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I think his gf is far more interesting than the Epstein mild connections. She married a 60 year old at 20. Then later dated 30-year older Eric Schmidt and then somehow ended up with the slightly younger Amodei. I am not going to think she was born with some outstanding ability of seduction at a young age or I assume she could have done better when she was 20. But it’s like once she was the tech slut she got passed around. And they seem to have bad processes for figuring out how to get better girls into their network.
Being able to talk nerdy as a 7+ and/or have both the attraction to engineering types and the ruthlessness is a superpower. Aella discourse same thing
Is it a super power? Mira Murat actually does research and appears to be hot enough to be rich by just being a SAHM. Surely there’s something in between 40+ year old college drop out and Mira Murati quality.
This strikes me as Amdoei and a few other tech guys having a weak mate search function and just going for whatever is readily available. Right time right place. He’s not even bad looking.
Does she? Her first job was PM at Tesla, followed by some startup roles (from memory) before becoming an executive and then CTO. Now she runs her own AI company. That trajectory screams manager/business not AI researcher. Just the kind of area where being a 7+ and able to talk nerdy is super useful. I remember looking at her career path years ago and realizing I could never nepo-baby that hard.
You may be right that she’s more of a manager than pure engineering.
I have no idea though on the nepo-baby comment. No one from Albania comes from much money. But being attractive, social, and a tier 2 mind seems possible. A Dartmouth Engineering degree isn’t easy. Schools like Dartmouth do sometimes push kids to more engineering management than pure engineering.
It's probably not nepotism in the strict definitional sense. But I've almost never heard of someone coming out of undergrad straight into project management at a prestigious company. Let alone from a non top 10 engineering school. Call it connections, familial or platonic. But she got into her positions based on some amount of capability and likely a large amount of "who you know" and was at least capable enough to build on that. But my realization was that technical knowledge and skill and actually attempting to do the work will not get as far as knowing the right people, being able to schmooze, and social climb your way into a prestigious position. Probably a bit of sour grapes.
Zuckerberg, SBF, Chamath. Seems like a lot have done it. In Musks orbit it seems like he does it a lot even with non-attractive people. His Doge choices were young. Nikita Bier at Twitter.
PM roles aren’t pure engineering. Dartmouth outside of HYPS is as prestigious as anywhere and coming from Albania getting into a top school is hard (white and had fewer resources). Albania to Dartmouth Engineering is a strong indicator of ability and agency. Only MIT, Stanford, and Caltech are more prestigious of the engineering schools. If my goal coming from Albania was to get into US tech I would probably rank Dartmouth as my 9th choice after Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, University of Chicago, and Colombia. Maybe CMU is better but Dartmouth opens up better trad finance jobs too. And probably about half a dozen schools at the same level. A poor white you would basically choose whichever lets you in and/or consider their aid. Seems a little weird to me to not consider Dartmouth engineering as prestigious enough not to get a foot in the door to perform.
Though she did backdoor Dartmouth thru a guaranteed transfer program, but again she’s essentially poor unconnected white so getting Ivy isn’t easy.
She's a white woman in engineering, emphasis woman. There is never enough women of any race in engineering, she meets the quota. Doubly so at some Ivy League where they explicitly discriminate for it. I doubt she paid a lot out of pocket or was sufficiently put out by it.
We have very different definitions of good engineering schools. You seem to be ranking them based on international prestige. The Ivies aren't great engineering schools. They aren't horrible, you'll get a great education, but they don't crack the top ten, though I guess this list includes Princeton. Ivies are schools for kids of the elite. Elites don't go become engineers.
Engineering School Rankings
First, I’ve never heard of a school tilting admissions based on intended major at the undergraduate level (Ivy plus). Because it’s obvious extremely easy to just lie.
Second, the entire Ivy League except Dartmouth is at best 50-50 male to female now. Most have higher female populations. Notre Dame is the only other topish school that has more males than females (guess conservatism or football draw). So the Ivies almost certainly moderately discriminate against females if anything. My guess is engineering backdoor program shifts it male.
Engineering rankings have major issues with the emphasis on research. Purdue is 8th. No one is choosing Purdue Engineering over Dartmouth engineering and most wouldn’t even choose University of Illinois over Dartmouth. Purdue engineers hit a career ceiling much earlier. The IQ gap between a Dartmouth engineer and a Purdue engineer is gigantic. And people want the credential signaling of Dartmouth (and signaling of 20+ IQ points) on their resume.
This reminds me of the Lantern episode Sunday night where the alien could recite Google on a topic but didn’t know things every American knows. lanterns No academically talented student is choosing Purdue over Dartmouth. OpenAI isn’t hiring from Purdue.
The lower end engineering schools are preferred for like basic engineering on old tech like building a road or keeping a foundry running. SV is going to take the candidate with demonstrated higher IQ everyday. And Dartmouth does that. It’s not just “prestige” it’s the filter of getting into Dartmouth as an indicator of ability.
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