Apptimize is a 2-year old startup closely connected with the rationalist community, one of the first founded by CFAR alumni.  We make “lean” possible for mobile apps -- our software lets mobile developers update or A/B test their apps in minutes, without submitting to the App Store. Our customers include big companies such as Nook and Ebay, as well as Top 10 apps such as Flipagram. When companies evaluate our product against competitors, they’ve chosen us every time.

We work incredibly hard, and we’re striving to build the strongest engineering team in the Bay Area. If you’re a good developer, we have a lot to offer.

Team

• Our team of 14 includes 7 MIT alumni, 3 ex-Googlers, 1 Wharton MBA, 1 CMU CS alum, 1 Stanford alum, 2 MIT Masters, 1 MIT Ph. D. candidate, and 1 “20 Under 20” Thiel Fellow. Our CEO was also just named to the Forbes “30 Under 30”

• David Salamon, Anna Salamon’s brother, built much of our early product

• Our CEO is Nancy Hua, while our Android lead is "20 under 20" Thiel Fellow James Koppel. They met after James spoke at the Singularity Summit

• HP:MoR is required reading for the entire company

• We evaluate candidates on curiosity even before evaluating them technically

• Seriously, our team is badass. Just look

Self Improvement

• You will have huge autonomy and ownership over your part of the product. You can set up new infrastructure and tools, expense business products and services, and even subcontract some of your tasks if you think it's a good idea

• You will learn to be a more goal-driven agent, and understand the impact of everything you do on the rest of the business

• Access to our library of over 50 books and audiobooks, and the freedom to purchase more

• Everyone shares insights they’ve had every week

• Self-improvement is so important to us that we only hire people committed to it. When we say that it’s a company value, we mean it

The Job

• Our mobile engineers dive into the dark, undocumented corners of iOS and Android, while our backend crunches data from billions of requests per day

• Engineers get giant monitors, a top-of-the-line MacBook pro, and we’ll pay for whatever else is needed to get the job done

• We don’t demand prior experience, but we do demand the fearlessness to jump outside your comfort zone and job description. That said, our website uses AngularJS, jQuery, and nginx, while our backend uses AWS, Java (the good parts), and PostgreSQL

• We don’t have gratuitous perks, but we have what counts: Free snacks and catered meals, an excellent health and dental plan, and free membership to a gym across the street

• Seriously, working here is awesome. As one engineer puts it, “we’re like a family bent on taking over the world”

If you’re interested, send some Bayesian evidence that you’re a good match to jobs@apptimize.com

I wrote this post up and circulated it among my rationalist friends. I've copied it verbatim. I figure the more rationally inclined people that can critique my plan the better.

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TL;DR:

* I'm going to commit to biomedical engineering for a very specific set of reasons related to career flexibility and intrinsic interest.
* I still want to have computer science and design arts skills, but biomedical engineering seems like a better university investment.
* I would like to have my cake and eat it too by doing biomedical engineering, while practicing computer science and design on the side.
* There are potential tradeoffs, weaknesses and assumptions in this decision that are relevant and possibly critical. This includes time management, ease of learning, development of problem solving solving abilities and working conditions.

I am posting this here because everyone is pretty clever and likes decisions. I am looking for feedback on my reasoning and the facts in my assumptions so that I can do what's best. This was me mostly thinking out loud, and given the timeframe I'm on I couldn't learn and apply any real formal method other than just thinking it through. So it's long, but I hope that everyone can benefit by me putting this here.

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So currently I'm weighing going into biomedical engineering as my major over a major in computer science, or the [human-computer interaction/media studies/gaming/ industrial design grab bag] major, at Simon Fraser University. Other than the fact that engineering biology is so damn cool, the relevant decision factors include reasons like:

1. medical science is booming with opportunities at all levels in the system, meaning that there might be a lot of financial opportunity in more exploratory economies like in SV;
2. the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical engineering means that I have skills with greater transferability as well as insight into a wide range of technologies and processes instead of a narrow few;
3. aside from molecular biology, biomedical engineering is the field that appears closest to cognitive enhancement and making cyborgs for a living;
4. compared to most kinds of engineering, it is more easy to self-teach computer science and other forms of digital value-making (web design or graphical modelling) due to the availability of educational resources; the approaching-free cost of computing power; established communities based around development; and clear measurements of feedback. By contrast, biomedical engineering may require labs to be educated on biological principles, which are increasingly available but scarce for hobbyists; basic science textbooks are strongly variant in quality; and there isn't the equivalent of a Github for biology making non-school collaborative learning difficult.

