[HN Gopher] Doing what you love when the money won't follow
___________________________________________________________________
Doing what you love when the money won't follow
Author : yamrzou
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-11-02 12:01 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (loveofallwisdom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (loveofallwisdom.com)
| ffdreamff wrote:
| What gets to me is how many talented developers at Google and
| Facebook are willing to take big salaries and turn a blind eye to
| the "meaning" of their work. I'm friends with such people. They
| are lovely humans. But I zone out when they talk about their
| work. I just don't care how fun the work is when the outputs of
| the company you work for I don't agree with.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| What if their work is meaningful? What if ads are just a way to
| help small businesses reach customers?
|
| The idea that Google is doing some awful thing is cynical. Even
| if you dislike ads, Google Cloud is infra for developers and
| applications to help businesses/people do work. All good stuff.
| ffdreamff wrote:
| I am cynical.
|
| But exactly zero of my half dozen or so friends at Google or
| Facebook jobs are meaningful. They enable the machines.
|
| > What if ads are just a way to help small businesses reach
| customers?
|
| I see this argument all the time online. But never in person.
| I don't think people say it in person because they know they
| don't truly believe it justifies the rest of the stuff.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Meaningful to who?
|
| It's unlikely to be a good assumption - that what people
| say in person is what they really think and what they say
| from behind a fake name isn't. There are a number of things
| people truly believe and don't say in person because of the
| expected negative reaction. I use my real name online and
| I'm careful of what I say. You seem to have created a fake
| name an hour ago to say something that you probably
| believe, but don't want to risk offending someone - it's a
| rational thing to do.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe you just haven't met anyone who's worked on SMB ads?
| grammers wrote:
| Passion can keep you going, but at the end of the day bills must
| be paid.
| angarg12 wrote:
| "Do what you love and money will follow" has genuinely wrecked
| many lives.
|
| I know too many people (some very close to me) that followed this
| mantra. What ensued was most often very low paying jobs, or long
| term unemployment. The "luckiest" ones were able to do a career
| switch later in life. But there is an opportunity cost, as well
| as great time and effort involved on starting from scratch at
| that point.
|
| Much greater advice is "do something that affords the lifestyle
| you want to have". This formula will be different for each one
| and will be a tension between work, money, and personal life. I
| know people who work jobs they don't love or hate, but pay enough
| to sustain their living expenses and support their hobbies.
| reneherse wrote:
| The equally naive "follow your bliss" or "follow your passion"
| was the common coming of age advice given by many middle and
| upper-middle class American baby boomers to their children.
| VLM wrote:
| It was not naive, they grew up in a generational-scale labor
| shortage with low inflation and incredibly low costs of
| living and low energy costs.
|
| They had a minimum wage in a technical legalistic sense, but
| financial success was guaranteed in practice. Risk taking is
| safe if you're not able to fail.
|
| Nobody lives in that kind of paradise now. Was all
| squandered.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Definitely seems like a couple of generations ago you could
| do basically anything (As long as you did _something_ ) and
| come out pretty decent financially.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > Seems
|
| And it definitely seems like every 20 year old has an
| incredibly fulfilling and well rounded life if you only
| look at Instagram.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I would bet the average Gen X person is closer to what I
| described than the average 20yo is to Instagram 20yos.
|
| I also elaborated in another reply.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| My point was that "seems" is probably based on
| performative information, like Instagram, not that 20
| year olds are doing great.
|
| People who work hard downplay how hard they work. People
| who got lucky play up how hard they work. Objective data
| points to lifestyles being mostly the same now and 50
| years ago.
| northwest65 wrote:
| A couple of generations ago you could have 100sqm house,
| a small black n white TV, maybe a basic 4 cylinder car if
| you were doing quite well, and be happy about it. If I
| lived at the level of consumerism my grandparents did, I
| could still do basically anything and be comfortable
| financially. Instead I have every electronic gadget ever
| made and an expensive Italian automotive exotica fetish
| and a constant thirst for more dollars to keep the gravy
| train chugging.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I wonder the extent to which that's the case (or maybe
| better said "that depends on what 'pretty decent
| financially' means").
|
| Both sets of grandparents were blue collar (steel
| milling/odd-jobs and coal mining/nursing). My parents
| were the first generation to attend college at all and
| both became public school teachers. Both sets of
| grandparents had a sizable (very large for a hobby) home
| garden to supplement the family food and made use of it.
| I remember eating "government cheese" (literal cheese
| from the government) at times. They were not
| substantially better or worse off than the other working-
| class families we saw around us and hung out with.
|
| Their pensions did ensure that they were able to not be
| in danger of starving in retirement, but they weren't
| traveling anywhere by airplane (I think maybe ever for
| one set and exactly once for the other) and, at the end,
| their estate was settled for an amount of money that one
| person could easily carry.
|
| Is that "pretty decent financially"? I genuinely don't
| know; it was surviving.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I'm Gen Z. It's the perception I have but, I don't know
| if it's accurate. My perception is also definitely biased
| towards middle class. One other thing is that I'm not
| american, which probably makes a difference.
|
| To refine things a bit more, it seems like if you got a
| degree and had a white collar job you were probably going
| to do decently. Nowadays degree + white collar job is
| basically baseline.
|
| My parents are Gen X with degrees (Eng + Chemistry?) and
| they seem to have enjoyed their 20s and early 30s,
| settled down in their 30s and ended up pretty well off
| without ever really worrying about money.
|
| I don't think that strategy would work very well today.
| The world seems a lot more competitive now than it was 20
| years ago, and _on average_ it seems like there are less
| serendipitous opportunities.
| antod wrote:
| _> My parents are Gen X with degrees (Eng + Chemistry?)
