Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity

Andrew Kortina - https://twitter.com/kortina - is the cofounder of Venmo and Fin. Fin is a high quality, on-demand, personal assistant and executive assistant service. You can get a $100 credit to try Fin at https://fin.com/yc Andrew blogs at https://kortina.nyc/ The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon *** Topics 00:00 - Human dignity and work 7:35 - Creating jobs 9:35 - From The Beautiful Struggle // The Beautiful Game - You might argue that we’re already in a sort of failure mode, where our ability to assign dignity to arbitrary work and motivate people to work bullshit jobs is more efficient than our ability to allocate labor towards industry that would have greater social benefit, like education, healthcare, food, etc. If we’re already in this failure mode, it’s kind of the worst of all worlds, because not only are we assigning meaning to work that doesn’t need to be done, but, also, we could be redeploying that labor towards efforts that are actually important today. https://kortina.nyc/essays/the-beautiful-struggle-the-beautiful-game/ 18:00 - Travel 20:30 - Why do we want to do anything? 21:35 - Life after Fin 24:45 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I want to preface this talk by warning you that it’s quite possible you’ll interpret much of this talk as cynicism. It is not my intention to be cynical. My goal is to treat you with respect by speaking to you honestly, without any grand illusions. None of the companies trying to convince you to work for them will mention technological determinism. They will confirm what your parents and teachers told you, that your work and contribution will be totally unique and significant. https://kortina.nyc/essays/the-emperor-has-no-clothes-there-is-no-santa-claus-and-nothing-is-rocket-science/ 31:30 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I recognize that the medi