Overpromising and underdelivering. 

That seems to have become a trend in many of the companies I’ve seen. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about large corporations or small, scrappy startups (although the sheer volume of startups popping up everywhere and competing with one another, at the throats), pre-emptive lying is on the rise.

There are two industries I think this is particularly true in - AI and, as much as it hurts to say, biotech (both of these are similar in that it’s relatively easy to hide what you do/don’t have produced and use jargon). 

Initially promises of things that ‘we will do’ or ‘are next on our radar’ were fair - but now companies are pulling out claims of science that literally aren’t possible. In two ways:

1. The technology is there, but people don’t understand it (skill issue, the talent force that runs the show literally isn’t equipped or trained to make use of what’s available)

2. People have an idea of what they want or envision the tech to do, but it is physically impossible to do (or at least the actual end result is 1/100th as impressive as the marketing makes it sound)

But they will be someday, people tell me. Stop being so negative. 

The issue isn’t that I don’t think people shouldn’t be visionaries. Flip it - people should have an ambitious north star. I’m just tired of feeling like my - and many of my friends, most of whom are in their early 20s and working 4-6 month internship terms - work isn’t amounting to anything. 

It’s a long-recurring feeling of contributing to something that’s so far away, so out there, so outlandish and unattainable that makes it feel futile and unrealistic. For people in their early careers who are trying their best to learn quickly and try as many things as possible, reasoning such as “it’ll get there someday” isn’t enough. We aren’t waiting around for “someday” - time is finite and precious (the average student only has 4 years of undergrad, give or take 4-5 work terms - generously estimated).

If your product takes 5 years to iterate and ship, then the work I do in anything <1 year feels pretty useless.

Some folks have told me about the importance of compounding. That to really reap the benefits from being an early team member/builder, you need to be able to sacrifice years to see it through. 

After working at various teams each for 6+ months (one being close to 2 years), but still feeling a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with something I couldn’t quite place my finger on, I thought I simply had a low risk tolerance or was desperately impatient. It was always a me problem.

I now realize that it was because there was very little outcome for, in my eyes, a high volume of time. Nothing I did felt real because there were no tangibles to prove I did anything. Or that I even existed there.

I’ll briefly illustrate this.

I spent 6 months with an early-stage team focused on tissue engineering - in those 6 months, I maintained cell lines, developed and experimented with countless mediums, and meticulously crafted nutrient pools with painstaking care. I semi-joke that I was a serf to the lab.

And, as biotech will have it, there were rounds of tests and inspections, among other things, that would take place after I had left. The role I played was important, but only mechanically. I was important because I would repeat without complaint. There was little value in having me zoom out, pitch ideas, see the projects through to the end. I was a lab rat.

I walked away from that position not knowing the fruits of my labour, feeling like I had put in so much time for nothing I could hold, keep, or point to. I can't even link it to this site. It didn’t feel real. I was just a statistical improbability of the dozens of scientists that would walk in and walk out. 

In recent years, the felt need to overpromise - has worsened this exponentially. 

I understand that you need the funding. I understand that you want to stay ahead of the competition. But if we continue to aim for goals that are a) unrealistic b) painfully time-draining and intensive, we end up achieving nothing at all. 

Theranos-esque situations are everywhere.

Now, I evaluate new projects in terms of immediate actionables. What can we achieve in small chunks? How are we going to achieve them? Why does this matter? What other tools, technologies, assumptions is our success hung on? What's the baseline we're at now? Be specific. 

That turns into something real.

/jg

05/20/24