Comments on: What value do we create here?

By: Conrad E.

Conrad E. — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:25:39 +0000

Carter I think this was a great post. I certainly wish more of my investment banking friends had read it.

By: Citypw

Citypw — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:02:27 +0000

good article.I tried translate it to Chinese version.

By: Gunnr

Gunnr — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:44:52 +0000

Put a reminder in your calendar to ask this question every Monday morning.

By: Kévin KIN-FOO

Kévin KIN-FOO — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:29:44 +0000

Once you know how you would like to create value? Found means to achieve your aspirations is another story

By: Carter

Carter — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:41:21 +0000

Thanks, Erik. That's a wonderful quote from PG, and it certainly gets at the
heart of the issue.

By: Erik

Erik — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:08:01 +0000

You might find this essay by Paul Graham interesting. (replace "value" with "wealth")
http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
"What leads people astray here is the abstraction of money. Money is not wealth. It's just something we use to move wealth around. So although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth. Wealth has been getting created and destroyed (but on balance, created) for all of human history."

By: Cheng Soon

Cheng Soon — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:41:37 +0000

Hi Carter,

I couldn't find your email so I thought I'd ask here. Would you grant me the permission to reprint this article in the upcoming issue of Hacker Monthly?

Please contact me if you need more clarification. Thanks.

By: sachxn

sachxn — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:48:29 +0000

awesome thoughts

By: blackofhat

blackofhat — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:52:27 +0000

Let's see now. You wrote some code at night. It paid for toys, eating out, and trips. What value were you creating? Who the hell cares? The value was in the dinners and the tickets to fly across the ocean. You were creating value for yourself. Any time you are outearning the I-Bank folks, I say bravo.

By: Carter

Carter — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:41:47 +0000

Copying this in from Hacker News where a lot of debate was going on (link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1242877)

1. I am not implying a moral obligation to do some jobs over others. Nor am I suggesting a framework to judge the value of some jobs over others. If I had known this was going to be read by so many people (over 2,500 in the first few hours), I would have spent more time making sure my message was communicated more clearly. I'm sorry for giving some people the wrong idea.

2. My point is actually very simple and I expect the vast majority of Hacker News readers already get it: for people considering what jobs to do, especially young college students, be wary of focusing on the value of fun and money. Fun and money can be very distracting when you are young and haven't experienced so much freedom before. However, the decisions you make when you are young can have consequences for the trajectory of your whole life. Always think about what will give you long-term and enduring happiness and satisfaction. Often, I think long-term happiness is connected with a cause greater than your own immediate satisfaction. Hence the consideration of value creation.

It's obvious advice, but I hoped my story would make it more digestible for college students.