Yisong Song

[Sam Altman @sama]

if you hire for extreme amounts of aptitude and drive

and put those people in positions that are "ahead" of their career trajectory

you are almost guaranteed success

[Sam Altman @sama]

a thing about research i didn't get before openai:

frequently before a big idea gets figured it out, multiple teams can sort of detect it on radar through the fog. you get an idea of where it's going to be and the rough shape far before anyone actually lays eyes on it.

[Sam Altman @sama]

one of the best things about elon is a reminder of just how much one person can do

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

There are many, many, many implications to this, but zooming in on just one because it is probably surprising: a large portion of engineering compensation is now dependent on interest rates, but functionally no engineers model their compensation as if this were true.

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

“My salary is a complex financial derivative” is a very counterintuitive result for many people for whom it is true.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

One can't help noticing the correlation between how hard countries resisted Germany in WW II and which countries favor appeasement now.

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

It is a true statement that email is an open protocol which is de facto controlled by an oligopoly. This is the most important statement you can make about email as a protocol, and it's instructive to other open standards / protocols / etc.

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠��� @lessin]

On the relative quality of ‘alternative assets’….

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

I broadly think this is true. There are also some interesting mostly unacknowledged filters on particular health statuses.

(Some things which are diagnosable and treatable are actually selected *for* at certain margins; many others are brutally selected against.)

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

You wouldn't think that "End conversations with a recap of what you have mutually promised each other for next actions and deadlines for the same if any" is a technology like the internal combustion engine is a technology.

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

In some cases this is systemically a good thing for all actors: “Don’t worry; I will go capitalism with your management chain to protect your ability to spend time on the things you value. This is why they and I earn the big bucks.”

[sam lessin 🏴‍☠️ @lessin]

The coming fall of the Kardashians in context of how entertainment is evolving... (aka why they are so pissed about tiktok)

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

The Department of X, for the 25th straight year, has reported that they did a lot about X, that they have made progress on initiatives A, B, and C with metrics to show for it, that X is nonetheless more pressing than last year, and that they need more headcount.

[Patrick McKenzie @patio11]

But that phrase “vegetable butcher”, some copywriter should earn a gold star for that.

It��s an explicit, conscious, and effective technique to tell the customer that outsourcing food prep is traditional and not something to be appalled by.

[云风 @cloudwu]

静态阅读分析整个项目的代码真的是个非常重要的能力，直接关系到编写代码的质量。可惜好多程序员过分依赖运行期调试，放弃了该能力的练习。拿到项目都是“单步运行看看”、“设个断点”。我很想用阅读代码基的规模、理解速度来衡量一个程序员的能力。这很容易拉开数量级的差异。

[virushuo @virushuo]

想起来个老笑话：食人族藏在IBM公司办公楼里，每天吃一个经理都没人发现，直到有一天吃了一个清洁工马上就被发现了！

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Corollary: If you're an established company, watch out. The future may be ignoring you, because it knows you'll be too hard to convince.

[Sam Altman @sama]

In addition to the standard criteria like intelligence, drive, and conscientiousness, I put a premium on happiness, optimism/positivity, and "collective self-belief" in hiring decisions.

Makes a surprising difference to the collective output of an organization.

[Sam Altman @sama]

A version of college replacement I'm super interested in:

Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings.