Bezos' Princeton math humbling retold; ex-exec: he usually IS the smartest in the room
MParakhin · x · 2026-10-09
Former Amazon executive MParakhin quotes a viral post retelling Jeff Bezos' Princeton story: wanting to be a theoretical physicist, Bezos spent three hours on one math problem and got nowhere, then asked a classmate who stared at it for 10 seconds and said "cosine." Realizing no amount of studying would reach that level of genius, he switched to computer science — "the smartest move he ever made was knowing he wasn't the smartest guy in the room."
MParakhin adds: "knowing Jeff personally, I can tell you he usually is." A classic anecdote about self-awareness and career choice, with a human-calculator video attached.
More from Companies & People
- Jev, a fast-decision AI from TypeSafe AI, goes viral in Silicon Valley as OpenAI follows — jeremyakahn · 2026-10-09
- Third Time Hearing of Someone Almost Denied Tenure for Nobel-Winning Work — sokrypton · 2026-10-09
- sull: nothing is truly closed source, but server-side code is still worth sealing — sull · 2026-10-09
- fal head of design Adam Ho on treating a design portfolio like a discography — adamho · 2026-10-09
- Graduate-level explainer video contest results announced — TOEwithCurt · 2026-10-09
- Musk: I see a path to SpaceX being worth orders of magnitude more than Earth's economy — elonmusk · 2026-10-09