| and they seem to have enjoyed their 20s and early 30s,
| settled down in their 30s and ended up pretty well off
| without ever really worrying about money._
|
| That probably depends on where they were and what "end"
| of GenX they were. The early part of GenX was entering
| the workforce in a pretty nasty recession with high
| unemployment, high inflation and limited prospects (hence
| Grunge hehe). The boomers (although probably not those in
| America to be fair) went through periods like this too.
|
| GenZ is experiencing high(ish) inflation and high(ish)
| interest rates now, but unemployment is still low and
| wages are still good. It can get much worse, and has done
| before. Generally though the bad times are shorter than
| the good times - hopefully that keeps holding true.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In 1970, 11% of American adults held a Bachelor's degree
| or higher. That figure proceeded as follows:
| 1970: 11.0% 1975: 13.9% 1980: 17.0%
| 1985: 19.4% 1990: 21.3% 1995: 23.0%
| 2000: 25.6% 2005: 27.7% 2010: 29.9%
| 2015: 32.5% 2021: 37.9%
|
| It's not at all surprising that being in the 83rd
| percentile of most educated in 1980 gave a better life
| outcome than having the same absolute level of education
| but relatively then being in the 62nd percentile in 2021.
|
| Roughly speaking, your parents' degrees are about twice
| as uncommon in 1993 (~midpoint of Gen X undergrad
| graduation) as they would be today.
|
| * - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_1
| 04.10.a...
|
| ** - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
| releases/2022/educatio...
| subarctic wrote:
| Not to mention Gen X is known for being a smaller
| generation than the ones before and after it, which is
| another factor that would have reduced competition for
| them in their careers.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That effect doesn't look to be huge.
|
| US population in millions per birth year (alive today) by
| generation*: Boomer - 3.7M / yr (70.23M /
| 19) alive; 4.5M / yr (85.4 / 19) originally born **
| Gen X - 4.4M / yr (65.8M / 15) alive Millenial -
| 4.8M / yr (72.19M / 15) alive Gen Z - 4.3M / yr
| (68.6M / 16) alive
|
| * - https://www.statista.com/statistics/797321/us-
| population-by-...
|
| ** - https://incendar.com/baby_boomer_deathclock.php
| yamtaddle wrote:
| My dad was a high school grad from the middle of nowhere
| and was literally raised in a barn (the girls lived in
| the house--it was too small for all the kids) with no
| running water (manual-pump well). His dad was a small-
| acreage farmer and slightly-successful rodeo rider. Birth
| year puts him in the early part of the Boomer generation.
|
| He puttered around with not-quite-successful-but-not-
| quite-failure blue collar sole-proprietor small
| businesses for most of his 20s, then got a low-level
| railroad job, worked his way up and spent his last ~15
| years in middle management there before being forced into
| early retirement. Recall, just a high school diploma. He
| couldn't handle middle-school math (by more recent
| standards) when I was learning it, and could barely use a
| computer. But he could run a train yard. Go figure.
|
| My mom quit work when they married in her late 20s, and
| never worked again. She had a junior college degree and
| just made enough to get by before that. Lived in a
| trailer when she was single.
|
| They retired _very_ well and paid my way through college
| in the early '00s. We never wanted for money at all when
| I was a kid--which is how they were able to drop four
| figures on a first computer (good ol' Tandy) for me, just
| _in case_ that led to something. A big week-and-change
| road trip every year, sometimes flights instead, plenty
| of time off and travel around the holidays. We lived in
| some pretty damn nice houses (at times--there 's only so
| much available when the railroad moves you to some podunk
| town and you want to buy on short notice).
|
| On one income. In a pretty mundane, middling-pay career.
|
| Union pensions and 20th century union health plans were
| _magical_. As were housing costs.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It wasn't squandered. Those people took advantage of that
| living situation to lock in the gains for themselves. It
| was very effectively used.
| reneherse wrote:
| I'm aware of, and agree with, the points you've so clearly
| articulated. But to my mind, being blissfully unaware of
| the context of one's material success is an example of
| naivety.
| munificent wrote:
| Equally important too that they grew up surrounded by
| parents who were miserable because they'd sacrifice
| everything for their jobs.
| xsmasher wrote:
| Yeah, this is cyclical -
|
| If the "Do what you love" parents crash and burn, they
| tell their children to "Focus on career." If the "Focus
| on career" parents succeed, they tell their children to
| "Do what you love."
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| My baby boomer uncle likes to brag that he bought a house
| at 19 after two years of delivering firewood in trunk of
| his car. He thinks kids today would get similar results
| with similar effort; it's very tedious.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| A family friend made 20+k in a summer, spray painting
| curbs 10-ish years ago. You can still make a lot of money
| in dumb-sounding niches.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Current you versus future you - which one will be happier? If
| you can't make both happy, then I advise pleasing current-you.
| Because sometimes the future is cut short.
|
| So, doing something that makes you happy, makes you happy now.
| It's obvious really.
|
| No, not hedonistic swill. Just do a job or effort that is
| fulfilling today. They don't all fail, they can be useful
| whether you make a fortune or not.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > Current you versus future you - which one will be
| happier?...I advise pleasing current-you.
|
| Focusing on yourself is a trap. While not ignoring your own
| needs instead focusing on the happiness of others (e.g.
| direct joy, relieving suffering, solving problems etc) is the
| greatest promotion of happiness in everyone including
| yourself while also having the meaning that will get you
| through the inevitable troughs.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| On the other hand, I didn't follow the advice, and instead "Did
| something I kind of like okay, and can make decent money
| doing." I've definitely done that, but at the cost of never
| really chasing down my original dream. Now I'm a crusty old
| fart and I feel like I could never "do what I love" because I
| just can't live on entry-level pay anymore--partially due to my
| lifestyle, but also because I have children, and that's not
| really an expense you can budget your way out of.
