
Do you want to sell sugar water or do you want to change the world? - dwynings
http://cdixon.org/2011/08/28/do-you-want-to-sell-sugar-water-or-do-you-want-to-change-the-world/
======
true_religion
What's with this recent push to ask computer scientists "why aren't you saving
lives with your skills?".

No one asks the same question of accountants, or sociologists, electrical
engineers, or mechanical engineers or any number of smart individuals in the
liberal arts fields.

Why is CS special in that its members need to be harried about selling sugar
water, where as everyone else in the supply chain for that sugar water doesn't
have to worry?

~~~
chc
You also don't see breathless AccountingCrunch articles about accountants
getting $41 million to develop accounting for pets and similarly silly things.
The call for loftier thinking is in response to the fact that the tech
industry seems to actively _celebrate_ shallow crap. It's easy to forget that
there are more praiseworthy goals in the world than having a successful social
network when that's what everyone actually praises.

~~~
patio11
_You also don't see breathless AccountingCrunch articles about accountants
getting $41 million to develop accounting for pets and similarly silly
things._

I don't agree with the normative implication here, but strongly suggest you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. It will help expand your worldview vis-
a-vis questions like "Is accounting Important?" or "Is $41 million a lot of
money?"

~~~
code_duck
"Is $41 million a lot of money" is a perspective-less question. Is it a lot of
money for an individual? Tell me you don't think so. Is it a lot of money for
an investment bank? Doubtlessly not.

Did the person you're responding to somehow say accounting was not important?
How will the Wall Street Journal help me understand that further and why do
you assume we need that insight based on all of this?

~~~
tptacek
All he's saying is that it's not a lot of money for accountants.

~~~
code_duck
Not much to take home or own part of, or not much to push around on someone
else's behalf? I have yet to understand. The first seems pretty unlikely,
unless accounting is a much better career path than I've heard, and the second
seems irrelevant.

------
noodle
“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change
the world. It really doesn’t.

“I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these
things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been
happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all.

“These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not
otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in
touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the
latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not
downplaying that.

“But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light —
that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to
be important.”

Steve Jobs [Wired, February 1996]

------
bmac27
Sorry. I find this kind of self-importance nauseating to say the least. Curing
cancer or connecting the entire planet is the only way one can change the
world? Really? If that's the case, then I guess 99.99% of our resources as a
global community are misallocated, along with the hopes & dreams of thousands
of entrepreneurs. Who says one can’t create valuable human experiences in
games or some other form of social entertainment? Or with a nutritional
product? Seems to me like Dixon is conflating Acai berry-esque products
produced by scamsters with folks who (god forbid) aren’t trying to create the
next Google. As if there are no shades of gray in between.

Yes, many entrepreneurs move on to bigger and better things. Which is great.
We should encourage thinking as big as possible. But to sweep aside the
smaller projects they & others created to get to that level (products/services
that may not have “changed the world” in the traditional sense but still
might’ve solved a burning problem) or to actively discourage folks from
solving similar-scale problems is the height of pretentiousness.

I think solving big problems impacting humanity is fantastic. Actively
discouraging people from innovating in spaces & making those folks feel like
douchebags because they’re not the developer equivalent of Mother Teresa and
aren't "changing the world?" That’s absurd. And it ought to stop. I've seen &
heard it too many times from a litany of folks in the tech scene.

------
whenisayUH
This type of platitude sounds good and all, but from the actions speak louder
than words file, I have to wonder if Chris' company Hunch which mines your
"taste graph" to help advertisers sell you stuff you may or may not need lives
upto the changing the world sound-bite?

Agree with jasonz above. IT absolutely can make a real difference. Healthcare
software, Kiva, etc.

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jasonz
_But information technology is what I know, and it’s probably too late for me
to learn a new field from scratch._

Information technology can absolutely save lives - I'd argue that a developer
building medical software can save more lives than a PhD working on a
treatment for cancer. The subtle killer these days are all the extra days a
patient spends in the hospital. An extra day or two is what leads to
complications. Work on solving the inefficiencies of inpatient medicine
(documentation, communication, decision making, ect.) and you can go home at
night knowing you are literally saving lives with your programming skills.

~~~
tsotha
>Information technology can absolutely save lives - I'd argue that a developer
building medical software can save more lives than a PhD working on a
treatment for cancer.

 _Anything_ you do that makes an economy a little more efficient frees up
resources for other things. In the US those other things end up being more
consumption, mostly, but in countries where people don't get enough to eat you
could be saving lives. That's why they call it progress. Or used to, anyway.

------
ahi
Said to John Sculley who absolutely sucked at changing the world and should
have stuck to selling sugar water.

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JasonPunyon
Yeah, I had this exact feeling about finance and was lucky enough to be able
to get out. Working for organizations that do little but spend ever-increasing
amounts of resources so that computers can edge each other out by nanoseconds
in the market to the continuing aggrandizement of the uber rich is about the
most depressing thing I can think of now.

I'd like to think that working on Stack Overflow's Careers service will help
keep at least a few people from taking finance jobs like I did by providing
them an alternative to needing to throw their lot in with a technical
recruiter in a big city. Due to the economics of recruiting, recruiters tend
to work with big finance (big salaries mean big commissions) instead of
companies that y'know, _make things_ but have lower salaries. I'd like to
think we provide a slightly more level playing field to regular jobs (because
we don't get paid on commission, therefore won't send applicants towards a
finance position before all others).

"You can't change the world, but you can make a dent" - Sheldon Mopes

------
_girishrao
Whether someone "changes the world" is not a binary function. It is
continuous. Has Steve Jobs changed the world? I think so. Has he changed the
world to the extent of Gandhi or Mandela, or Hitler? Probably not.

