I'm waiting for the tech world to realize that "the brightest minds of our generation" don't actually work at google, because if you are that enormously bright you don't want to work for ads or in an opaque megacorp.

Why does anyone think a brilliant mind would enjoy that? So they could make a little bit more money?

Do you honestly think brilliant people, the smartest of our generation, care about money?

IME, Google software devs aren't even the brightest minds in the parking lot.

Completing large engineering projects says nothing about individual capability, and nothing about how Google deploys shitty AI moderation and about how Google employees insist it's great and perfect and never does anything wrong gives me any reason to believe they are even competent.

It's literally a meme that people started repeating in earnest without a second thought.

Don't you think a brilliant person would work somewhere, like, interesting?

In economies where you aren't rewarded for individual competency (because software management couldn't pick out individual competency if it screamed at them), highly competent people aren't going to play the game, they are just going to find something to pay the bills and work on hobbies.

The smart people are often where the money isn't, because they are rarely driven by monetary pursuits.