Ethan's Wiki Update #6
What is money? I have been thinking about money this week after reading a book.
What’s New
Career Seniority/Manager Page: How I've run major projects
Focus and set the project as the top priority
Maintain a detailed plan to success, observe and keep iterate quickly on the plan
Over-communicate, both 1-1 and broadcast updates to get everyone aware of what's happening around
Break off subproject and delegate to others to manage a goal
Project managers are laser focus and highly organized person, expect their IC ability to take a hit
Blindspots in LLMs discovered while using AI for coding
For example, AI does not know when to stop digging on a problem and reevaluate the options
Some will eventually go away, e.g. capability on Python and JS is better than statically typed language
Some can be partially solved with prompting, like lost of context
One HN comment says it well, LLMs make a different set of mistakes which human are not trained to catch
Entrepreneurship Page: 50 things we've learned about building products (HN)
A list of lessons which link to more articles by PostHog
Building great, small, efficient, transparent teams with ownership and trust
Ship fast, release quick, get real world feedback and validation
The Trap of Money
Something I added to the Finance page at the top this week.
Understand what money is. Otherwise, you might fall into the trap of money.
I got the idea from this Japanese book, named "Who Do You Want to Earn Money For?" It claims that money is fundamentally worthless and that money cannot solve any problems. It’s not that it cannot solve some problems, it’s that money cannot solve any problems.
The book explains macroeconomics concepts really well with simple examples and almost no terminologies. Plus a touching and engaging storyline. Unfortunately, I can only find Japanese and Chinese copies, and links to it in book stores website, not even a Wikipedia page for it. So, I would like to share the key points:
Money fundamentally worth nothing
If it has value, then money will not be destroyed and printed again
People want money because the society demand money for transaction and tax, people have to use it as a tool to trade
The value of the money is to facilitate trade, and the value of trade is that the resources and energy went into producing the goods and services for someone in the society
Money has value to individuals, but worth nothing from the perspective of society as a whole
Money fundamentally cannot solve any problem
Bring 100 billion to middle of nowhere is useless, money cannot be magically transformed to food
You cannot pay to solve any problems without the natural resources and the human that put effort into transforming those resources to products and services
Be reminded that it is the fellow human in the receiving end of the money that help you solved the problem, not the money itself
Without the people, without the society, money can solve nothing
If a business, government, or the whole society is to increase the amount of money one has, there is no actual gain for anyone
Imagine a country has 100 people which need 2 bread per person, so total 200 bread each day
If one day there is only 100 bread, bread price might double
Printing money for each person, or people using their own saving, does not solve the problem
Having more money is just competing for a bigger share of the limited resources
When the total resources are limited, money is just a relative competition with others
The true problem is the productivity dropped by half
The true solution is to bring back production to 200 bread
So, everyone all saving money is meaningless for everyone, because the society does not grow
Real value emerges when the society develop and the aggregate productivity grow. If one greedily hoards resources, one is simply acquiring a larger cut in an ever-shrinking pool. If you only think of earning money for yourself, then you fall into the trap of money. You are trying to compete with others for resources. A better way, is to think of it as what value can one provide, invest in the society and grow the pool together.
We all care about something, whether it's a partner, a child, an animal, nature, or anything else, we cannot protect them forever. Everyone has to leave eventually. To hope they will be okay after we are gone is for society as a whole to progress and protect each other.
So, what do you think about money? What do you want to work for?