4 ms·

My answer to this is: Do what you love. This might mean to radically change what you do. The vibe I get from your post is that the situation you are in is the

by TekMol 9y ago

My answer to this is: Do what you love. This might mean to radically change what you do. The vibe I get from your post is that the situation you are in is the result of a "career move". Driven by rational thinking about salary and future safety. If your goal is to live a happy, meaningful life, I am sceptical that this approach can work. But I am very open to discuss this. Personally, being raised very anti authoritarian, I naturally always did what I loved doing or what I was curious about. I'm not super rich and I don't jump around in joy all day. But I have a pretty nice lifestyle that I enjoy. Would love to hear other perspectives on this.

zaptheimpaler 9y ago
I totally agree! Especially with your point that we CAN radically change what we do and its really not that difficult to learn new stuff. People are great at learning new stuff. There are more hurdles with convincing other people that you can learn though.. I would love your help on a dilemma - how do you get past the practical hurdles of recruiters and "X years work experience reqd" & background & credentials? Like I have an interest in ML and a very solid understanding & passion for math. I have picked up a bunch on my own and I'm sure i can pick up the rest - its mostly just linear algebra / statistics. But working data scientists tend to be grad students/PhDs and have some credentials to prove they are "academic" (because the rest of us could not possibly be "academic".. LOL). How do I get past that?
- TekMol 9y ago
  how do you get past the practical hurdles of recruiters and "X years work experience reqd" & background & credentials? From my experience, when you do what you love the power is completely on your side. Not on the side of recruiters and employers. Companies have been hunting me down and trying to convince me to work for them for years now. Every company craves people who build great stuff and are passionate about what they do. Shift your focus from what you get to what you give. And everything will fall in place over time.
jsudhams 9y ago
I must say I was thinking doing what you love matters but I do what I love now i.e. designing infrastructure but it gets overwhelming, I don't like being forced to work when I don't feel. So I have decided to make more money asap and retire do what I love later. I really changed my path after reading 16 ways to fail book. Though many won't agree here, I think financial freedom is basic to live and do what you love.So i started looking at the career as job sometimes even as a task. And the task fetches my salary no more no less. Not working beyond 8 hours and not pushing projects for sake of management helps to tolerate the job even if you don't love it. Because then you have life beyond you money fetching task.
rhizome 9y ago
It sounds awesome have a fully articulated sense of purpose such that a person can simply decide to focus on what they love, even if it's "radically different" from what they're doing now. How do you know whether what you're doing is truly what you love, once you eliminate meaningless rationalizations like "future safety?"
- TekMol 9y ago
  How do you know whether what you're doing is truly what you love My emotions tell me. Sometimes I feel dead and the world seems grey. And sometimes I feel so alive and the world is full of colors. The "alive" mode is the one I want to be in.
  - hasenj 9y ago
    Emotions fluctuate all the time.
    - TekMol 9y ago
      Do they fluctuate randomly? I would think they are within the realm of our control.
JohnnyConatus 9y ago
Dear TekMol, We regret to inform you that starting tomorrow, our organization, our parent company, our subsidiary company, and our affiliate partners will no longer be able to provide you services. Unfortunately, all of our employees read your post and they agree with you and they have all quit to follow their bliss and have left en mass for Chiang Mai until they can "figure out what that means." Candidly, we expect a large increase in the number of people working as life coaches. As a result, we will no longer be able to provide the following services: - Retail employees to help you - Any sort of clerical work - Coal mining and other energy gathering work that requires outdoor and or physical work - Water plants and filtration systems - Less glamours medical care - All the law jobs you don't know about but which keep our world running as well as it does - And any and all sundry job that aren't cool enough to be in an TV commercial By this letter, we formally requests you stop spouting your bullshit. Further, we encourage you to consider the implicit flip-side of your argument that, to paraphrase, one can only be happy or have a meaningful life if one does what they love. The incredibly insulting inference being that people who don't do exactly what they love can't possibly be happy or have a meaningful life. Good luck with your parakeet farm or whatever it is you do. Cordially, The Good People at JustTryingToMakeRent Co.
- TekMol 9y ago
  Dear JustTryingToMakeRent employees, Thank you very much for your open letter! And thank you for making the world such a wonderful place where coal is mined and plants are watered and everything works so flawlessly. Is it really impossible to love those jobs? I often have the feeling that at least some of you are in a great mood when I meet you at your workplaces. For example when I visit my dentist. The whole team is always in a great mood, making jokes with each other, being friendly, enjoying the workday. If there are jobs that simply cannot be loved - I think we should enhance or automate those. Let's start the debate. What job is nothing but shit? I don't run a parakeet farm. I object to the "use" of animals. One of the things I love to do is write software though. Right now I am sitting in a nice internet cafe. At a window that overlooks a river. Sipping coffee, enhancing an application. And right now I love it. Chances are good that some of you are users of the application. Yours, TekMol

