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nostrademons • yesterday at 9:50 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

Medicine and finance have both reinvented themselves within the last generation. The skillset of a top practitioner now looks very different from the top practitioners in the 80s.

I think what you mean by a "timeless industry" is one that defines itself by the problem it's solving rather than by the solution. Tech and the Internet was so powerful that for a brief couple decades, the industry defined itself by the solution: just use computers. But really, AirBnB is in the hospitality industry, and Uber/Lyft/Waymo are in the transportation industry, and Zillow/Redfin/Trulia are in the real estate industry, and Stripe/Square/Paypal/Zelle/Plaid are in the payments industry, and Flexport is in the shipping industry, and so on.

The depressing part for me, who went into one of the consumer tech giants, is that I thought I was going into the tech industry and it turns out I'm really in the addiction industry. I now know a lot about how to deliver hits of dopamine at scale that bump up daily engagement, but that's not really what I thought I was going into, and the actual technology I use has completely shifted underneath.


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StilesCrisis • today at 12:30 AM

I can relate! I once joined a team that worked on "Analytics" when I was naive and didn't realize that meant "remarketing and ad targeting."

Just keep an eye out for something different. I'm sure there are jobs that you can do and feel good about.

et-al • yesterday at 10:48 PM

> I thought I was going into the tech industry and it turns out I'm really in the addiction industry. I now know a lot about how to deliver hits of dopamine at scale that bump up daily engagement

You could've got out sooner once you caught a whiff of this?

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kenjackson • yesterday at 11:55 PM

This post is deserving of more visible placement...