andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-760 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: This news article by Ryan Tate is an amazing bit of sociology: If you want Facebook to spend millions of dollars hiring you, it helps to be a talented engineer, as the New York Times today [18 May 2011] suggests. But it also helps to carouse with Facebook honchos, invite them to your dad’s Mediterranean party palace, and get them introduced to your father’s venture capital pals, like Sam Lessin did. Lessin is the poster boy for today’s Times story on Facebook “talent acquisitions.” Facebook spent several million dollars to buy Lessin’s drop.io, only to shut it down and put Lessin to work on internal projects. To the Times, Lessin is an example of how “the best talent” fetches tons of money these days. “Engineers are worth half a million to one million,” a Facebook executive told the paper. We’ll let you in on a few things the Times left out: Lessin is not an engineer, but a Harvard social studies major and a former Bain consultant. His file-sharing startup drop.io was an also-r
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 This news article by Ryan Tate is an amazing bit of sociology: If you want Facebook to spend millions of dollars hiring you, it helps to be a talented engineer, as the New York Times today [18 May 2011] suggests. [sent-1, score-0.382]
2 But it also helps to carouse with Facebook honchos, invite them to your dad’s Mediterranean party palace, and get them introduced to your father’s venture capital pals, like Sam Lessin did. [sent-2, score-0.303]
3 Lessin is the poster boy for today’s Times story on Facebook “talent acquisitions. [sent-3, score-0.1]
4 ” Facebook spent several million dollars to buy Lessin’s drop. [sent-4, score-0.175]
5 io, only to shut it down and put Lessin to work on internal projects. [sent-5, score-0.103]
6 To the Times, Lessin is an example of how “the best talent” fetches tons of money these days. [sent-6, score-0.048]
7 “Engineers are worth half a million to one million,” a Facebook executive told the paper. [sent-7, score-0.1]
8 io was an also-ran competitor to the much more popular Dropbox, and was funded by a chum from Lessin’s very rich childhood. [sent-10, score-0.124]
9 Lessin’s wealthy investment banker dad provided Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg crucial access to venture capitalists in Facebook’s early days. [sent-11, score-0.442]
10 And Lessin had made a habit of wining and dining with Facebook executives for years before he finally scored a deal, including at a famous party he threw at his father’s vacation home in Cyprus with girlfriend and Wall Street Journal tech reporter Jessica Vascellaro. [sent-12, score-0.45]
11 First, the network of connections and free money. [sent-20, score-0.079]
12 It makes sense: if you’re a rich businessman and your kid wants to follow in your footsteps, you’d help him out, right? [sent-21, score-0.122]
13 Second, the way that the New York Times (and the news media in general) missed the story. [sent-22, score-0.142]
14 This is a perfect illustration of James Flynn’s point that meritocracy is self-contradictory . [sent-23, score-0.108]
15 Also a good argument for a multiplicity of news sources. [sent-24, score-0.135]
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