by TekMol 9y ago

zaptheimpaler 9y ago

I totally agree! Especially with your point that we CAN radically change what we do and its really not that difficult to learn new stuff. People are great at learning new stuff. There are more hurdles with convincing other people that you can learn though.. I would love your help on a dilemma - how do you get past the practical hurdles of recruiters and "X years work experience reqd" & background & credentials? Like I have an interest in ML and a very solid understanding & passion for math. I have picked up a bunch on my own and I'm sure i can pick up the rest - its mostly just linear algebra / statistics. But working data scientists tend to be grad students/PhDs and have some credentials to prove they are "academic" (because the rest of us could not possibly be "academic".. LOL). How do I get past that?

TekMol 9y ago
how do you get past the practical hurdles of recruiters and "X years work experience reqd" & background & credentials? From my experience, when you do what you love the power is completely on your side. Not on the side of recruiters and employers. Companies have been hunting me down and trying to convince me to work for them for years now. Every company craves people who build great stuff and are passionate about what they do. Shift your focus from what you get to what you give. And everything will fall in place over time.

jsudhams 9y ago

I must say I was thinking doing what you love matters but I do what I love now i.e. designing infrastructure but it gets overwhelming, I don't like being forced to work when I don't feel. So I have decided to make more money asap and retire do what I love later. I really changed my path after reading 16 ways to fail book. Though many won't agree here, I think financial freedom is basic to live and do what you love.So i started looking at the career as job sometimes even as a task. And the task fetches my salary no more no less. Not working beyond 8 hours and not pushing projects for sake of management helps to tolerate the job even if you don't love it. Because then you have life beyond you money fetching task.

rhizome 9y ago

It sounds awesome have a fully articulated sense of purpose such that a person can simply decide to focus on what they love, even if it's "radically different" from what they're doing now. How do you know whether what you're doing is truly what you love, once you eliminate meaningless rationalizations like "future safety?"

TekMol 9y ago
How do you know whether what you're doing is truly what you love My emotions tell me. Sometimes I feel dead and the world seems grey. And sometimes I feel so alive and the world is full of colors. The "alive" mode is the one I want to be in.
- hasenj 9y ago
  Emotions fluctuate all the time.
  - TekMol 9y ago
    Do they fluctuate randomly? I would think they are within the realm of our control.

JohnnyConatus 9y ago

Dear TekMol, We regret to inform you that starting tomorrow, our organization, our parent company, our subsidiary company, and our affiliate partners will no longer be able to provide you services. Unfortunately, all of our employees read your post and they agree with you and they have all quit to follow their bliss and have left en mass for Chiang Mai until they can "figure out what that means." Candidly, we expect a large increase in the number of people working as life coaches. As a result, we will no longer be able to provide the following services: - Retail employees to help you - Any sort of clerical work - Coal mining and other energy gathering work that requires outdoor and or physical work - Water plants and filtration systems - Less glamours medical care - All the law jobs you don't know about but which keep our world running as well as it does - And any and all sundry job that aren't cool enough to be in an TV commercial By this letter, we formally requests you stop spouting your bullshit. Further, we encourage you to consider the implicit flip-side of your argument that, to paraphrase, one can only be happy or have a meaningful life if one does what they love. The incredibly insulting inference being that people who don't do exactly what they love can't possibly be happy or have a meaningful life. Good luck with your parakeet farm or whatever it is you do. Cordially, The Good People at JustTryingToMakeRent Co.

TekMol 9y ago
Dear JustTryingToMakeRent employees, Thank you very much for your open letter! And thank you for making the world such a wonderful place where coal is mined and plants are watered and everything works so flawlessly. Is it really impossible to love those jobs? I often have the feeling that at least some of you are in a great mood when I meet you at your workplaces. For example when I visit my dentist. The whole team is always in a great mood, making jokes with each other, being friendly, enjoying the workday. If there are jobs that simply cannot be loved - I think we should enhance or automate those. Let's start the debate. What job is nothing but shit? I don't run a parakeet farm. I object to the "use" of animals. One of the things I love to do is write software though. Right now I am sitting in a nice internet cafe. At a window that overlooks a river. Sipping coffee, enhancing an application. And right now I love it. Chances are good that some of you are users of the application. Yours, TekMol