People change the world everyday by doing their daily duties. Parents,
friends, teachers, they all change parts of our world everyday. These impacts
should not be diminished.

Life is too short to chase someone else's world-changing dreams. Do what you
love. If you happen to change the world in some way during the process, all
the better.

------
petercooper
I can't buy into this argument.

What's important is that you're supporting society, not whether you're at the
coal face of saving lives. If it were, Elon Musk should be a paramedic, not
inventing electric cars.

Even if you do only run an online payments system, a project management
webapp, or a site like Twitter, people and businesses are using those things
in _support_ of other enterprises. Those things could include space travel,
saving lives, new technologies, and more. You don't need to be at the coal
face to be pushing the world forward, just doing _something_ to support all of
the people who are.

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RegEx
Right now, I want to make good grades. Later in life, I want to be a great
husband/father. Throughout all this, I want to use programming to make some
people's lives easier/better (and be good enough at it to financially support
my family). That's enough for me, and it can be enough for you if you want.

------
rooshdi
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference,
ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big
differences that we often cannot foresee."

Marian Wright Edelman

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fractallyte
Conversely, one question that, if asked of enough people, could end up
destroying civilization:

 _"Why are you doing that?"_

('Mister Pinschur', by Maurice Ogden & Betty Fuller, Astounding SF, February
1955)

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dave_sullivan
Somewhere in between I guess?

That quote is from Steve Jobs, and while he certainly has changed certain
parts of my lifestyle (I have the information of the world at my fingertips
via my phone!--I don't use their other products), are you really saying that
Steve Jobs has "changed the world"? I suppose it's a matter of semantics, but
that seems like a stretch to me. He's certainly done more than sell sugar
water and made absolutely amazing personal/professional accomplishments, but
"change the world"?

And do I have to work in clean-tech or biotechnology to change the world, or
can I build a vertically integrated hardware and media empire instead? Is the
latter noble enough? I dunno, I'm pretty unimpressed by this article's
sentiment and find the whole thing a bit facetious and condescending.

~~~
nickpinkston
Non Apply Fanboy here.

You can say what you want about Apple: cut-throat business, closed platforms,
etc. - BUT I don't think you can deny that they've been able to build the
bridge between the oligarchs blocking progress (AT&T, music labels, etc.) and
those building the future. The perfect bridge? Hardly, but I think they get a
good deal of credit for making glass smartphones and tablets popular products.

Technology and social progress is often blocked because of business and other
social issues - rarely just technology. Apple has been the marketing force
trying to push throw this - while certainly securing its position and profit
immensely. I think you can argue that they're a net-benevolent force for the
world - unlike Coke which is certainly a net-negative one - while being as
marketing savvy.

------
freddealmeida
I don't understand this question. Didn't sugar water (colas for example)
change the world?

~~~
philwelch
Record levels of childhood obesity say yes.

------
jpwagner
To counter this sentiment, one need not come up with examples of how such-and-
such software contributes a great deal to the noble cause of blah, because
society is built on abstractions. Much of the world is hungry, but becoming a
master hunter is not the way to solve that problem.

In my view, you have two choices: (1) trust the market to determine where
society needs help and to give job opportunities in those areas, or, since
that rosy picture may not be reality, (2) gather as much wealth and power as
you see fit and push society to be better.

~~~
nickpinkston
#2 never seems to materialize. People who change the world when they made
their money (Bill Gates) generally keep trying to change the world with their
own philanthropy. Whereas the path of: 1.) Make Partner at Goldman -> 2.)
Commit your money & agency to solve problems - isn't shown to happen in most
cases. Sure a % to charity - but that's far less than what's possible if
you're really taking that route.

------
smiler
History tells us that not everyone can change the world. That's ok

------
_girishrao
While I agree that we can try to “change the world” in our own way, there is
another side to these types of goals.

Steve Jobs also said “Things don’t have to change the world to be important”.

I wrote about this just last week "Why changing the world is overrated"

[http://girishrao.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/why-changing-
the-w...](http://girishrao.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/why-changing-the-world-is-
overrated/)

------
larrys
"when I came home at night, I’d know that I had literally spent my day trying
to cure cancer or prevent global warming"

Someone can have a very large influence on the world if they make enough money
(by doing anything) and then spend that money to empower others to "cure
cancer or prevent global warming".

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russellallen
You know, I really enjoy drinking sugar water. It's one of my enjoyments in
life.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm glad you enjoy it. Because it's not doing your body any good.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

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sentinel
How did Steve Jobs change the world for the better exactly?

~~~
danssig
Well, to be fair, we were in a bit of a rut on where to go with computers. Now
the future is more clear.

~~~
sentinel
To be fair as well, creating beautifully designed, expensive personal
computers has never really been a world problem.

~~~
danssig
I was talking about tablets. Most people don't need a desktop.

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fedd
reading the title, i thought that the article would be about the difference
between the master of sales that sells lemonade since his childhood, and the
nerd that can't speak smoothly but has disruptive and needed project and
working skills. and that investors start to prefer the latter.

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chipsy
It's important to recognize that you don't know where the earthshaking ideas
will actually come from.

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zackattack
"But information technology is what I know, and it’s probably too late for me
to learn a new field from scratch."

Rationalization; party line.

(Someone as smart as Chris Dixon could pick up a new field in 3 months. It
actually doesn't take that much intelligence to learn a new field. It takes
some intelligence, it takes a good mentor and it takes discipline.)

~~~
gfodor
See also: <http://sivers.org/kimo>

------
Hisoka
If you want to change the world, chances are you're going to be depressingly
disappointed. I find it best to limit my definition of the "world" to save to:
a family, a couple of friends, and hopefully, if I'm lucky: a team of
employees that I can manage and work with to create something many people will
want.

