Chickens said. Today, WE introduce a talented programmer — Adam D’Angelo, named by Fortune magazine as “one of the smartest people in tech”. He went to Caltech, the cradle of “genius”, became Facebook’s first CTO, and later created Quora, the world’s leading q&A company. Ranked 24th on Forbes’ 2016 list of the richest entrepreneurs under 40. The scariest part is that this guy, who is worth billions, is born in the 1980s (born in 1984), and his life never needs explanation
Winning competitions became a regular occurrence
Like many geniuses, Adam showed incredible talent and intelligence early on. This is embodied in the programming competition he entered. Programming students should know that in programming, algorithms are one of the important indicators to distinguish the logical thinking level of programmers. In other words, if you write good algorithms, it can simply be equated with your good programming mind. In algorithms, the ACM Contest (ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest) is recognized as the authoritative contest in the field of algorithms. It is no exaggeration to say that if you get good results in ACM competition, you can easily pass the algorithm assessment of Domestic Internet companies with BAT level or above. What’s more, they test candidates directly on algorithmic quiz questions and then get the offer if they pass. But it is such a particularly high gold content, is considered by many programmers “nightmare” competition, Adam will win the runner-up through all the way, you can see, his algorithm is very strong. It’s not unusual for him to compete at this level and do well
Of course, some people may say that he has strong algorithm skills, you can only show that he has talent in programming thinking, can not completely show that his IQ must be high. Yes, the real embodiment of Adam’s IQ is the university he attended — The California Institute of Technology. How good is this university? Let’s just say, anywhere in the world, you can just say you graduated from Caltech, and people will think you’re a genius. In fact, this university is really all about talent. This university only admits 200 undergraduates from all over the world every year, in other words, if you are not ranked in the top two in a region, province, or even a country, you will not be admitted to this university. In addition, the school focuses on science and engineering subjects such as math and engineering. You can see how biased they are when you look at the schedule they set. The liberal arts courses offered by Caltech are “operations research”, “history of science and technology”, “economics” and so on, while such courses are included in science courses in most schools. Also, “hard work makes up for hard work” is not a virtue at Caltech, and if you’re struggling with a problem, you should act like it’s easy. In other words, it’s a world of geniuses, so it’s no surprise that Adam has a red rating on TopCoder (the highest level)
Genius is met in the day
Adma loved software development in high school, and went to the same school with another classmate, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. One is a business wizard, the other is a programming genius, these two people meet, will rub out gorgeous fireworks. Indeed, in high school, they created Synapse Media Player, a music-recommendation app that was downloaded over a thousand times (at a time when very few people owned personal computers) and attracted the attention of Microsoft and AOL, They asked two talented high school students to buy them for nearly a million dollars, and offered them a salary of nearly a million dollars a year (reportedly $980,000). However, goose, this in the general people look attractive offer, completely into the eyes of two big men. Shuangshuang turned down the offer and made the software available for download, free of charge
Zuckerberg went to Harvard and Adam went to Caltech. Although they were not in the same school, the distance did not affect their friendship. As we all know, Zuckerberg has a lot of ideas. When he came up with the idea for Facebook, he immediately went to Adam. Adam jumped in to help an old friend start a business, and he immediately set out to help develop Facebook’s infrastructure. Adam was so committed that he took a semester off to meet his Facebook schedule. That’s when Facebook was in its prime. Adam deserves much of the credit for Facebook’s success. We can see it in Zuckerberg’s trust and admiration for Adam: “For every good thing I made, he made six.” After graduation, Adam became the first CTO of Facebook. After that, Zuckerberg always asked Adam to interview for technical positions. If Adam thought the person was smart and capable, the offer would be secure
What’s the real answer?
We might have expected Adam to stay at Facebook, but most people would have expected him to. In 2008, just as Facebook was reaching new heights, Adam decided to leave the company. He wanted to create products that would have a bigger impact on the world. “Facebook had gotten to a point where I felt like MAYBE I wasn’t really needed anymore.” So Adam, then 26, poached Charlie Cheever, a senior manager at Facebook, and co-founded what became known as Quora in 2009. Here I would like to add that many people in China call Quora the foreign Zhihu, but they do not know that Zhihu comes after Quora, and Quora is for international users, while Zhihu is a q&A website for Chinese people. There is not much comparison between the two in terms of product positioning and market
What Adam loves is the process of exploring the nature of a problem. He found that although there was a huge amount of information on the Internet, it was very difficult to find valuable knowledge for himself. So he wants to create a knowledge base that everyone can see, not just a “one-time” answer that you or your friends give you in five minutes. It is worth mentioning that Adam himself is very willing to ask and answer questions on Quora. Up to now, Adam has answered more than 900 concurrent questions and raised more than 1,000 questions on Quora, which is where his interest is. Adam is the “logician” type — quiet, analytical, rarely cares about titles or MEDALS, spends a lot of time alone, likes to get to the bottom of things and enjoys solving problems
The possibilities of the future
In an interview with reporters, When asked what he learned at Facebook, Adam replied: “Focus on the long term. Always do what’s good for the future, not the short term.” It’s this big picture that has kept Quora growing steadily, and in 2017 Quora raised $85 million in Series D funding at a valuation of around $1.8 billion. But Adam has his sights set on more than that, saying in an interview years ago that Quora is focused on the long term and expects to be 100 times bigger in the future. Let us wait and see, looking forward to the quiet work of the talented engineer, as soon as possible to realize his dream
I hope Adam’s story can inspire you. Finally, I invite you to think about what we can learn from people around you who have strong logical thinking. Feel free to interact with me in the comments section
