Smash Notes

Back to Can You Engineer Serendipity?, with Evan Baehr & Chris Taylor.

Why Do University of Texas Grads Work in the Bay?

Evan Baehr says top CS students at UT and the Austin companies that want engineers keep missing each other. The students say Austin companies fall short and leave for the Bay to work for a real company. Investors and founders in Austin say they want the best engineers, skip UT, and hire from Stanford.

The UT student then goes to San Francisco and works at a company Joe Lonsdale invested in. The people were already right here in Austin. Evan Baehr calls the 40 acres the 40 acres of quicksand. For people outside UT, parking, getting around, and knowing what is going on feel impossible, and the city lacks town gown connective tissue with the faculty and the students at UT.

The opening is probably not Twitter and probably not job boards. Evan Baehr wants real collisions in spaces. A few minutes embodied with another person builds trust, and then the two go have coffee.

Grokipedia·University·Texas

Transcript

Can You Engineer Serendipity? ·

Austin Next

More from this episode

  1. What Is Rosedale?Rosedale is a physical room Zac Solomon runs for serious, non-dogmatic argument. The project started very niche.
  2. What Is Serendipity Manufacturing?Chris Taylor says serendipity manufacturing is mostly the room.
  3. Why Did Less Writing Make a Writing Club Happier?Zac Solomon says a writing club is really about talking to other people. People use the writing as the excuse for showing up.
  4. Why Is Fridge Starting to Charge Event Hosts?Chris Taylor says a big benefit of being a Fridge member is throwing events in the space for free once the group is above 10.
  5. Why Do Big Spenders Love the Free Golden Ticket?Evan Baehr runs a for-profit membership with a very high price and a free version called the golden ticket for extraordinary people under 25.
  6. Why Did a Member Mop the House Floors Unasked?Zac Solomon is the only employee, and the members already got the picture.
  7. Why Does a Small Austin Club Survive Losing Half?Zac Solomon calls a small rented room probably the most sustainable way to run a community in Austin. He is a little younger and takes very minimal risk.
  8. Are Sweet Greens the Way of Texas?Evan Baehr says an experience of Texas made of Sweet Greens and La La Land is not the way of Texas.

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