[Firmwarrior]

Man, it's so weird and pathetic

All of these guys are probably a hundred times smarter than me or most of the other code monkeys working for the FANGMAN, but they're all squabbling over little 5-figure scraps of grant money.

[whytai]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

  In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake

[nequo]

I think it’s their egos they’re squabbling over, not grant money.

[bigbacaloa]

Zhang evidently doesn't care about money at all. The same is true for many professonal mathematicians. Caring about money makes it difficult (not impossible) to do anything deep.