Twitter pays engineer $10 million as Silicon Valley tussles for talent

Take it from someone who has been doing this four years, If you did it once and you killed, you either (a) had beginner's luck, which I've seen time and again. Its when they go up a second and third time and eat their balls that we really see what they're made of. (b) had the audience so front-loaded with buddies that your material was certain to kill. Or (c), you're some motherfucking prodigy that shouldn't be fixing coffee machines.

Everyone circle their answer.

 

I think you're wildly underestimating just how exceptional the average engineer in Silicon Valley is. Wildly. (As an aside, I think you're wildly overestimating how exceptional the $10 million a year guy is.) You don't even get to play in that league unless you've already stood out for a long, long time.

 

Perhaps, but when I here hear cranberry say he's incapable of learning a foreign language, or KJIM say her sister couldn't possibly learn how to properly use a comma, I call bullshit.

Excellence isn't acheived achieved, unless excellense excellence is sought.

People aim for average, and want to chalk up those who acheive achieve excellence as "gifted" beyond their means. I don't buy that.

 

There is a certain lazy comfort in believing that we're all just gifted in our own way.

 

It's acceptable for you to misspell four words in one post, but the rest of us should be out learning to code?

 

"Spelling. That's not a subject, right? I mean, spellcheck, that's a program."

KJIM's sister would sympathize. I just never could learn how to properly spell.

It's just not my fault. I wasn't gifted in that way.

 

Tiago Splitter makes $10,000,000.00 a year. And there's a New Yorker article about DJs in Las Vegas who make 50k and more a night.

281 NBA players are under contract to make 2 million or more this season.

 

Jesus. This is just your stupid "bootstraps" conceit playing itself out again. People have a wide range of cognitive abilities and, yes, much of it is genetic. It's why we have aptitude testing and the entire field of psychometrics. How do you explain savants?

I imagine you spent much of your childhood trying to hammer round pegs into square holes.

 

You don't seem to be able to.

Look, people have different aptitudes. My younger sister is a barrel racer and horse trainer. I can't do that, either, and I am the one who got her interested in horses. Same interests, different talents.

I am lousy with learning other languages, too. And I'm someone who's twice (so far) been immersed in foreign cultures and has tried -- hard -- to learn the languages. During Peace Corps, I had a tutor for a solid year. I can still barely order dinner, although I do amuse at Moroccan restaurants.

I don't have those things in me. That's all there is to it.

 

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Huh?

Look, YF, engineering isn't some people's thing. It has shit to do with math.

Not everyone can do everything.

I don't know you personally, but I'm thinking empathy and sympathy aren't anything you at which you could make a living. You just don't have it in you, although you think you might.

 

I believe I'd rather die than do computations all day.
No, thanks.