time and effort to everything). The medical angle adds both additional regulatory, ethics, and safety considerations, as well as political egos from MD's, hospital admins, university chairmen, etc.

-Pay: in the commercial/private sector, I am sure things are probably a little better, but with more strings. But you can choose to fight in the VC funding space, for bigger pots of money, vs. jumping into the right for NIH R01s, R21s where the politics and competition are brutal. The basics are not dissimilar - VCs like founders with track records and ideally a minimum viable product or proof of concept, NIH grant reviewers like proposals from established labs (who have a lot of money and data already). Just that it seems the pot is a lot tighter for people trying to get money from the government. The DoD maybe better in this regard.

-Culture: Are you going to be a founder or early employee, with equity and potential for higher raises? Or are you going to be a postdoc making $40-60k for the next decade of your life?

That being said, I do know people do it, i.e. the "Craig Venter model". They don't tend to get a lot of press, though, and they often exit to big pharma or big devices (medtronic...)

"fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc."

I think a big part of it is less pay. Important things pay very little compared to frivolous metoo.io apps and social advertising and whatever.

Capitalism is a greedy optimizer. When it finds a local maximum it goes all in. It does not explore the fitness landscape.

<<Capitalism is a greedy optimizer. When it finds a local maximum it goes all in. It does not explore the fitness landscape.>>

Upvoted specifically for this line. That strikes me as a key insight into the free market's strengths and weaknesses.

I've thought this for a long time. Ultimately I think it's that private enterprises must have a low appetite for risk. The only time you see private enterprises investing in fundamental R&D or otherwise really exploring, it's when they are either so huge that they have immense cash hoards (e.g. Google) or they are monopolies with guaranteed cash cow income streams (e.g. the old Bell Labs). The vast majority of private enterprises cannot risk investing in anything without a very high probability of return, and that means being conservative and doing things that have already been proven to work. (Or that are only a slight deviation from things that work, or that build on already proven tech, etc.)

Governments have immense disadvantages too. They are slow and inefficient and are absolutely horrible at taking things the "last mile" from lab prototype to product. Governments flat out suck at "shipping." Yet they have the ultimate guaranteed income stream -- taxes -- and so can afford to invest in "high risk, high payoff" R&D and basic science that might never produce direct payoff (but may produce large indirect payoffs later).

The optimum seems to be, as with many things in nature, a balance. There may also be third options that have yet to be discovered, such as innovations in finance that enable risk to be spread more intelligently.

I think another part of the problem is that there aren't really any important things in the public sector right now. The last public sector thing that engineers got excited about was the Apollo program.

Fixing government? Yeah you might be able to modernize a lot of the tech stack that runs various governmental entities but you're not going to actually fix the entities. You'll be implementing failed or broken policies in node.js instead of cobol. It's a step in the right direction but it doesn't actually fix the core of what's broken.

Curing cancer? There's no Federal Department of Stopping Cancer, either you work for a big pharmaceutical company or you get a PhD and scramble for grant money.

Rebooting our space program? That happens every administration and it always starts with some kind of dream to do audacious thing X that won't get any significant funding.

Fixing education? I'm not really sure where to start here. You can't fix from within since there's a constant struggle by the administrators to stay in power because teachers don't have any upwards mobility besides administration. And trying to fix it from the outside? That's even tougher, Kahn Academy has some traction with people but little with teachers who fear it'll put them out of work.

Find me something inspiring that's not going to be mired in politics and bullshit and I'm all ears. I don't think any of those are all that inspiring. I'd even deal with less pay for something really impressive.

>Curing cancer? There's no Federal Department of Stopping >Cancer, either you work for a big pharmaceutical company or >you get a PhD and scramble for grant money.

Actually, there is a Federal Department of Stopping Cancer - the National Cancer Institute.

http://www.cancer.gov/

Point taken.

But it's got a $5b a year budget which is pretty small in the biotech world. It's even worse when you consider that 42% of it is grant money. So my statement isn't quite right, but in my opinion, still close to right. Maybe 70% true.

http://www.cancer.gov/aboutnci/budget_planning_leg/plan-2013...

http://obf.cancer.gov/financial/factbook.htm

Inflation adjusted NASA's budget during the Apollo program was $30 billion a year or so. And that was in a realm that's better understood.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should start spending $50 billion or $100 billion a year on cancer research. But I would argue that it might take that kind of investment to really move the needle in a meaningful way and provide enough good paying opportunities for nerds to get them interested.

Thanks for the link though, even if it makes me look a little dumb.

It's also an Unfriendly optimizer. Capitalism's local maxima often consist of things like Gilded Ages and Great Depressions in which return on investment is maximized to the hilt at the expense of nearly all other values. Yes, once we force it out of those local maxima, it goes back to generating wealth in a way that people actually want it to, but eventually, without deliberate management to keep it out of them, it always finds another damn local maximum to get stuck in.

"fixing government, curing cancer, improving medicine, rebooting our space program, fixing education, etc."

-- There are a bunch of startups already in these areas...

Its a cop-out. If SV wanted to tackle the big problems, the legal costs of playing in D.C. wouldn't hold them back. Lobbying revenues for the top 10 firms in DC combined are probably $250m per year. Facebook could buy all the top players in DC for a few decades with what it spent on WhatsApp. Citing legal challenges is just cover for the fact that there is more money in sexting than curing cancer.

What people miss is the incredible amount of infrastructure development done at Facebook. While it would be an honest statement that it's behind Google (which takes a different approach to infrastructure) in that respect, it also differs crucially from Google that much of it is open source. As a mater of fact, here is one example of code that Facebook contributed heavily to (and that I've worked on as well) that is being used (amongst many other things) to cure cancer: http://www.slideshare.net/ryancox/20101207-o-connortrihughba...

Not everyone is a geneticist or a bioinformatician. Not everyone who has the capability to write code that Facebook need has the capability to become as good of a geneticists as they are a programmer. Yet, it's not fair to say that this talent is wasted: some Facebookers have contributed to open source, others have joined infrastructure companies (much as others have come from those companies).

Why haven't I instead went to work directly for, e.g., NASA or a national lab? Well first, as an undergraduate I deeply _wanted_ to take an internship at NASA (they had a great program for local students) but couldn't as only US citizens were permitted to do so.

I was already well into a full-time industry job when I became a US citizen (I've also worked at startups prior to attending college: again, I highly doubt NASA or a research lab would just hire a high school student ). Now I've already heard too many horror stories from classmates working for various government/aerospace/hardware/other traditional orgs about the low autonomy, office-space-esque working condition (be in the office by 8:30 AM, or there'll be a "talk", even if you've worked late into evening), but most importantly about how most of the folks working there are not doing the kind of work I am. Those that _did_ do that kind of work first had to expand a lot of energy proving what was apparently at the start -- that sometimes building something from scratch is less work (both now and later) than trying to shoehorn a problem to an existing but ill-fitting abstraction.

Fortunately, I am seeing this change for the better -- and many places (e.g., LLNL) already stand out -- but for now I'll quote Thiel: "rocket scientists go to Wall St for money, but also because aren't allowed to play with rockets anymore!"

Obligatory disclaimer: I'm a former Facebook employee and am holding on to my RSUs, but I've sad much the same long before I've worked at Facebook (indeed, this is why I chose to work there!). I am not speaking solely for myself, not on any company's behalf.

Did you intend to respond to me? I'm sure Facebook does lots of neat things, I'm not criticizing it. All I'm saying is that its a cop-out when companies and investors say that its legal challenges that prevent investment into curing cancer, or whatever it is people think smart kids should work on besides sexting apps or the infrastructure for sexting apps. Its cover for the fact that there's just not much money in saving the world.

Hmm, I think I've mis-read your comment then. My apologies. That said, if you don't mind I'll let it stand as is -- perhaps as a comment on the OP. My point is "cancer research OR Facebook" is not a choice anyone goes out to make consciously: they study a specialty and then seek out the most rewarding (according to their own definition of "rewarding") career options available to them. If one is interested in building distributed systems, there is simply more opportunity to do so at Google, Facebook, or other places in the software/Internet industry than in other industries (that's not to say those opportunities don't exist elsewhere, of course).

I do agree that it's B.S. to say that legal challenges prevent investment in cancer research (unless people mean "coconut oil cures cancer" type of research, in which case they well should). I would probably say that if anything current patent law makes cancer research more profitable that it would be without it (however, I don't have enough of legal background to speak definitively on this).

> Its cover for the fact that there's just not much money in saving the world.

The question for me is why is this true? It seems like there should be.

I think its an issue of discounting the return by probability, and being able to internalize positive externalities. You can spend $10 billion trying to cure cancer, but how much do you have to get in return for the risk that you won't? And if you need to make a 50x return in the successful case to justify the failure risk, how will you do it while society is demonizing you for withholding cancer cures from dying people?

