Choose Work Wisely

Shaan Puri shares Max Levchin's insight about being careful what you choose to work on, as anything can be optimized endlessly. This leads to a discussion about how talented people at major tech companies often end up optimizing seemingly trivial features rather than working on more meaningful problems.

Key Points:

• Max Levchin (PayPal co-founder) warned: "Be really careful what you choose to work on because everything can be optimized endlessly"

  • After PayPal, Levchin worked on Slide, making widgets for MySpace and Facebook (like "SuperPoke" where you could throw chickens at friends)
  • His takeaway: You can get trapped optimizing trivial things (like "chicken slaps per day")

• Shaan relates to this trap personally:

  • "I found myself falling into the same trap - no matter what I'm doing, if I'm selling little widgets, my life becomes about selling widgets"
  • "I can optimize that to infinity and people do - if you go look at how any company works, that's what they've done"

• Sam Parr shares a similar observation about Facebook:

  • His wife worked at Facebook where brilliant people were "trying to convince Brazilians to put more stickers on their photos"
  • Specifically mentioned a dog sticker with a long tongue
  • Sam's reaction: "I felt like a cartoon... I was like 'what are you guys doing?'"

• Siqi Chen shares a related story about Slide:

  • When discussing acquisition of his app, Slide executives told him "you shouldn't confuse revenue for success"
  • His retort: "You guys shouldn't confuse the lack of revenue for success either"
  • The Slide executives had earlier mentioned wanting to "buy all these shitty companies for cheap" during a recession