Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

https://mobile.twitter.com/luismbat/status/13611279484016148...

Grabbed a relevant reference from Wikipedia: https://archive.ph/tL5oD

Perelman solved the Soul Conjecture. Then he wanted a tenured/research-only position, but Princeton only offered a tenure track job, so he declined. And then he took a (research-only) job elsewhere (in Russia), which gave him requisite time/space to prove the Poincare conjecture. So Princeton would have benefited from giving him tenure when he asked for it.




I wonder if those people taught Google the idea of insisting famous candidates solve their pet leetcoder challenge before they can go another round of interviews?

Perelman, when asked for his CV, "You have heard my lecture why would you need anymore information?" Then proceeds to leave.


Google needs a million perelkids not one perelman


Thanks for the link. I still do not understand why people call it "Fiasco" though. Princeton at least tried, pretty sure many other universities knew about the soul conjecture, but did not make any effort.


I think it meant "fiasco" for Princeton specifically and not in general - they had him ready to accept a immediately full-tenure position which they didn't offer and later he went on to solve the Poincaré Conjecture. Sure, one can say that they couldn't have known the future but considering the Soul Conjecture is described as an extraordinarily difficult problem that he solved in a short 4-page paper, they could have tried harder. Anyway, granted, hindsight is 20/20.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: