It is obviously Google.

I could tell it was Google after reading this:

> A suprisingly large fraction of the smartest programmers in the world do work here. In very large quantities. In fact, quantities so large that I wouldn't have thought that so many really smart people existed or could be centralized in one place, but trust me, they do and they can.

There are certainly other places with lots of smart programmers, but it seems every time I read something self-congratulatory like this, it's Google.

I agree. How do you know someone is a Googler? They will tell you how their entire company is the most smartest in the entire multiverse.

If you are so smart why are twiddling around bits in gmail for breadcrumbs when you could have started your own company or gotten into academia?

I am not sure if breadcrumbs means low compensation, but the comp at Google (especially for people succeeding) is high and low risk.

If you just want to write software (as opposed to run a business), being an engineer at Google is really nice. You get a ton of resources, work on projects that have millions of users, etc. Don't get me wrong, entrepreneurs are awesome. But it's a much, much broader skill set than what is required to be a successful software engineer.

As for academia, my personal problem with it is that it's too focused on elegant/complicated/clever solutions to problems that don't really exist. And the compensation is terrible.

Intelligence != entrepreneurship. And plenty of smart people flee academia because they want to avoid the politics (and get paid better to boot).

Isn't it funny how that line is always followed by, "But actually, they can be really dumb about this one thing."

If everyone starts their own company, who's going to work at yours?