The two implications here are that even if I am still interested in computer science, which I am, and although biomedical engineering is less upwind than programming and math, it makes more sense to blow a lot of money on a more specialized education to get domain knowledge while doing computer science on the side, than to spend money on an option whose potential cost is so low because of self study. This conjecture, and the assumptions therein, is critical to my strategy.

So the best option combination that I figure that I should take is this:

1. To get the value from Biomedical Engineering, I will do the biomedical engineering curriculum formally at SFU for the rest of my time there as my main focus.
2. To get the value from computer science, I will make like a hacker and educate myself with available textbooks and look for working gigs in my spare time.
3. To get the value from the media and design major, I will talk to the faculty directly about what I can do to take their courses on human computer interaction and industrial design, and otherwise be mentored. As a result I could seize all the real interesting knowledge while ignoring the crap.

Tradeoffs exist, of course. These are a few that I can think of:

• I don't expect to be making as much as an entry level biomedical engineer as I would as a programmer in Silicon Valley, if that was ever possible; nor do I believe that my income would grow at the same rate. As a counterpoint, my range of potential competencies will be greater than the typical programmer, due to an exposure to physical, chemical, and biological systems, their experimentation, and product development. I feel that this greater flexibility could help with companies or startups that are oriented towards health or technological forecasting, but this is just a guess. In any case that makes me feel more comfortable, having that broader knowledge, but one could argue that programming being so popular and upwind makes it the more stable choice anyway. Don't know.
• It's difficult to make money as an undergraduate with any of the skills I would pick up in biomedical engineering for at least a few years. This is important to me because I want to have more-than-minimum wages jobs as a way of completing my education on a debit. While web and graphic designers can start forming their own employment almost immediately, and while programmers can walk into a business or a bank and hustle; doing so with physics, chemistry or biology seems a bit more difficult. This is somewhat countered by co-op and work placement, and the fact that it doesn't seem to take too much programming or web design theory and practice before being able to start selling your skills (i.e. on the order of months).
• Biomedical Engineering has few aesthetic and artistic aspects, the two of which I value. This is what attracted me to the media and design program in the first place. Instead I get to work with technologies which I know will have measurable and practical use, improving the quality of life for the sick and dying. Expressing myself with art and more free-wheeling design is not super urgent, so I'm willing to make this trade. I still hope to be able to orient myself for developing beautiful and useful data visualizations in practical applications, like this guy, and to experiment with maker hacking.

There is still the issue of assuring more-than-dilettante expertise in computer science and design stuff (see Expert Beginner syndrome: http://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the-expert-beginner). I am semi-confident in my ability to network myself into mentorships with members of faculty [at SFU] that are not my own, and if I'm not good at it now I still believe that it's possible. In addition, my dad has recently become a software consultant and is willing to apprentice me, giving a direct education about software engineering (although not necessarily a good one, at least it's somewhat real).

There are potential weaknesses in my analysis and strategy.