I think part of it also diminishing returns: life of cancer patients has been greatly improved, with early detection it's no longer a death sentence and at times not even a major handicap. See, e.g., quality of life after treatment of prostate cancer now vs. quality of life after treatment of prostate cancer treatment just 20-30 years ago.

I imagine power law holds in most disciplines: going from 99.99% uptime to 99.999% is far harder than going from 99.9 to 99.99% which in turn is harder then going from 99% to 99.9%. Likewise, I'd imagine same holds true with death tolls over N years from various illnesses (but obviously with different constants involved).

Can you explain to me what you meant by externalities here? Do you mean medical industry benefits from cures without contributing to funding the NIH grants?

No I mean that when you discover or invent something that "saves the world" it might have a large net positive benefit, but it might be difficult for the inventor to capture enough of that benefit to justify the risk of investing in the discovery. Say you need a $500bn payout to justify the risk of investing $10bn in curing cancer, as opposed to spending that money in something with surer returns. Curing cancer might generate $2 trillion dollar in net social benefit, but it might be very difficult for practical and political reasons for the company making the invention to extract 25% of that to justify their investment. A cure for cancer would quickly be subject to generic drug licensing by the government, under the premise that it would be wrong to profit so much from withholding cancer treatment from sick people. So why deal with that when you can get 100x return on an internet startup?

Ah, got it. It also seems the more useful the drug, the higher the pressure for low cost generic licensing (though, then again, the larger the circulation).

I wonder if an X-Prize like model might work better here, with, e.g., individuals with genetic risk for a specific cancer "crowd funding" various grades of prizes, with the actual awarding of prizes, setting and advertising the prizes, being done by an organization/consortium that knows what they're doing.

>The question for me is why is this true? It seems like there should be.

As someone else noted, "saving the world" usually translates into economics as "generating large positive externalities". It's not just that you might have to give out cancer cures for free (in most countries the state will pay for health-care anyway), it's that you simply can't patent the Theory of General Relativity or the Germ Theory of Disease or the Dead Germ Method of Vaccination. Even improvements in nutrition and yield of crops can only partially be treated as private, excludable property.

Radical new discoveries are almost always nonexcludable, and thus can't really be treated as private commodities sold on a market. Note that I said can't, not shouldn't: trying to treat nonexcludable goods as private commodities leads to bankruptcy rather than sin.

Another thing I was thinking about was if people had as many government recruiting requests come in their inbox/linkedin, if that would factor into more people in tech joining? It just seems like private sector throws more resources into keeping the machine fed with talent.

I found the article to be a nice summary of the current Silicon Valley zeitgeist. Someone who has never really followed developments in technology can get a nice overview by reading this article.

I think you should give the whole article a chance. It's about the dichotomy of tech industry and has more solid point of view if you read it the way through

Yup i stopped at same point.

I'd add a point. It's also because young people don't fully grasp the cost / benefit analysis - they don't know the pain, and they don't know how to develop & implement the solution.

I might have a cool idea to cure cancer, but it'd be a difficult search to even figure out if it's been done before: lot of learning to do.

Whereas a quick scan of app store and talking with a few buddies tells me if my idea for a sexting app has been done.

The subtitle reads "In start-up land, the young barely talk to the old (and vice versa)". WTF do the author get this observation from? Looks like an unsubstantiated assumption to me. Other than an making an allegation, there is no reference to this through out the very long article.

So you stopped because of a rhetorical question?

You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are systemic problems with governments contracting out software.

The substance/cool chasm is real (find my other post in this thread) and vicious.

Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of meetings. The people I know that are in their twenties and trying to fix cancer are being met with the horrible baby boomer mentality about everything.

You have just exemplified the issue completely.

Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos. Spend more time thinking about how to solve hard problems. Spend less time thinking about "us" and "them" and more time thinking about "everyone".

Yeah, fuck that noise.

"Spend less time thinking about getting sex" hahahahaha yeah okay.

Look, maybe when you're in your 30s or 40s and you've got the wife and the kids and the minivan and the bills and the mortgage you can focus on the more noble things in life, like making the world a better place so that your progeny will have an easier time of it.

But, in the meantime, for those of us without children, fucking is a pressing issue.

EDIT:

I'll be still more blunt--the people who gain the most from us "making the world a better place" are those with kids and a stake in society. You are trying to take advantage of us.

You should've gotten us healthcare, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us a safety net, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us cheaper student loans, but you fucked it up. You should've gotten us more affordable housing, but you fucked it up.

