[batista]

Really? Because nothing in that bio points to that. Actually the whole thing is unbelievably vague and opaque.

And these kind of cutesy oneliner descriptions of one's skills make me cringe: "Simply: I make beautiful things with data".

OK, she works as a "chief scientist" (that's not even a job, for us, old time folks, but anyway) at bitly (a URL shortening service, i.e as far away from a real business as you can get, that aspires to be a "bookmarking service" also.

[dherman]

[Disclaimer: I have decades of first-hand knowledge of Hilary's awesomeness, going back to when we were CS students together in college. So yeah, I'm defending my friend.]

I'd like to ask you to think twice before publicly questioning someone's credentials like this. Whatever your intentions, picking on someone's CV just because of a blog post you disagree with is not only rude, but it sends a message -- particularly to women in tech -- that if they speak publicly, if they offer up their opinion, they will be attacked not about the content of their point but about their competence to speak at all. I believe this kind of attack has real consequences on our field, and I would urge everyone to show everyone the respect they'd want for themselves.

Dave

[batista]

>it sends a message -- particularly to women in tech -- that if they speak publicly, if they offer up their opinion, they will be attacked not about the content of their point but about their competence to speak at all.

Oh, don't worry about that. I'm an equal opportunity insulter! I didn't even care that she is a woman or not while making my point. Nor do I think that women in tech need special treatment. We all get what we all get. Do you see exchanges between males being any more courteous?

Notice also how I avoided to speak about their opinion on Yahoo at all -- they might or might no be 100% correct.

I only responded to the statement by some parent poster, that her CV "proves" that she is especially knowledgable in the ads field.

[geofft]

"Chief scientist" is absolutely a real job. Why would you think it's not?

[fredsanford]

Grady Booch had the title of Chief Scientist at several successful companies.

Is he legit in the "titled world?" :)

[batista]

Because it's a non descriptive BS title / buzzword?

Which is very common in modern business, but shouldn't happen when you have "science" in there. Lives a bad taste.

Science is all about clarity and SPECIFIC fields of study. Nobody does "science" in general.

[geofft]

At a small company with specific goals, there's no implication of doing "'science' in general". I can buy that the idea of being chief scientist at, say, IBM or Google or Microsoft is a little fluffy, but if you're a startup focusing on one goal that is a little beyond what the scientific community knows how to do in theory, it's entirely reasonable to have a position in charge of guiding and directing (and performing) research to that goal and keeping up with the state of the field.

It's largely equivalent to a PI role of a university research project, except that there are things going on in the company other than pure research and so there are chief officers of other things too. Nobody thinks that "primary investigator" is a fluffy title on the grounds that people don't do investigation in general; it's clear they're investigating specific things.

[erikpukinskis]

NASA has a Chief Scientist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Chief_Scientist

You say "Nobody does 'science' in general", but you are wrong. Many people work at organizations that have a broad range of scientific pursuits in a broad range of fields of study. The Chief Scientist's job is "ensuring that [the organization's] research programs are widely regarded as scientifically and technologically well founded and are appropriate for their intended applications".

[alwaysanswerd]

Dude, Amgen and a ton of other biotech/pharma firms have "Chief Scientists" or "Chief Scientific Officers" on staff. Sure, they work in specific fields or specific departments, but that is absolutely a valid and commonly used title.

[chimeracoder]

> a URL shortening service, i.e as far away from a real business as you can get,

Please define 'real business'. What does a company need to have to be a 'real' business? Users? Revenue? Profits? A product that at least some people are willing to pay money for?

I agree that bit.ly is a very simple concept, but I take issue with the disdain in your post - even URL shortening stops being straightforward once you expand from n = 1 to n = 10,000,000. And bit.ly does a lot more than 'just' that.

This reminds me of McCain's 'real America'. You may not like {NoVa, these kinds of startups} and you may think that they don't capture the 'true' spirit of {Virginia, business}, but at the end of the day, their {votes, dollars} count just as much as 'real' {America, business}.

You may not think Hilary's qualified to talk about the details of Yahoo's particular advertising model, but don't extend that into what's bordering on an ad-hominem attack against a very legitimate startup, as well as a key figure at said startup.

[batista]

>Please define 'real business'. What does a company need to have to be a 'real' business? Users? Revenue? Profits? A product that at least some people are willing to pay money for?

Revenue and eventually profits. Even if "url shortening" is a "real business", it still is in the very far outskirts of "businesness". A very marginal value adding service, that exists solely because of some very marginal deficiencies of other services. Even Twitter has trouble monetizing, a "url shortening service" 100 times more so.

>even URL shortening stops being straightforward once you expand from n = 1 to n = 10,000,000.

I fail to see how. Even a simple setup can handle 10,000,000 shortened urls with aplomb. And url shortening is the most sharding friendly use case you can get, ie linear scaling is trivial in a url shortening service.

>You may not think Hilary's qualified to talk about the details of Yahoo's particular advertising model, but don't extend that into what's bordering on an ad-hominem attack against a very legitimate startup, as well as a key figure at said startup.

Well, she may or may not be qualified. I just pointed out that the page the parent pointed to as proof of her competence on the matter doesn't _prove_ her qualifications at all.

[zanab]

Edward Tufte makes the exact same argument and has a book entitled 'Beautiful Data,' and NO ONE says that about him. Also, while I applaud your use of quotes as rhetorical device to discredit Hilary Mason and her job title, I respond better to well-reasoned arguments. May I encourage you to watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL3DWcBsPU4 Now imagine her saying, "Simply: I make beautiful things with data." Does that still read cutesy to you? I might also suggest perusing her GitHub code, but I wouldn't want to alarm you, what with all this newfangled technology and rapid motion.