|
| So because I didn't do what I loved while I was young, I've
| kind of missed the train. I might be able to later in life, but
| I will have to wait quite a while.
| efishnc wrote:
| What did/do you love?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes this is mostly advice for young people with no
| responsibilities.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| >> "do something that affords the lifestyle you want to have".
|
| Absolutely. And this goes hand in hand with downregulating your
| lifestyle expectations.
| adolph wrote:
| Ikigai is an excellent conceptual framework. I think something
| that many people tacitly work it out for themselves. For those
| not reading the article, please do click through for the Venn
| diagram of: * What you love * What you are
| good at * What pays well * What the world needs
|
| Each of these are somewhat independent factors and Ikigai is at
| the intersection of all four. "According to psychologist Katsuya
| Inoue, ikigai is a concept consisting of two aspects: "sources or
| objects that bring value or meaning to life" and "a feeling that
| one's life has value or meaning because of the existence of its
| source or object"." [0]
|
| In that I think Ikigai acts as a method for fumbling towards the
| higher bits of Maslow's hierarchy to self-actualization. [1]
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
| rikroots wrote:
| The key takeaway I got from the article was a word I've not come
| across before: avocation - an activity that someone engages in as
| a hobby outside their main occupation. I've known of the concept
| since before I started work[1], but it never occurred to me that
| there would be an English word for the concept. Which, as I am
| supposed to be a poet, is a bit embarrassing.
|
| Talking about poets, it's interesting that there's not many full-
| time poets in the world; most poets need a paying job (often in
| academia) to cover the bills. I personally think this is a Good
| Thing as it helps give them (us) a perspective beyond the poetry
| scene, and the blank page, which helps ferment more enjoyable
| poems.
|
| [1] - A couple of weeks after starting my first full-time job I
| discovered I genuinely detest paid employment. For me, the day
| job really is just a way to fund the rest of my life where all
| the fun stuff happens.
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| That was my takeaway as well. The "hustle-mindset" of turning
| every interest, passion, and hobby into some sort of side-gig
| is so pervasive currently that the existence of the word that
| sums up essentially the opposite mentality surprised me. Happy
| to have found it.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| > Talking about poets, it's interesting that there's not many
| full-time poets in the world; most poets need a paying job
| (often in academia) to cover the bills
|
| Why don't they release poems like songs? In South Asia, there
| are poetry concerts and it is a hit with the older generation
| who were exposed to more poetry before movie songs became
| mainstream.
| em500 wrote:
| Would that really help? My guess is that most musicians and
| song writers also need another paying job to cover the bills?
| rikroots wrote:
| I can't answer your question, but it does remind me that I
| read a really interesting article in Slate about Rod McKuen a
| couple of weeks ago - https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-
| mckuen-best-selling-po...
| srhtftw wrote:
| Robert Frost's _Two Tramps in Mud Time_ [1] is required reading
| for all supposed poets lacking in knowledge of avocation.
|
| 1- http://holyjoe.org/poetry/frost4.htm
| jschveibinz wrote:
| My father (born in 1921 and a WW2 vet) was a machinist, a trade
| he actually enjoyed. But he lectured me as a child to know the
| difference between a "vocation" and an "avocation" using those
| exact words. Perhaps this was something that was taught to his
| generation in school since a lot of work back then was in the
| factories. So, he made it a point to be involved in bowling
| leagues, men's clubs, church choir, etc. in his free time, just
| like many of his friends and coworkers. Just watch a couple of
| episodes of the Flintstones and you will see what life was like
| 50+ years ago. This whole concept of having a life and serious
| interests outside of work has been mostly lost--but it needs to
| come back for our collective sanity. The book "Bowling Alone"
| written on this topic a few years ago is worth reading.
|
| Of course, while the men were out having an avocation, the
| mothers stayed home with the kids. Now, some sharing of those
| duties needs to happen. But it is really important.
| [deleted]
| throwaway13337 wrote:
| People love doing things that they think they are good at and get
| respect for.
|
| It just so happens that our culture over-values things that are
| not aligned with contributing to a better society right now.
| Someone identifying as a musician will get more accolades from
| one's peers than a plumber and therefore feel that their passion
| is in the music.
|
| We require a culture shift wherein we start to see, in a deep
| way, the value in the hard work of trying to make things better
| in the small, humble ways we are able to do ourselves. It is our
| values that are at fault.
|
| Maybe this new generative AI will help us re-align our values by
| showing that art regurgitation is not a defining characteristic
| of what makes us human and therefore virtuous. Maybe what makes
| us human are the smart applications of insight in ways that
| improve the lives of those around us.
| gort19 wrote:
| yunwal wrote:
| My experience with friends that are making music professionally
| is that you will be brutally insulted by every idiot on the
| internet no matter how talented you are, and very rarely
| receive meaningful feedback - positive or negative.
|
| Most people make music for internal gratification.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you're a mediocre musician whom only your friends and
| relatives come to hear, you'll get a lot of accolades. The
| problem is, you'll suspect they're insincere.
|
| If you're a good plumber, you'll get a ton of genuine ones from
| people whose dire problems you've solved.
|
| I had a doctor once who said he sold his house to a plumber,
| who was trading up.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > Someone identifying as a musician will get more accolades
| from one's peers than a plumber and therefore feel that their
| passion is in the music.
|
| "Things musicians would never say"
| ffhhj wrote:
| Having worked from games to augmented reality, web, automation
| and AI, I think the advice should be: do what
| you love and make money from those skills you get on the road
| bilsbie wrote:
| Do what you money and the love will follow.
| eirikbakke wrote:
| There's "overhead" in every profession: time spent in cars and
| airports, time spent in boring meetings, time spent writing grant
| proposals, time spent on the day job while auditioning, etc.
|
| If you can spend 20 hours per week doing the thing you love, year
| after year, you're doing well.