So, no, I'm not going to help you beat cancer so you can spend an extra year with your kids (who are going to be bankrupt the rest of their lives because of your medical bills).

EDIT2:

You couldn't even manage to kick out the bastards in office who are running the alphabet-soup agencies that are ruining our country. There. There's your fucking legacy.

who are you even talking to? me? you don't know me. I'm not a baby boomer with a wife and kids. I'm in my late 20s and work at a tech startup in New York. I just happen to have some perspective.

Not "you" specifically, the sort of "You" (insert appropriate audience/strawman).

Upvoted for honest expression. But you're doing exactly the same thing you're criticising: you haven't kicked the bastards out either, or gotten healthcare sorted because you're too busy chasing sex and thinking about your own life.

In 20 years someone will be writing your post about you!

I actually am working at a startup in the healthcare space, and do mentoring and coach people to try and help give them skills they can earn a living with.

I still find time to try and chase tail--after all, it's the oldest game in the world, and if you're not playing, you might as well be dead, right?

I can tell by the fading font color that this isn't a popular post, but I fucking love it.

Hit the nail on the head. There is a plethora of important and difficult problems to solve, and the millenial generation has to trudge through the pile of shit that's been left accumulating for the past several decades. Our most pressing matters involve navigating a new world that is built on the internet.

Okay, if you actually need an app to help you get some ass, I suspect there might be another significant underlying issue there, and the app probably wont help you anyway. Besides there being hundreds of these silly things out already, I don't see why you or someone else getting sex should necessitate some brilliant programmers help who could otherwise be spending her time on problems far more worthwhile(e.g. perhaps aiding in curing STD's is more enticing for you).

What makes you think that the people getting rich off Poke apps are the brilliant ones? That is the fallacy of it all.

Did you read the article? Its not only about the ones who get rich, its moreso about the significant amount of talent flowing towards these superfluous types of "companies" (ie. startups that are really nothing more than mere features, or eCommerce websites), instead of working for a larger "old-guard" company that actually accomplishes much more because the startup is more cool or popular; according to the author.

I think it may be overblown a bit sometimes, but there is definitely truth to this.

So, erm, what are these large "old-guard" companies that somehow would make better use of my talents?

And further, where did they come from?

Are you saying you wish you lived 30 years earlier, because life is better for gat generation than yours?

Sex and photo-sharing pays the bills. Thinking about "everyone" does not.

If some folks were just trying to pay the bills, working in government or biotech would be fine. What kind of bills are we talking about? I think it's more that sex and photo sharing, at the moment, net an excess of wealth quickly and efficiently.

This sounds so unbelievably ignorant I laughed. Do you honestly think solving a problem that aids "everyone" is worthless, or cannot pay bills? Just an fyi, pharmaceutical industry is actually pretty lucrative because everyone is vulnerable to illness.

Honestly though, I suspect most of the people sitting there writing those silly apps wouldn't be able to do things like cure Cancer or aid in creating vaccines and etc. anyway, so I think the issue may be a tad overblown. Many of these "app developers" are actually people who simply learned to write code on some site and simply churn out games, sex-apps and such just hoping one will catch on and make them lots of money; thats really it.

I really don't think many pathologists, biologists, etc. are wasting most of their time making some silly app that "disrupts" how people share naked photos.

Solving a problem would be worth a great deal. Thinking about how to solve a problem is not worth a great deal. Attacking problems that have been unsolved for decades, despite lots of work, seems like a poor idea when compared to smaller problems that can actually be solved today.

> Spend less time thinking about getting sex and sharing photos.

Incentives, please? I would guess that maybe 20 years earlier, being an engineer who spent all their time working on something that sounds boring like "making better semiconductor materials" probably got more recognition and social status than it does now. If I say something like "Oh yeah, I work on gallium arsenide diodes at [research company]", people at parties are going to nod off before I can get to 'diodes'.

Why would a 20-something want to work for the likes of, say, JPL, when they can get tons more pay and recognition by working at, say, Facebook?

I think the problem has a lot to do with the fact that too many people are motivated by those really shallow incentives (a little bit of money, a little bit of fame) than by things that matter more in the long run.

"Too many people are motivated by those really shallow incentives (a little bit of money, a little bit of fame) than by things that matter more in the long run"

No, I think it has more to do with the fact that people who work on things that matter more in the long run should be offered those "shallow incentives" as you call them by a societal structure. Society (at least in the US) has withdrawn those incentives (a stable family, recognition of intelligence vs. being popular); and the result is that people are moving away from anything that doesn't offer them more recognition -- of any kind.

