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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

> Why are the smartest people in the world working on delivery food?

They probably aren't. Some of them are really smart. Some of them are pretty dumb. Some are determined and hardworking. Some are lazy. Most are more or less somewhere in the middle.

I don't know why anyone would assume the smartest people in the world are working on delivery food (I understand the subtext of the-smartest-people-are-choosing-to-work-on-apps-ad-tech-etc but I just don't buy it)?

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A lot of startups are incredibly marginal, and a lot of the smartest, most determined people start those companies. There are so many brilliant people building payroll software and HR data normalization companies. Yes, they have lucrative markets, but are they really what our best and brightest should be working on? And with regards to staffing, these companies do recruit smart CS kids from MIT, Stanford, etc. so there is a misallocation of talent that exists.

You're doing the same thing as the article writer. Just assuming that these people are "our best and brightest." What is there to tell us that other than they're getting paid a lot of money and they went to a prestigious school? It's a nice story to tell but that's all it is IMO.

People assume "highest paid" = "smartest" because the assumption is if you're smart you'll go where the money is.

This is not always true. And smarts/talent aren't completely interchangeable, either.

everyone in this industry loves to think that they're surrounded by (and accordingly one of) the smartest people in the world. Sure, some people in tech are very very smart, but many, maybe most, of the smartest people in the world, don't work in tech at all (they work as researchers, in universities)

Thanks for pointing this out. It's entirely possible, even likely, that the smartest people in the world don't work in tech, or finance, or any of the topics us HN readers find dearest.

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