Talent Misallocation Problem

Sam Parr reflects on the misallocation of talent at major tech companies, where brilliant minds are often focused on trivial optimization tasks rather than meaningful innovation.

Key Points:

• Talent Wasted on Trivial Tasks:

  • At a Facebook party, Sam discovered highly intelligent employees were focused on "trying to convince Brazilians to put more stickers on their photos"
  • Specifically mentioned a dog sticker with a long tongue that employees were trying to promote
  • His reaction: "I felt like a cartoon... I was like what are you guys doing"

• Similar Pattern at Other Companies:

  • Shaan Puri shared Max Levchin's story (PayPal co-founder):
    • Brilliant engineer who "single-handedly was fighting fraud at PayPal" as a "one man army"
    • Later worked on Slide making "widgets for MySpace and Facebook" like "SuperPoke where you throw chickens at your friends"
    • Levchin's key insight: "Be really careful what you choose to work on because everything can be optimized endlessly"

• The Optimization Trap:

  • Talented people get caught optimizing meaningless metrics: "should I be optimizing this chicken slapping or should I be doing something else"
  • Shaan admitted falling into the same trap: "no matter what I'm doing... my life becomes about selling widgets and I can optimize that to infinity"

• Conquering Energy Misdirected:

  • Sam noted Mark Pincus at Zynga had "Genghis Khan energy" but used it for "FarmVille"
  • Called it "a waste of talent... to have that conquer energy and do it in the lamest way possible"
  • Siqi Chen's response: "a few billion dollars is a few billion dollars"