4 ms·

We aren't "poor sods" or carrot-led horses. We're just motivated by different things than you. In my case, fully mission driven

nicbou 6y ago
What mission is this important?
- mepiethree 6y ago
  A lot of things, in my opinion. If you do work that can save even one life, it's worth it on a utilitarian level. It's not that hard to think of life-saving things to work on. You could imagine, perhaps, COVID vaccine distribution, solar energy technology, suicide hotlines, lots of food solutions (impossible meat perhaps), even autonomous vehicles if you've drank the kool aid, etc. Of course this assumes that the 40th-80th hours provide marginal utility (perhaps a big assumption).
vbtemp 6y ago
I think when this conversation comes up, a lot of different things get overloaded. There are classes of "work" where output linearly scales (more or less) with input: For example, if you;re a truck driver, time spent with your butt in the driver's seat probably corresponds very tightly to your mileage per day and even deliveries per day (and therefore profit) But given this is mostly a software-centric message board, software engineering and tech in general I have not observed much correlation at all between amount of input (work) and output (profit, success, happiness, etc). The expanse is wide open, the decision-tree of ways to approach a problem is nearly infinite, and choosing an approach to go down almost always incurs an opportunity cost of solving the same problem in a much better way. I've seen this a lot with lots of founders: They are so motivated and have enormous reserves of energy to "work", and while they are legitimately "working" in a certain sense (writing code, hustling for investment, planning business strategy, etc), it's often work that functions like a greedy algorithm: Stuck in local maxima, stuck in ruts, inflexible, etc and having a very hard time pausing, reflecting, and being judicious with their time, energy and focus. I call this the "Bias of Doing Work"

nicbou 6y ago

What mission is this important?

mepiethree 6y ago
A lot of things, in my opinion. If you do work that can save even one life, it's worth it on a utilitarian level. It's not that hard to think of life-saving things to work on. You could imagine, perhaps, COVID vaccine distribution, solar energy technology, suicide hotlines, lots of food solutions (impossible meat perhaps), even autonomous vehicles if you've drank the kool aid, etc. Of course this assumes that the 40th-80th hours provide marginal utility (perhaps a big assumption).

vbtemp 6y ago

I think when this conversation comes up, a lot of different things get overloaded. There are classes of "work" where output linearly scales (more or less) with input: For example, if you;re a truck driver, time spent with your butt in the driver's seat probably corresponds very tightly to your mileage per day and even deliveries per day (and therefore profit) But given this is mostly a software-centric message board, software engineering and tech in general I have not observed much correlation at all between amount of input (work) and output (profit, success, happiness, etc). The expanse is wide open, the decision-tree of ways to approach a problem is nearly infinite, and choosing an approach to go down almost always incurs an opportunity cost of solving the same problem in a much better way. I've seen this a lot with lots of founders: They are so motivated and have enormous reserves of energy to "work", and while they are legitimately "working" in a certain sense (writing code, hustling for investment, planning business strategy, etc), it's often work that functions like a greedy algorithm: Stuck in local maxima, stuck in ruts, inflexible, etc and having a very hard time pausing, reflecting, and being judicious with their time, energy and focus. I call this the "Bias of Doing Work"