| plutonorm wrote:
| I very nearly looked for the most dead end, brain dead job
| possible when I was in my mid 20s. The plan was to do something
| that enabled me to just think, which is my passion really.
| Thinking and learning and digging out the truth. Sometimes I
| wonder what my life would have been like if I'd followed through.
| Would I have been happier, would I have been more productive for
| society or less? Maybe one of the hundreds of projects I don't
| have the energy to complete would have been completed and born
| fruit. In this path of life I feel like a tree that is
| continually bearing fruit, only to have it fall to the floor and
| rot unused. If I'm honest I think society would be better to let
| those with the disposition to dream and build without need for
| employment. Society as a whole would be better to allow those
| whose disposition forces them to continually create, to do just
| that, create. To be called to something is a gift, to be denied
| your calling creates a wound deep within the soul.
| fnovd wrote:
| Employment is an abstraction of resource-gathering. Every
| living being must gather resources to survive. Modern society
| does not enforce employment; employment is the manifestation of
| resource-gathering in modern society. Thinking and learning and
| digging out the truth is an incredibly popular lifestyle
| aesthetic. It's incumbent upon you to discover how to live that
| life while providing value to society, and if you cannot, then
| there exist some truths that others already discovered which
| are still foreign to your understanding. It's OK to think for
| your own intrinsic enjoyment, but if you aren't able to match
| the baseline of other successful thinkers then what is the
| utility to society of endowing you with what ultimately amounts
| to unlimited leisure time? Pontification is a perfectly
| acceptable hobby.
| plutonorm wrote:
| That would be true if there were vast numbers of truly
| creative people driven by nature to create and then create
| again. But there aren't. There are the correct number. The
| distribution of personalities reflects the need for those
| personalities as discerned by natural selection operating at
| the level of societies for 100s of thousands of years. There
| are the correct number of thinkers. The correct number of
| doers and they should all be supported to perform the
| functions for which they were designed by nature.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Brandon Sanderson did much of his early work while employed
| as a night security guard. If he hadn't had the time to write
| those early books, he might never have been paid enough for
| writing to write full time. That kind of 'growth hack' can
| make sense in some circumstances.
| zackmorris wrote:
| I can tell you what happens because I moved furniture for 3
| years after I graduated college so I could work on my internet
| business:
|
| Failure.
|
| Utter, complete, soul-crushing, devastating failure. Not just
| in one thing. I'm talking a 20 year death march finally ending
| in burnout in 2019 just before the pandemic. My experience has
| been that the more mindless the work, the more psychologically
| taxing it is for creative types like pretty much everyone on
| this site. Opportunity cost becomes all-consuming.
|
| My regret is the opposite of yours. I wish I had gone and
| worked for a major corporation for a few years and saved up a
| few hundred grand so I could get out from under obligation and
| invent the things that I was born to build.
|
| I wish I had lived in a van and avoided expenses and helped
| with communal projects in a makerspace.
|
| I wish I had worked on any personal project at all of my
| choosing, instead of letting others dictate which personal
| projects had merit and coopting my motivation.
|
| My spirit has been so utterly shattered so many times, that I
| no longer hold strong beliefs or expectations. I've toiled
| under such a level of negative reinforcement for so many years
| that I no longer trust my own instincts. I don't believe that
| the future will necessarily get better, that the past even
| existed, or that (as the article said) money comes from doing
| the things we love.
|
| But you know what? I feel alive for the first time since I was
| maybe 5 years old. Watching the world work through some of the
| existential crises that I've faced since the 90s has been very
| healing for me.
|
| I have no great words of wisdom to impart. But I do feel a
| calling to find peace. In my own life, I've been practicing
| service to others, who are an aspect of myself under
| reincarnation and the multiverse (quantum immortality, etc).
| Which looks like setting boundaries and communicating
| intentions even if I can't meet them at that time. It means
| basic kindness to everyone I meet, even finding ways to love
| them no matter how much I disagree with them. And giving them
| the dignity to succeed and fail and learn in their own way.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is that I've largely abandoned logic,
| because I've experienced what it's like to try as hard as I can
| but have it end in tragedy. Bad things still happen no matter
| how much we try to prevent them. But good things also happen
| when we aren't expecting them, through the infinite power of
| serendipity (one of the forces that created the universe). So
| I've shifted to magical thinking (faith, hope, love,
| meditation/prayer, manifestation, etc) and have witnessed how
| reality has shifted to reflect my inner world (as above, so
| below). Now I walk in wonder as the world solves nearly every
| problem I wanted to solve, but without my ego's attachment.
|
| Next steps for me are to keep applying small moves to shift
| laterally into neighboring realities along this timeline. This
| is an embrace of the free will that science claims doesn't
| exist. It's seeking meaning through art and culture as our
| system of necessity works tirelessly to obliterate it. That's
| how and why I'm working towards the rejection of economic
| systems, since they're based on constructs like artificial
| scarcity and denial that wealth creates poverty for someone
| else through ignorance of karma. Loosely, that looks like being
| as vegetarian as possible, while still providing for the
| nutritional needs of my body when warranted. It looks like
| acknowledging my inner monologue but recognizing that it's not
| my consciousness, and heeding my subconscious by being an
| audience for my dreams. And showing up, even on days when I
| start from a place of zero energy, which is all too often in
| these times.
|
| I wouldn't trade the pain I've experienced, since it resulted
| in my conscious awakening. Being here now is priceless.
|
| If this all sounds like gobbledegook, and maybe it is, then you
| the reader have the priceless gift of youthful thinking on your
| side. Run with that and don't get dragged down by rantings from
| old burnouts like me. Your achievements remind me that anything
| is possible, even when I'm my own worst critic and limit myself
| with labels like I just did. Everyone has to find their own
| way.