• The time investment in the biomedical engineering faculty as SFU is very high. The requirements are similar to those of being a grad student, complete with a 3.00 minimum GPA and research project. The faculty does everything in its power to allay the burden while still maintaining the standard. However, this crowding out of time reduces the amount of potential time spent learning computer science. This makes the probability of efficient self-teaching go down. (that GPA standard might lead to scholarship access which is good, but more of an externality in this case.)
• While we're on the conscientiousness load: conscientiousness is considered to be an invariant personality trait, but I'm not buying it. The typical person may experience on average no change in their conscientiousness, but typical people don't commit to interventions that affect the workload they can take on either by strengthening willpower, increasing energy, changing thought patterns (see "The Motivation Hacker") or improving organization through external aids. Still, my baseline level of conscientiousness has historically been quite low. This raises the up front cost of learning novel material I'm not familiar with, unlike computing, of which I have a stronger familiarity due to lifelong exposure; this lets me cruise by in computing courses but not necessarily ace them. Nevertheless, that's a lower downside risk.
• Although medical problems are interesting and I have a lot of intrinsic interest in the domain knowledge, there are components of research that interest me while others that I don't currently enjoy as much as evidenced from my current exposure. I can seem myself getting into the data processing and visualization, drafting ergonomic wearable tech, and circuit design especially wrt EEGs. Brute force labwork would be less engaging and takes more out of me, despite systems biology principles being tough but engaging. So there's the possibility that I would only enjoy a limited scope of biomedical engineering work, making the major not worth it or unpleasant.
• Due to the less steep learning curve and more coherent structure of the computer science field, it seems easier to approach the "career satisfaction" or "work passion" threshold with CS than for BME. Feeling satisfied with your career depends on many factors, but Cal Newport argues that the largest factor is essentially mastery, which leads to involvement. Mastery seems more difficult to guage with the noisy and prolonged feedback of the engineering sciences, so the motivations with the greatest relative importance might be the satisfaction of turning out product, satisfying factual curiosity or curiosity about established/canon models (as opposed to curiosity which is more local to your own circumstances or you figuring things out), and in the case of biomed, saving lives by design. With mathematics and programming the problem space is such that you can do math and programming for their own sakes.
• Most instances of biomedical engineering majors around the world are mainly graduate studies. The most often reported experience is that when you have someone getting a PhD in biomedical engineering, it's in addition to their undergraduate experience as a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer or a computer scientist. The story goes that these problem solving skills are applied to the biology after being developed - once again a case of some fields being more upwind than others. By contrast, an undergradute in bioengineering would be taking courses where they are not developing these skills, as our current understanding of biology is not strongly predictive. After talking to one of the faculty heads, the person who designed the program, he is very much aware of problems such as these in engineers as they are currently educated. This includes overdoing specialization and under-emphasizing the entire product development process, or a principle of "first, do no harm". He has been working on the curriculum for thirty years as opposed to the seven years of cases like MIT - I consider this moderate evidence that I will not be missing out on the necessary mental toolkit over other engineers.
• In the case where biomedical engineering is less flexible than I believed, I would essentially have a "jack of all trades" education meaning engineering firms in general would pass over me in favor of a more specialized candidate. This is partially hedged against by learning the computer science as an "out", but in the end it points to the possibility that the way I'm perceiving this major's value is incorrect.

So for this "have cake and eat it to" plan to work there are a larger string of case exceptions in the biomedical option than the computing options, and definitely the media and design option. The reward would be that the larger amount of domain specific knowledge in a field that has held my curiosity for several years now, while hitting on. I would also be playing to one of SFU's comparative advantages: the quality of the biomedical faculty here is high relative to other institutions if the exceptions hold, and potentially the relative quality of the computer science and design faculties as well. (This could be an argument for switching institutions if those two skillsets are a "better fit". However, my intuition is that the cost for such is very high and probably wouldn't be worth it.)

Possible points of investigation:

• What is hooking me most strongly to biomedical engineering were the potentials of cognitive enhancement research and molecular design (like what they have going on at the bio-nano group at Autodesk: http://www.autodeskresearch.com/groups/nano). If these were the careers I was optimizing towards as an ends, it might make more sense to actual model what skills and people will actually be needed to develop these technologies and take advantage of them. After writing this I feel less strongly about these exact fields or careers. Industry research still seems like a good exercise.
• I will have to be honest that after my experience doing lab work for chemistry at school, I was frustrated by how exhausted I am at the end of each session, physically and mentally. This doesn't necessarily reflect on how all lab work will be, especially if it's more intimately tied with something else I want to achieve. And granted, the labs are three hours long of standing. It does make me question how I would be like in this work environment, however, and that is worth collecting more information for.
• To get actual evidence of flexibility in skillset it would be worth polling actual alumni from the program, to see if any of the convictions about the program are true.

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Thoughts, anyone?

[Feel free to read this poor little unrigorous and unsourced post in JK Simmons' voice. That is entirely optional and you are of course free to read it in any voice you like; I only thought it might be interesting in the light of what is mentioned in the edit at the bottom of the text]

Nowadays, it seems that the correlation between sciency stuff, social ineptitude, and uncoolness, is cemented in the mind of the public. But this seems to be very era-specific, even time-specific.

As a lesswronger, I find what follows ironic: In Islamic countries, "scientists" are called with the same word use for religious leaders and other teachers, "olama", literally "knowers"; historically, there's been a huge overlap between the two, and, when one of these folks speaks, you're supposed to shut up and listen. This is still true to this day. There might not be much wealth to be gained from marrying a scientist, but there was status; amusingly enough, it's in modern-day materialism that is pushing them into irrelevance as money becomes, more and more, the sole measure of status.

