[slvng]

The best engineer I've ever known ended up working for years on optimizing ad space auction time by micro seconds.

[bpavuk]

they either:

a) don't care

b) were desperate enough at the time, then, like that damn videogame, it sucked him in

it's too easy to get carried away by sheer technical complexity of optimization tasks, even if you are optimizing for bad.

[giancarlostoro]

Or were paid handsomely?

[hosteur]

That is really sad.

[speedgoose]

They may have been extremely competent at this, but if they decided to spend years of their relatively short ephemeral life on such a useless project, perhaps they weren’t the best at the time. Perhaps they needed money and were focusing on family life, I don’t know. Who I am to judge? I’m judging though.

[blell]

Why is that useless as opposed to what most of us do for work? I think you guys have a weird sense of how useful the average job is, or how much the average job contributes to society at large. At least this made a lot of money I guess.

[malicka]

I would like to add they waated their time on something evil, not useless. Can’t say I blame them too much for cashing that check, though.

[rchaud]

Before tech became the go-to big money job, there was a well-worn stereotype of electrical engineering grads going to Wall Street instead of an EE-centric job.

[snakeboy]

Well, nobody needs Google-level money...