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This question's gauche, but: given the prevalence of $400k++ comp packages for ~30-year-olds in Big Tech, why aren't there lots more "gentle[wo]man scholars"? i.e. people quitting to do non-remunerative creative projects I can think of some, but shouldn't there be thousands?

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Noah Tye

@noahlt

Jan 28

Thinking about this from the angle of "assume these scholars actually exist"… — most people's curiosity is satisfied by learning what has come before (ie, not research) — most who attempt research will not produce results — most research results are invisible; can't do marketing

Noah Tye

@noahlt

Jan 28

So to flip the question around a bit: why does

@andy_matuschak

have 46k followers? why does

@michael_nielsen

have 71k followers? what atypical thing have you done to not just do interesting stuff but also get attention?

Noah Tye

@noahlt

Jan 29

Also: you can see this as a self-aggrandizing marketing problem, or as a societal science communication problem!

Replying to

and

Honestly, the question makes me pretty uncomfortable. Internally, it mostly just feels like following the simple adage of "produce the kind of work / communication I'd want to read." I'm sure I'm operating on a lot of intuition here that I haven't really made explicit.

2:28 AM · Jan 29, 2022Twitter Web App

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