[timemachiner]

Since it seems to be a thing to report that X person specializing in machine learning has moved from Y company to Z, it makes me wonder if other areas of computer science is seen as relevant by the general public.

One rarely hears Dr. John Doe from Florida State University (or insert non-Standford university here) in Distributed systems has moved from Microsoft Research to NetApp. These are arbitrary names. The point is you rarely hear about people from other areas of CS outside of machine learning/universities outside of Stanford moving from one company to another. The field of CS is vast and there are multitude of practical and theoretical problems outside of machine learning that are worth looking into (ones that aren't currently considered hip or cool by the public).

[jamesjyu]

You touched on a much wider human phenomenon: attention isn't evenly distributed. The media isn't pushed to report in proportion to an individual's impact. It's guided by trends, aka what people want to read.

AI is hot. So therefore there is a huge spotlight on all angles there. You can argue whether that is actually fair (personally, I do think AI is a high beta field). Topics that don't fall under this are regarded as inside baseball.

[dmix]

Media coverage and popularity always works this way. I'm not sure why so many people perpetually can't wrap their head around it. There have been endless comments online where people are offended or surprised that x person is getting attention, but they are just like these other people who are just as good.

But obviously there's more to drawing people's attention than the individual skill or a comparable position at a different company. As you mentioned this top of HN ranking is driven by joining a trendy company, leading a hugely hyped product team (the Tesla automation stuff was on the front page yesterday), and a personal with a really hot skillset.

Combined of course with the usual luck and good timing.

Is it really hard to see how this isn't much more interesting than someone joining a realitively standard branch of Microsoft?

[kornish]

Karpathy in particular has built an excellent personal brand, lots of which is through his blog. It seems that technically backgrounded "explainers", á la Neil deGrasse Tyson or Richard Feynman, Elon Musk or even Bill Nye, can credibly straddle both expert and layperson worlds. People like to feel like they know what's going on.

[ryandrake]

Part of me dies inside every time I read the phrase "personal brand". I think it's sad that it is no longer enough to be good at what you do--you need to self-promote, blog, and talk talk talk in order to make it these days. What happened to also recognizing the quiet but competent craftsmen?

[kornish]

Out of interest, what makes you think it was ever not this way? I recently reread the Isaacson Ben Franklin biography and one thing which struck me was how much time he put into crafting his public persona.

The comment up this thread holds true: human attention is not evenly distributed. That doesn't mean, however, that there's an imperative to "network" or build a "personal brand" – plenty of people gain a deep satisfaction from excelling at their craft.

[ryandrake]

Maybe I'm seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, but it seems there was once a time in Silicon Valley when you could make it big as a pure technologist and not have to always be marketing and selling yourself. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.

[ghaff]

It may have not been called a personal brand, but I think it's fair to say that many past inventors, scientists, generals, artists, etc. who we remember today were pretty adept at self-promotion.

[matthewmacleod]

I think that depends on what your interpretation of "making it" is.

There area millions of quiet, confident, competent people across industries. People who reliably turn out high-quality products and are well-paid for their work. They get on well with their colleagues and progress with their career at a decent pace. You just don't hear about this much. Doesn't this count as making it?

I'd say that the reason you hear more about people who are well-known is essentially just because they are well-known :)

[colordrops]

> Media coverage and popularity always works this way. I'm not sure why so many people perpetually can't wrap their head around it.

It probably wouldn't work this way if people could wrap their heads around it.

[babyrainbow]

> I'm not sure why so many people perpetually can't wrap their head around it.

The really question is, should we (as thoughtful human being as we consider ourselves to be) bother to question the trend (Which you are surprised that people are doing)? Or silently accept it?

[eslaught]

If we're going to bother questioning trends, shouldn't we be aiming to be questioning in a way that is different from everyone else who has questioned before us? Because, as pointed out by GP, it would appear that previous questioning has failed to have an impact. Just asking the same questions over and over doesn't get us anywhere.