| fluxinflex wrote:
| For long time working in the tech industry was what I _loved_,
| heck I made my hobby (coding) to my job, what more could one
| want! But 20 years later and my love for coding was being drained
| by working in the ad-tech industry or building software to have
| people being replaced by a computer.
|
| Thankfully stepping out of the tech industry has given meaning to
| what I do. I now do what I love but for something meaningful -
| coding for my own projects, be they good, bad or indifferent, for
| me they are meaningful.
|
| An no the money does not follow but I can make others smile and
| occasional happy with what I do.
|
| I accept that I have to make the money last and sized down: no
| more fancy restaurants nor expensive electric toys; instead more
| supermarket queues and eating at home. But life is no longer the
| rinse and repeat of a 9to5 office job.
|
| > Rarely does a life leave time or energy for child-rearing, a
| paid job and a fulfilling avocation.
|
| I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the norm.
| The norm should be "It's rare for a person to have a shitty job,
| a mortgage, student debt to pay off and no financial possibility
| to have children until they are 65".
| selestify wrote:
| > I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the
| norm.
|
| Is this not already the norm? "Norm" as in, most people in
| developed nations already experience this?
| orev wrote:
| >> Rarely does a life leave time or energy for child-rearing, a
| paid job and a fulfilling avocation.
|
| > I could not imagine living a world where this becomes the
| norm. The norm should be "It's rare for a person to have a
| shitty job, a mortgage, student debt to pay off and no
| financial possibility to have children until they are 65".
|
| This is the world you're living in _right_ _now_ , it just
| sounds like you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't see it.
| For every worker who can sit home and code, there are at least
| hundreds of people doing menial jobs like harvesting crops,
| packing shipments, drilling for oil, fixing streets, etc. Most
| would probably describe those as "shitty jobs", and sadly those
| jobs barely pay the rent.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> menial jobs like [...] drilling for oil [...] and sadly
| those jobs barely pay the rent_
|
| Out of all the jobs you listed, drilling for oil is the one
| that does not fit the bill, not by a long shot. In fact, in
| this market, it's by far the most lucrative you could have.
| [deleted]
| r053bud wrote:
| For me I'd love to be a Highschool teacher, but the pay is simply
| not there. It's hard for me to convince myself to take a huge pay
| cut from Software Engineering though. Huge bummer to me.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| have you ever considered providing mentorship opportunities to
| high schoolers? imo it is very possible to get the joy of
| teaching and passing on your knowledge & skills w/o being in
| the system.
| iguanayou wrote:
| I taught high school for five years but have been a software
| engineer for the past ten.
|
| I'd love to teach again - but sadly that would mean going back
| to a one bedroom apartment in a not-great part of town. Where
| I'm at now, I have a nice place in the country and the means to
| pursue hobbies that I couldn't before.
| selectodude wrote:
| Chicago Public Schools are hiring, you'd pull in $90+K.
| otikik wrote:
| I wanted to make video games.
|
| As an industry, video games suck, for a developer. No life-work
| balance, sudden firings, etc.
|
| Went for a web development instead. I program games as a hobby,
| and have some open source libraries out. A family, a house,
| interesting challenges. I sometimes wonder, yes. I hug my son and
| see what I have built so far.
| [deleted]
| uwagar wrote:
| theres nothing wrong taking and using family money or inheritance
| if u can. put it to the best use.
|
| the other aspect that must be acknowledged (if not encouraged)
| not outright avoided is the idea of sacrificing yourself for the
| art. a bit like a suicide bomber. being an artist isnt about
| having a middle class income and lifestyle so you dont 'die
| penniless'...there is something more mystical that only an artist
| can bring to life for themselves and others.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| My generation (I am 14) might need something hammered into their
| heads. Just drawing pictures or making mediocre music isn't gonna
| bring you a lot of success or money, either get better or find a
| way to monetize it. But doing something you don't care for and
| making it your life kind of makes you into a slave in a way.
| orev wrote:
| For Gen X, Fight Club explained it clearly:
|
| "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day
| we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But
| we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact."
|
| In the TV/movie days, the dream of being a star was also there
| for many, but it was also so obviously out of reach that only
| the most daring and talented even attempted it.
|
| The difference with your generation is that everyone grew up
| with a movie studio in their pocket, and watching YouTube makes
| everyone think that being a star is a real possibility. For
| some it will work out, and talent may be discovered that
| otherwise wouldn't have been, but that vast majority will have
| to come to terms with the cold really that work is actually
| work, same as everyone else.
|
| It is possible to find something you like that also pays well
| (most tech people here probably got here that way), but it does
| mean that you need to do the "hard things" early in life.
| Figuring out how Linux or Rust works is far less fun at the
| beginning, and you need to make a real effort to pull away from
| social media and video games to focus on things like that. I
| suspect it's much harder today than it was 15 years ago.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Another reality is that virtually all of those stars are
| psychopathically hard workers, doing insane stuff behind the
| scenes to be who they are. My kid thinks Tom Brady is cool -
| he doesn't realize that Tom is a crazy dude who lives what
| would be a miserable life for 166 of the 168 hours every
| week. My kid just sees the touch downs and the people
| cheering and boy does it look fun.
| DimitriPetrova wrote:
| Tom Brady doesn't live a miserable life. He enjoys football
| and training/practicing. He's obsessed with it.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| I should have said: A life that most would find
| miserable.
|
| He may well find it satisfying and/or enjoyable. But it
| appears to be some kind of severe workaholism he has, and
| I'd speculate there is a 50% chance football owns him,
| not the other way around. It would be fun to be him for
| just one Sunday though right???
| aschearer wrote:
| Hi Bob, I just want to say you're 14 -- don't worry about
| making money or success. There's plenty of time for that. And
| for coming to terms with the lack thereof. You're still a kid
| so get off Hacker News and go enjoy drawing pictures and making
| mediocre music. After all, unless your a child prodigy, what
| else could it be but mediocre? And that's more than enough! You
| won't get a second chance at being young, enjoy it while you
| can.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Do what allows you to afford your hobbies.
