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by kasey_junk
4396 days ago
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"How are you getting that from what I said?" It's implied by what you didn't say. You don't require technologists involved in internet ads to justify their existence whenever a post about google comes up. Nor when news breaks of a new internet startup being acquired. I'm picking on you a little bit as a proxy for the entire HN community, as there seems to be a bias against HFT and towards internet ads that is a little unseemly. Further, I'm not convinced you understand the scope of money involved in HFT vs cancer treatment for instance. When Roche bought genentech (a cancer research company) they paid 46 billion dollars for the privilege. Knight Capital Group, one of the biggest players in HFT is worth around 1.4 billion dollars. The market seems to be allocating resources correctly. The PR companies on the other hand... |
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Wow, you've gone through my entire HN corpus to verify that?
> I'm picking on you a little bit as a proxy for the entire HN community
I would prefer that you didn't do that, since I am not a good proxy for any community that thinks figuring out ways to get people to click on ads is a good use of smart people's time and energy. (Btw, I'm not sure that the entire HN community is such a community; a part of it may be.)
> The market seems to be allocating resources correctly
The numbers you give are interesting, but I'm not so much interested in money as in human resources. Genentech may have cost $46 billion, but are they paying smart people enough to get them to do cancer research instead of becoming quants?
Some of this may be a perception problem, as you imply by your comment on PR companies. What data I've seen on where smart people can get paid the most indicates that it's not cancer research. But I'm sure the data I've seen is incomplete; I would love to see more comprehensive data if there is any.