[babyrainbow]

>If we're going to bother questioning trends, shouldn't we be aiming to be questioning in a way that is different from everyone else who has questioned before us?

That would be nice.

> it would appear that previous questioning has failed to have an impact.

Just because something does not cause a change, does not mean it does not have an impact. Maybe, the impact is that it is keeping things from getting worse...In this case, question like these may help to balance the influence of "trends" and helps us to maintain perspective...

[doomlaser]

The person being replaced is Chris Lattner, inventor of LLVM and Swift, of whom it was big news of his leaving Apple to join Tesla fairly recently.

[shas3]

Dunno if this is his real account, but it is supposedly not working out https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/877341760812232704

[saagarjha]

Huh, that's stange. He's been at Tesla what? 6 months? Interesting to see that he's moved on already.

[jacquesm]

We'll see how long Karpathy lasts.

[extr]

must be nice to post a tweet that you're looking for "interesting roles" and immediately have the replies fill up with "come to microsoft", "come to google" etc etc. strange he would just throw tesla under the bus like that. anyone know why?

[dmix]

How is he throwing them under the bus? He said it turns out he didn't fit in well at Tesla. That's just being honest.

If the alternative is phony politeness and masking reality under a guise of everything went great then I prefer this approach.

This is a great aspect of the software industry IMO. And if you want to get lots of job offers then build some great OSS projects like this guy. It's a great way to demonstrate your skill and attract a following which guarantees you job offers.

[extr]

I don't know, to me the statement begs the question "So why wasn't it a great fit?". People are going to speculate regardless of an announcement from you, if it were me I would prefer to just keep my head low and let those who really care to know/I care to tell ask me (or Tesla) personally without a bunch of unneeded commentators jumping in and potentially putting negative connotations in my mouth.

But I hadn't seen that Telsa released a similar statement, and that changes the context quite a bit to match what you describe.

[erikpukinskis]

There are thousands of ecological niches. I'm the kind of programmer who takes time off to make gnocchi and think shallow thoughts about quantum physics. Not every company is into that. Some are. It's not a judgement against anyone, it's just a question of fit.

[tezka]

> I don't know, to me the statement begs the question "So why wasn't it a great fit?"

That's not "begging the question" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

[sjroot]

Interesting. What is Chris going to do now? He was a big hire.

[dmix]

Looking for a new job it seems.

[dejawu]

I think it's fair and makes sense. A lot of Karpathy's work has been featured on HN and I find this news relevant in following what he's working on.

When Scott Aaronson wrote about moving to Austin, that post made the rounds here too.

[rockinghigh]

I doubt that Andrej is known to the general public. With every decade the fields of computer science sees its share of buzz words and trendy topics. It used to be programming languages or networking, and people in these fields used to make the news: Guido van Rossum joining Google or Leslie Lamport joining Microsoft Research.

[Houshalter]

A lot of Karpathy's research and blog posts have been featured on HN. He made char-rnn which spawned hundreds of spin off projects that made it onto HN. He also comments here regularly and explains new research. So it makes sense that news about him would get attention here.

[sidlls]

This same thing is an issue in many scientific disciplines. How many people can even name an area of physics research that isn't particle physics or general relativity, for example?

[Cyph0n]

Well, physics is quite complex. I think electrical engineering is similar in that regard.

Personally, I am aware of the two you listed + experimental, condensed matter, and astrophysics. There is some overlap between physics and EE, so I may be aware of others.

[Animats]

There's lots of action in low-energy physics, down around absolute zero. There are jobs in semiconductor device physics.

[sjg007]

Biomedical

[dwighttk]

biomedical physics?

[nkozyra]

Next big thing. Get in on the ground floor

[matchagaucho]

Tesla's market cap exceeds Ford and GM. Their ability to surpass Uber is contingent on hiring talent to develop self-driving cars.