Computer nerds have finally, and at this point it seems like for the first time in a good while, gotten some modicum of respect for what they do. And now people think that they're just going to give up that respect so willingly, and for so little reward?

Money and fame impact who you marry and have kids with. That can have a significant effect in the long run (where long == your own lifetime).

And you exemplify the kind of self-righteous person that probably spews this kind of junk daily.

The reason people work on sexting apps over curing cancer is because it is a more human problem than curing cancer. In all your tunnel-visioned dash to label problems as "hard and "worthy" you are the one that missed the forest from the trees. All people will die, and while it would be great if they could stick around a bit longer without pain, the biggest difference is how people spend their lives today. If they can spend it connecting with other people they care about, and derive meaning from that, that is a thousandfold more compelling problem.

It's not that other people don't have their incentives and values right, it's that you don't recognize them.

Lets just be honest with ourselves. The biggest reason more people are willing to work on these substance-less apps is because its far easier to create something superfluous as a twitter-helper(or any of the hundreds of ecommerce sites that simply provide new ways to do old things like laundry, via your phone), than it is to cure cancer, and they get to call themselves "hackers", "entrepreneurs", "techies", etc.

There are many players in the game now who are in it more so for the hopes of striking in rich and social currency than the actual joy of solving problems, surprise surprise. This is why the app stores are flooded with endless spinoffs and knockoffs of the same things over and over again.

Let's just be honest with ourselves. The people who become research doctors working on curing cancer have very, very hard lives, and most aspiring cancer curers never get to do any actual curing. They have to do a PhD/MD, survive their internship and residency process, and most likely publish papers before they're even out of school before a cancer lab will even hire them.

Substanceless apps are not only objectively easier than curing cancer, there are much lower barriers to entry. In fact, for some perverse reason, our society seems to feel that the most trustworthy process for handling real, major problems like cancer research is to erect the highest possible barriers to entry, throw even the survivors out of the field at every least opportunity, and then place absolute trust in the few who survive this winnowing process.

The concept that treating everything serious as a tournament-structured winnowing process might have some negative impact on the ability of our research institutions to actually treat and cure cancer does not seem to occur.

Well fucking said.

I guess we're in agreement then. Its easier to work on these small superfluous apps than to work on something like curing diseases (which is being used as an arbitrary example of something more "meaningful" than say, a sexting app (another arbitrary example)). The cool factor is also something to consider since computers are cool these days.

I took the side of the issue that I did because its what was discussed in the article; I definitely agree that the medical cartel system we have in place here is also a huge problem. Its the only industry I can think of where the number of new practitioners allowed to enter the field is a function of the number of existing practitioners.

Commenting on this incredibly late, but I knew there'd be some good fodder in this comment thread.

You have a good point, but unfortunately you're still missing the point. Not being able to effectively cure cancer isn't the issue Silicon Valley is facing. As others have said, as software engineers, we would have gone to school to do bioinformatics and study the natural sciences if that's what we wanted. The issue is that a vast number of people are working on shitty, pointless, worthless apps.

It has nothing to do with barriers to entry. What kind of problems do you learn to solve in this field? Computational ones, i.e. things involving facets of computing. So why are less companies devoting resources to working on facets of networking, optimizing computer architecture, writing more efficient compilers and operating systems? Things that software engineers should have plenty of knowledge on, and would be much more beneficial to society than the next bullshit social app. Why is this not the case?

That is what the author is addressing. Churning out photosharing app #35875 isn't helping anyone. But maybe if people started taking pride in the notion of being a hacker and a computer scientist, and actually solving shit worth solving instead of stamping those phrases on their Twitter pages for social approval, then just maybe the Valley could gain some credibility back.

>So why are less companies devoting resources to working on facets of networking, optimizing computer architecture, writing more efficient compilers and operating systems?

I can think of a couple reasons:

1) Because hardware/microarchitecture companies do devote effort to architecture and compilers.

2) Because low-level software/OS companies do devote effort to networking, compilers, and operating systems.

3) Because network effects mean that only a very few mutually incompatible languages and OS's can survive on the open market, with a larger but still fairly small variety surviving on open-source volunteer efforts.

>Not being able to effectively cure cancer isn't the issue Silicon Valley is facing.

Oh really? Aren't there some computational problems we could work on that have cancer-cure-level impacts?

We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys.

