Biggest waste of talent you've seen

Question

What's the biggest waste of talent you've ever witnessed? In two categories, either an individual capable of breakthroughs spending their time optimizing buttons, or a group of people attracted to a vapid industry (finance comes to mind).

cranberryturkey · Accepted Answer

back in 2003 i had a shitty little job at one of the newest "SEO" companies. A team of two brothers, me, and their highschool buddy who admitted he thought he was just there because he was like a bouncer incase someone harassed them at the office.
i hired this kid who worked at fry's electronics, he was about 20. He was a genius programmer and worked for us for about a year. I eventually got fired because I needed to consult and they said i was passing company secrets by telling customers to use title and h1 tags lol.
Anyway, I had an interview with a contracting company for a tellme contract they were one of the first VOIP XML companies. I went to the interview and told them to hire this kid I knew, they did. TellMe eventually got acquired by MS

stop50 · Answer

Apart from women and other minorities in Tech: no. After nearly 10 years i still can count the women i worked with one hand. Other minorities are exactly 0.

herbst · Answer

Don't we all spend some of our time optimizing buttons?

colesantiago · Answer

anything in blockchain.