I presume (perhaps wrongly) that the parent finds it worrisome that Pinterest is hiring neuroscience researchers with a background of knowing how to change peoples' minds.

On the other hand Kitty Xu is almost certainly a very smart person and Pinterest just likes hiring really smart people.

I presume that the parent finds it worrisome that Johns Hopkins University (prestigious, academic, intelligent, good) can't compete, on employing neuroscience researchers (intelligent, valuable, academic, good), with Pinterest (dumb, corporate, useless, bad).

But it's a mystery for now.

It's not pinterest and Kitty Xu, the trend for advance in neuroscience and understanding of brain mechanisms is to be applied in marketing and advertising to influence and manipulate people's minds.

Basically exploiting knowledge on how our brain works against us to profit a few among the richest instead of trying to improve everything for everyone.

This kind of behaviour is considered a marker of a declining civilization on the verge of collapsing, so yeah it's worth worrying about.

Got a degree, then got a job. That isn't depressing. That is what people do.

I can imagine a site like Pinterest has quite a lot of fascinating data for a researcher to work with.

What's depressing about that? I know unemployed graduate students. I've taken cabs driven by PhD grads.

You haven't succeeded in making it any less depressing. I didn't take it to mean that the author was at some depressing place. Rather than it's sad in general that people trained to do that kind of research aren't able to keep doing it and advancing science.

With the exact same quote in the clipboard, I came here to make the exact same comment.

It is depressing.

Well I have to say, having been on Pinterest just about a week ago that it’s a refreshingly mellow place a world apart from the burning rubbish fire of most social media

Pinterest is among the website I dislike the most for their antifeatures and usual "social" trickery.

How is that depressing?

- Researcher.