| mmartinson wrote:
| Y'all should enjoy drawing pictures and making mediocre music
| without worrying about how that relates to success or money.
| Your career is important, but it's only one part of a good
| life. Things that are enjoyable but unproductive often have a
| way of building skills and character that can later help you in
| unexpected ways.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > Y'all should enjoy drawing pictures and making mediocre
| music without worrying about how that relates to success or
| money.
|
| Or whether you have to have health insurance. If having
| health insurance wasn't tied to employment, just think of the
| opportunities that could open up.
| colinsane wrote:
| of the basic necessities, health insurance is perhaps the
| easiest to acquire as a financially strapped person these
| days, due to Medicaid (assuming you're US). shelter, on the
| other hand...
| senko wrote:
| Hello from Europe.
| _gmax0 wrote:
| Given the state of the world, naturally there is greater
| pressure to survive, requiring one to focus on the short-
| term: securing capital or success, which in this context I
| interpret as 'fame' and perhaps implies capital. If this is
| the model under which we operate, indifference towards this
| pressure indicates to me that a person is either
| unwittingly/willfully ignorant, or has a value system that
| prioritizes internal satisfaction.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| It may seem like 14 years old is "too soon" for being
| preoccupied about one's livelihood but, based on my
| experience, it is certainly healthier than waking up as a 27
| y/o man and finding that the perception of your personality
| has been built on a lie, well intentioned as it may be.
|
| The common view we have of teenagers, as devoid of any
| agency, vastly underestimates them, not only that, it
| excludes them for the "res publica": the participation to the
| public life, exclusion that emerges then as lack of maturity.
| All the acting out and "teenage angst", it is my opinion, is
| actually a call for responsibility and participation, and it
| is by this participation, and the subsequent confrontation
| with the messy reality of life that make you realize your
| limitation and allows you to grow out of your childish dream
| if they are, indeed, childing. This dampening of expectations
| is not a negative thing: it's what has allowed civilization
| to go on: almost nobody wanted to be a farmer. Keeping the
| door open for the odd wind of luck while living a pragmatic,
| if not as colorful as one's fantasies, life is the more
| realistic and healthy way of organize one future while the
| "think about this later" is a recipe for regret and
| depression caused by the mismatch between what it is and what
| I wished it were.
| fnovd wrote:
| The beauty and tragedy of our culture is the ability to
| leverage your future for a moonshot. It enables some real
| treasures to be discovered who can share their creations with
| the world, but each comes with the invisible cost of hundreds
| and thousands of failures who must "settle" for an average
| life. The success of the fortunate comes in no small part out
| of the investment of time, energy, and money from the failures.
| Young people are the worst at risk-assessment and at thinking
| through long-term costs, so most will happily alter the shape
| of their 99%-probability future if it improves the shape of
| their 1%-future. Dreams are powerful.
|
| You can do something you don't care for without making it your
| life.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Twelve years ago I wrote a blog post on exactly that concept
| of people going after optional disproportionally large gains,
| where everyone else only see the survivorship bias:
|
| "I have to wonder then whether, over many eons, we've evolved
| the risk appetite required to explore options - i.e. in
| exploration of new food sources. However, while I would argue
| that such risk appetite is a superior trait for populations,
| it may be of net negative value for any particular individual
| singled out of a population. Because, while a roaring success
| may benefit that individual as well as the population around
| him, say, if (s)he found a new food source and also could
| control its public distribution for his/her benefit, it could
| also turn out that the exploration fails, and the individual
| perishes from exposure to whatever risky environment in which
| he placed himself in the first place. So, extrapolated over
| many generations of natural selection, this successively
| repeated scenario would breed individuals into risky-options-
| seeking automatons, who don't necessarily do so on the net
| likelihood of their own benefit. In a large population of
| such risky-options-seekers, some would inevitably succeed,
| improving the lot of the population, but those that failed
| would be crossed off the natural selection list, even though
| the same traits were being exercised in survivors and non-
| survivors alike.
|
| So when it comes to the value of risky-options on the
| individual basis, I would argue that the jury's still out,
| and that economic conservatism may be the individual's value
| maximizing choice after all . . ."
|
| https://walkabout165.blogspot.com/2010/05/its-all-
| optional.h... (There's context provided in the post).
|
| I probably have some interim updated thoughts about this
| twelve years on, but nothing conclusive.
| fnovd wrote:
| "Economic conservatism" is a value-maximizing choice in
| some ways, but there is also the value of risk-taking as
| self-actualization. "It's better to have loved and lost,"
| as they say.
|
| There is value in being granted the freedom to fail, and
| even smart risks require a chance of failure; that's why
| banks and investors exist as they do. The difference is
| that a teenage individual is far worse at analyzing risk
| and the consequences of failure while having almost
| absolute authority over their own direction.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| there are plenty of ways to earn an income doing both of those
| things, it just might not be 'for yourself' and it might not
| meet your expectation of 'a lot of money' but you can in fact
| be comfortable and earn a living. also most professionals in
| any field are by definition mediocre.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Especially with generative AI evolving the way it is.
| shagie wrote:
| I'm going to suggest a read of Find The Hard Work You're
| Willing To Do
|
| http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018...
|
| (and a HN thread on that article form a bit ago -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209541 )
| [deleted]
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| 1) Figure out something that you are good at but don't like and
| make plan how to levarage that in the best way to become
| financialy indepenend (aka rich) from that.
|
| 2) Now you can do what you want.
|
| For the average Joe this means that we'll be spending a lot of
| time outside of work working on 1). There is no other way for
| those of us from non-rich families: we have to wisely sacrifice
| free time and convert that free time into a non-linear $$$ return
| in the most practical way possible.
| VLM wrote:
| There seems no obvious reason that everything good would be
| profitable, as if profitability is an expression of goodness. But
| as long as you can fund the good stuff somehow, it'll be OK.
| nytesky wrote:
| There's a whole meme in blind about aerospace engineers earning
| peanuts. Not sure if there are too many wanna be astronauts or
| just the nature of finances when primary customer is the gov.
| Even SpaceX is supposed to pay only soso!
| SnooSux wrote:
| A bit of both according to a coworker who left that space.
|
| There are more Aerospace Engineers that want to build the
| greatest latest rockets than there are positions so they have
| to settle for lower pay.
|
| And working on planes is a lot of contract work so the job
| situation isn't ideal.
|
| Picking a boring field is definitely a path to job stability.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Instead of following the notorious "do what you love and money
| will follow" advice, the author suggests instead to:
|
| > And so, the advice I would give to young people is this:
| structure your life so that you have the time and money to do
| what you love. That's not easy to do by any means, but it is a
| much more realistic goal.
|
| I often tell people that when I first entered the tech industry
| many moons ago, I wasn't chasing the money. I simply loved
| working with computers. And it just so happens that working in
| tech is lucrative. But I do wonder, fast forward 15 years later,
| if I would've stuck around if the field wasn't as booming.
|
| I wonder if I tricked myself into believing that working in tech
| is really my passion ...
| enobrev wrote:
| I've wondered the same, with the same lead into the industry. I
| don't think it's possible to extract the two from one-another.
|
| I've nerded-out on the majority of the projects I've worked on
| through my career - especially in the latter years. But there
| are quite a few projects in the past that would not have come
| to completion without a big fat carrot to keep my belly full
| and my favorite bartenders' rent paid.
|
| Some weeks - no matter how interesting the problem is - I
| couldn't possibly care. The money remains a great fallback
| motivator; And unfortunately, often can end up being a shackle
| to a project that's well past its sell-by date.
| allenbina wrote:
| I wonder about this all the time. In the past 5 years I've
| learned a lot of IoT projects, electronics, arduino. I've
| played around with linux for decades, but my passion was
| originally music.
|
| I went down the music path but the money was awful. It taught
| me how to apply myself to different projects, and I don't love
| tech as much as I love music, but it allows me to have the
| freedom to do other things, which I also love.
| moe091 wrote:
| If you did trick yourself, then maybe that's actually a good
| thing. New advice:
|
| instead of "do what you love and the money will follow," find
| something lucrative and learn to love it.
|
| Though I think in most cases that might be
| difficult/impossible, maybe you just got lucky
| comfypotato wrote:
| They aren't mutually exclusive. I think you and I both have
| enjoyed the happy coincidence that we like programming more
| than most things that pay equally.
| baxtr wrote:
| Don't be hard on yourself. Things with traction are usually
| interesting per se.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| I was making computer programs just for the heck of it even
| before I knew it was possible to make money with them. Even if
| the field wasn't booming, I would have stuck around and kept
| making them on the side. Doing what you love doesn't mean it
| can only happen full-time.
| jdbernard wrote:
| I have found myself in a similar position for most of my
| career. I also got into for the love of working with code. But
| I've stayed in the industry largely because it enables me to
| provide a comfortable lifestyle for my family.
|
| I am still passionate about writing software, but the software
| I like to write doesn't pay the bills. It's avocational. The
| tech industry afforded my family the lifestyle I desire, but it
| didn't really ignite my passion, it was just lucrative.
|
| I've since shifted into management. I'm finding new fulfillment
| in creating the kinds of teams I wish I had as an IC, that lets
| individuals work in ways they find fulfilling.
| paulpauper wrote:
| To make decent money with a passion you often need to be in the
| top .1%. It's not like you need to be among the best in the world
| to make money working in fast food or law, compared to being a
| sprinter or chess player. Part of the problem is people will do
| hobbies for free, hence why they are hobbies and not jobs. Also,
| hobbies/passions do not create as much economic value compared to
| jobs. Coding the infrastructure that powers Amazon's store
| probably produces more economic value than learning how to play
| guitar, that is just the reality of the situation.
| yunwal wrote:
| > Coding the infrastructure that powers Amazon's store probably
| produces more economic value than learning how to play guitar,
| that is just the reality of the situation.
|
| This may be correct but I feel like there's an incorrect
| assumption that producing economic value leads to receiving
| economic compensation. The amount you're paid for your output
| doesn't directly correlate to the amount of output, it
| correlates to how well you can hold that output hostage in
| exchange for money.
|
| A professional open-source developer on a major project like
| flask almost certainly produces way more value than a Google
| Junior engineer but still probably doesn't get paid as much.
|
| I'd say the same goes for many guitarists
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I love not having a boss, so I spent ten years being a prole and
| working my arse off.
|
| Now I do what I want.
|
| Some people want to spend their 20s doing what they want. I
| didn't feel I had that luxury. I didn't feel that I could just
| "not have a boss" straight away.
| esel2k wrote:
| There are a few books around that topic. I did read the Cal
| Newport - "So good they can't ignore you" where the summary says:
| Skills trumps passion and following you passion is a bad advice.
|
| I did follow that book for the last 5-10 years of my career and
| can say, I did double my salary and have now a life where I can
| easily afford big holidays, not worry about any car or health
| issues/breakdowns and put money on the side. But deep down I
| truly regret not turning my career in the middle to something
| closer to what I wanted to do. Today I have some small regrets
| not having followed a bit more the "passion"-things mid-career or
| trying to combine them and not always focus on money and climbing
| the ladder... One better advice is: If you want a satisfying
| career, ask yourself: What activities do I keep returning to,
| even though they are challenging?