I'm 30. I'm one of the young guys.

I also realize that (a) my odds of winning the VC-funded lottery are low and (b) all of us are going to be old one day.

No age is too young to die of cancer. One of my friends died last year at 31.

You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies.

I don't like how stodgy, checked-out, appearance-obsessed execs run companies. I also don't like how VC-funded egotistical frat boys run companies. It has nothing to do with age. Most people of any age are not equipped to run companies.

We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of meetings.

I agree 100% and that won't change when I'm 50. I'll probably be even grumpier about the corporate nonsense (if God decides to be a dick and I'm still working corporate jobs by then).

The people I know that are in their twenties and trying to fix cancer are being met with the horrible baby boomer mentality about everything.

Sure. I don't think you're wrong, and your observations are valid. Is it generational? I'm not sure. I don't like the Gen X, VC chickenhawk mentality or the Millennial-generation "move fast and never fix things" mindset either. People who gain power become short-sighted, flippant, emotionally insensitive and, over the long term, creatively and intellectually weak. This is true regardless of age.

I rail on "the Boomers" all the time because the political impact of that generation has been terrible, and their economic mismanagement has fucked us up big time, but I don't actually think it's a problem with the individuals.

Sorry about that Michael, I had you confused with someone else on HN. Apologies.

Look, if the money were there and the environment was there we'd be there. It really is that simple.

I think the odds of winning the startup lottery are actually pretty high, at least for all reasonable definitions of "winning". Although that might be survivorship bias speaking on my end.

If more people were like Elon Musk we'd be working on these harder problems. I totally agree with you about your observations about people that gain power, at least in aggregate.

So it's all someone else's fault?

Of course it is.

I'm reminded of a scene in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, with Kieran Culkin and Emile Hirsch. (Great movie, btw.) Minor spoilers:

The boys are riding their bicycles along a country road, and happen upon a dog that's been struck by a passing vehicle, and is dying. Hirsch's character, Francis, says (paraphrased), "Someone needs to come for it. They need to do something." Tim, played by Culkin, responds, "There is no 'they'. We are they."

I trust the scene's relevance isn't too obscure.

Reminds me of Heidegger's concept of the "they self" as an inauthentic way of being.

Great movie. But the tiger part was a bit ridiculous.

The scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ut7L-X1NQ

What always stuck with me was the end: "No one was coming for this dog, I hope you realize that. Nobody around here, no one who passed it, not even the guy who hit it. I hope you realize that. Don't you ever tell me to get real. I know what fucking real is, okay?"

Isn't photo-sharing a solved problem? Getting sex would seem to be, as well, but to the degree it isn't, then why aren't the youth of today inventing real solutions? I'm not sure Tinder/Grindr/etc. are a confident step in that direction.

On the subject of "solving problems we have":

Interestingly, in a lot of smaller startup scenes (not the SF bay) we're seeing the hipster/gentrification thing happening and they are talking about Public Health issues and throwing their weight against them.

But if you're under 35, the Public Health issue isn't cancer or heart-disease. It's cars. That's what kills young people. The sprawl-driven development and the constant political battle over decent human-scaled transit-driven urban development.

Y'see, people under 35 often don't have kids and their college days aren't far behind them (or are still happening). And that means dinky apartments and taking trains and buses and walking everywhere. Even if some of them have the money for a swanky suburban home and an awesome car, they at least remember what it was like without one.

And from the discussion on that, the fact that car accidents are one of the leading causes of death is an obvious part of the conversation.

I've seen young startup hackers fighting their cities for Open Data to develop better transit and planning tools, making websites for local political campaigns, etc.

A lot of it has to do with the bubble economy. A bubble economy doesn't create substance, it just focuses on returns. Ever since the bailout, money has been cheap and "tech" showed some of the best returns—second only two developing markets.

Google and Apple have record revenues and profits and are propping up everything else. Everyone, including Facebook, thinks they are going to be the next Google. And as long as money remains cheap, it will keep flowing into tech without bounds. You look at a company like LinkedIn—a company with a P/E near 1000—and you can see is clear as day. Even sustainable businesses like Amazon have had their stock price inflated through the roof with cheap money looking for a good return.

When the bubble pops things will reset in the Bay Area. Money will go somewhere else and only the companies which have real businesses will survive. Right now, money is still cheap. Investors will continue to invest in cool apps, and public companies will continue to purchase those apps with funds from the people's retirement to stay relevant. Just like with every bubble, the person on the hook at the end of the day is the average citizen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com