In the West, in the XIXth century, Science and Progress were hip and awesome. Being a scientist of some sort was practically a requirement for any pulp hero. In the USA, an era of great works of engineering that had a dramatic impact on life quality made engineers heroes of popular fiction, men of knowledge and rigour who would not bow down to money and lawyer-cushioned bourgeois, or to corrupt and fickle politicians, men who would stand up against injustice and get the job done no matter what. Everyone wanted to call themselves an engineer, and the word was rampantly abused into meaninglessness; florists called themselves "flower engineers"! That's how cool being an engineer was.

In the Soviet Union, as long as they didn't step on the toes of the Party, scientists were highly acclaimed and respected, they got tons of honour and status. There was a huge emphasis on technological progress, on mankind reaching its full potential (at least on paper).

Nowadays, nearly the entire leadership of China is made of technicians and engineers. Not lawyers, or economists, or literati. These people only care about one thing, getting the job done - and that's what Science does.

So, I've really got to ask, when and *how* did Science and Engineering become "uncool", and why are they termed "geek", the term used for sideshow circus performers whose speciality was eating chickens alive (or something like that), and which, before that, used to be synonymous with freak and fook? When and how did we become worse than clowns in the eyes of society?  Most importantly: how can the process be reversed?

After all, from a utilitarian standpoint, Science being cool and appreciated and respectable is kind of important.

EDIT: There's also the strange relationship, in the public mind, between science and dangerous, callous, abusive insanity, with a long tradition in popular fiction from Victor Von Frankenstein and Captain Nemo to Tony Stark and GLaDOS, and some Real Life counterparts, especially in brutal totalitarian regimes. Wikipedia has an interesting article on the topic, and how the characterization and prevalence of the Mad Scientist related to time-pertinent perceptions of Science.

For some reason, that aspect is often treated as cool and dramatic and impressive (besides being characterized as repulsive), perhaps because it involves displays of power over others, which is a high-status thing to do. Is that one of the existing paths to social prestige? Achieving power, and being inconsiderate about flaunting it? I'd like to hear more constructive alternatives, because that one doesn't seem viable, from where I stand.

I'm a high school senior from Europe and in a few months I'll be heading to university.

I have a keen interest in the human body. As such, I would like to work in emerging interdisciplinary fields, such as stem cell transplantation and suspended animation.

I could go on to study, say, Biomedical Science, but I'm also fascinated with Engineering. That is, I think that my aspirations, which are to improve human condition, could be well served from an Engineering standpoint.

What do you think? Would my interest in the human body and its applications be better suited for Engineering or for Biomedical Science? How should I decide what to study?

There are a lot of unknowns about the future of intelligence: artificial intelligence, uploading, augmentation, and so on. Most of these technologies are likely a ways off, or at least far enough away to confound predictions. Genetic engineering, however, presents a very near term and well understood possibility for developing greater intelligence.

A recent news story published in South China Morning and discussed on Steve Hsu's blog highlights China's push to understand the genetic underpinnings of intelligence. China is planning to sequence the full genome of 1000 of its brightest kids, in the hopes of locating key genes responsible for higher intelligence. Behind the current project is BGI, which is aiming to be (or already is) the largest DNA sequencing center in the world.

Suppose that intelligence has a large genetic component (reasonable, considering estimates for heritability). Suppose that the current study unveils those components (if not this study, then likely another study soon, perhaps with millions of genomes). Then with some advances in genetic engineering China could quickly raise a huge population of incredibly intelligent people.

Such an endeavor could never be carried out on a large, public scale in the West, but it seems China has fewer qualms.

The timescales here are on the order of 20 years, which are relevant compared to most estimates for AI and WBE. More, genetic engineering human intelligence seems to be on a much more predictable path than other intelligence technologies. For both these reasons I think understanding, discussing, and keeping an eye on this issue is important.

What are the ramifications for

• AI research? FAI? In particular relating to enhanced humans speeding further development
• Whole Brain Emulation research?
• Other technologies that may pose existential risks (nanotech, biotech, etc, especially in light of the fact that it may be China leading the way)?
• The potential for recursive feedback? (Smarter scientists engineering smarter scientists. Less worrisome due to timescales)

Of course, there are a host of other interesting questions relating to societal impact, both near and long term. Feel free to discuss these as well.