|
| (check this HBR article: https://hbr.org/2020/11/what-you-should-
| follow-instead-of-yo...)
| senko wrote:
| > Skills trumps passion and following you passion is a bad
| advice.
|
| It's hard to get really skilled at something if you're not
| passionate about it.
| kerblang wrote:
| There is something to be said for _loving what you do_ - which is
| to say, your job might be inglorious to some, but if it can be
| done well or badly, why not do it well? And then unfortunately
| the answer is, "Because I'll get fired for doing it well."
| Because yeah you work for people who hate everything they do and
| have contempt for everyone doing it.
|
| But it is possible to love being an accountant, a janitor, and
| then some, if you're permitted to treat that job as something
| meaningful rather than hateful. We've been taught to be angry
| that we aren't living out some fantasy and hate everything around
| us.
|
| Go ahead, call me gullible...
| anderspitman wrote:
| I think doing what you love (for work) is overrated. It's more
| important to do something that you think is meaningful.
| colinsane wrote:
| does this reframing do anything to solve the underlying
| dichotomy? few people, i venture, can truly find meaning in the
| present business environment. maybe it makes it easier to
| justify work at a non-profit, if the work is menial but
| meaningfully impactful.
| davidjfelix wrote:
| Sounds like you might love doing meaningful work.
| Jiro wrote:
| If something is so much fun that you'd be willing to do it
| without getting paid, other people probably will do it without
| getting paid, which means that nobody's going to pay you for it.
| otikik wrote:
| Or they could unionize
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| The other strategy is to have a rare skill or set of skills
| such that, even if lots of other people will do it for free and
| therefore underbid you, you can still find buyers despite your
| higher (non-zero) price tag.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Very well and succinctly stated.
|
| Go to any un-juried street art fair, and see all the mediocre
| art being offered by people with no outstanding talent. They
| probably love making their art, and not only _would_ they do it
| without getting paid, they actually _are_ doing it without
| getting paid.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I got into computers back in the Before Times because I liked it
| _reasonably_ well, and it promised a decent paying job. I never
| did it at home just for fun. I hardly ever read technical
| literature that wasn 't connected to the job. That said, it
| wasn't usually drudgery, and quite often it was way fun.
|
| This also left time to learn piano, singing, and to visit 26
| countries. If I'd done those things full time and waited for the
| money to follow, I'd still be waiting. Now I'm retired and
| writing, and definitely _not_ expecting a lot of money to follow.
| (Some, anyway! I just got my year-to-date statement from Amazon.)
|
| I'm not a religious person, but I always think of Adam and Eve
| being expelled from the Garden of Eden, and told:
|
| _In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return
| unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou
| art, and unto dust shalt thou return._
|
| (good thing I looked this up. I would have said "by the sweat of
| thy brow")
|
| We have to work. That's the human condition.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I do what I love, and there's no money at all.
|
| I'm fortunate, in that I was able to save up enough of a modest
| nest egg, so that it doesn't matter.
|
| I have skills that could make _a lot_ of money. The problem is
| the way that the folks that pay me, treat me, and my work.
|
| People seem to take the fact that they pay money, to be _carte
| blanche_ to treat the people they pay, like garbage.
|
| When I was younger, I could eat that s**t, but as I got older, I
| got crankier.
|
| Nowadays, I do very good work, for free, for folks that couldn't
| afford me. They can be a pain, but I can also walk away (or
| threaten to), and we can usually work through the rough bits.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > but I can also walk away (or threaten to)
|
| That's just as true when they're paying you.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not to me. If I sign a contract, I consider myself bound to
| it.
|
| It's not as easy to walk away. I consider it a matter of
| Integrity.
| jimz wrote:
| (well, that and if it's legally binding, it's a matter of
| performance or damages)
| p0d wrote:
| My view is explore what you are curious about. My curiosity led
| me to the last 25 years in IT and more recently IT in education.
|
| As a religious person I have wondered where this computing
| curiosity or desires of my heart came from. God or myself?
|
| Either way, I had no sense of loving computers in the beginning.
| I just wondered if I could add a bigger hard drive or how to make
| a website .
|
| The lack of curiosity I have witnessed down through the years has
| often surprised me.
| ProAm wrote:
| This article reminds me of another quote, "Don't believe
| everything you read"
| brundolf wrote:
| Good advice
|
| I think part of the problem is that "what you love" is too coarse
| of a term; the author hinted at this but didn't really dig into
| it. I would break it down into at least three parts:
|
| 1. Something that's fun to you (the moment to moment lights up
| your brain)
|
| 2. Something that gives you esteem (feeling like you're _good at_
| something, and probably also having others validate that with
| praise and /or payment)
|
| 3. Something that gives you a sense of purpose in life (like
| you're contributing to something bigger than yourself- can be
| artistically, socially, etc)
|
| Combining those with:
|
| 4. Something that makes you money
|
| we have four different needs that can be met by the same or
| different activities. Finding three in a single activity is hard;
| finding all four in a single activity is nearly impossible. But
| one or two here, one or two there, is very doable (assuming time
| allows). I tend to think a person should aim for a primary job
| that fills two, or maybe three, because of how much of their time
| it takes up. But they should not hold out for a job that fills
| all four.
|
| What's important is to become aware of exactly what each of these
| needs looks like for you personally, and which activities do and
| don't fill each of them. Then you can plan and prioritize to try
| and fill the gaps in your life.
|
| PS: I've found that #3 tends to revolve around people other than
| yourself. That could mean moving them or bringing them joy
| through art/creativity, or raising children, being a community
| leader, doing charity, or even just building a product that
| directly makes people's lives better. The specifics depend on the
| person. But totally insular activities probably won't ever do it
| for #3; I think we've got something at the base of our monkey-
| brains that has an unchangeable need to be helpful to the tribe.
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