10 ms·

Do What You Love and Starve? (2006)

199 points by exolymph 9y ago

nikkwong 9y ago
Heh, I don't know how I feel about this, at least for people who are highly talented. Intelligent hard working people at this day in age often choose practical career paths that they like, which lead to ample job opportunity.
hprotagonist 9y ago
Where to find a business to copy? Drive around to find a simple business at which customers are lined up out the door. For example, see a successful burrito shop or espresso cart? Open a similar one in a similar neighborhood. Your chances of success will be a helluva lot higher than 20%. ... says the man who has obviously never done business in the food service industry. The failure rate of restaurants is shockingly high.
- rich_ard 9y ago
  Down on your luck? Open a coffee shop!
  - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
    Best buisness ideas come from hollywood- open a bookshop or a boutique - where you get to squander all your wealth in months on stuff of your personal taste.
  - wyclif 9y ago
    That's even worse advice than opening a restaurant: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...
    - ForRealsies 9y ago
      Want to get rich quick? Open a brewery!
- D_Alex 9y ago
  Plus, I don't think you can build a great society on the back of burrito and espresso shops...
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Actually you could build a mighty fine one. A great society is not presupposed on some advanced tech of shit.
    - D_Alex 9y ago
      I completely disagree, but maybe we have different ideas of what a "great society" is.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        Perhaps you imagine some kind of high tech megacity. I'm content with a peaceful population with understanding, love for one another, sense of justice, and free burritos.
  - sooheon 9y ago
    Why not? We have 8 billion people to build a great society with, I think 1/8 billionth of human effort could be directed to a great local burrito shop. Great societies are built by people doing their part and loving their lives, not by everyone trying to "change the world".
    - dhbradshaw 9y ago
      I love this comment. It's really refreshing.
    - mantas 9y ago
      A good burrito (or any good food for that matter) can "change the world" much more than yet another "instuber for X" startup...
    - D_Alex 9y ago
- yters 9y ago
  I see lots of burrito trucks that seem to have survived awhile. Probably because they don't need to pay all the taxes and such involved with owning a building. Just buy a van, cook some food, and park somewhere people need to eat.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    This is also highly locale dependent. Have fun getting ticketed for operating in the wrong area without checking local laws. "You're in a truck, just move" sounds like a good idea until you realize you're back to square one marketing wise and nobody knows you're there.
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      > Have fun getting ticketed for operating in the wrong area without checking local laws. I've seen more than one food truck which eventually became a stationary establishment because there was only one (desirable) place they could work out legal status. It's pretty common for local laws to include "no selling food from a non-storefront within X feet of a restaurant", which can quickly close off all the good territory.
- ACow_Adonis 9y ago
  Yeah,that is absolutely horrible advice. I live in a neighborhood where there's businesses with lines out the door, and a reliable number of new businesses springing up each year, seemingly under the advice of "it would be cool to open up a business in neighborhood X because it's super popular". These businesses are inevitably dead within 3 - 12 months, and what's not said/perceived is that they guy with lines or the door runs an incredibly tight ship and has 15 to 20 years of international cooking and restaurant experience under his/her belt. You open up a burrito/coffee shop next to him, and you're going to get the same number of customers as before you opened your business...
  - chillingeffect 9y ago
    > You open up a burrito/coffee shop next to him ISTR the article saying something like "located far enough from my store that he wouldn’t fear my competition."
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      That may not help. The assumption is that Successful Business is successful because of the product it sells, and therefore if you sell the same product you will be successful too. Someone who doesn’t understand why this isn’t guaranteed or what the other relevant variables are probably shouldn’t be giving business advice.
    - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
      Ok. But firstly, he/she doesn't fear your competition now, or when you open. Secondly, this seems to assume that his product is easily replicable, and that you'll be able to find some untouched environment in which to plonk yourself down and get free business. Far enough away from his store is likely in a position where there is no business. Plus we have a phrase for easily replicable businesses in economics: low barriers to entry. And they're exactly the kind of businesses that have the longest tails of miserable wages and miserable returns. What's more, because every man and his dog can do them, there is no untouched environment in which to plonk yourself down and you have competition from everyone. Those who invested in their skills over the long term, are talented, grow their skills, understand the market, get lucky, and/or used their privileged advantages wisely take the prime real estate/positions, and they thrive there. And for the most part, they do not care about some upstart newbie who thinks "making coffee/food is easy" opening up next door, any more than tom hanks loses sleep about all the wannabe actors turning up in LA. You move far enough away, and you lose out on all reasons that the original business person wants that position specifically. And if you're good enough to induce demand where-ever you set up, odds are its because you're good enough (probably through 30+ years of experience) to do so. By all means, imitate successful strategies. But my first advice is not some fantasy regarding being able to find a magical good-transmission person (how do you identify them with your lack of knowledge? How do you know the restraunter isn't barely making minimum wage or burning through his inheritance like so many I see around here despite big lines?) or a magical good-transmission-owning-consultant (again, how do you know one, all consultants will tell you they're good and will be willing to take your money as long as you pay them). No. My advice would simply be to find a couple of fields/skills, preferably ones that aren't looking like they're already going the way of the dodo already, and work your butt off getting good at them. If you think you want to run a restaurant/coffee cart, start working in restaurants, or as a barrister/roaster. If you think you want to run a transmission joint, go work in one. And if you want to turn it into a business, learn some basic economics/business on the side. Low barrier to entry businesses have the lowest expected returns, and every successful business is more complicated than it looks.
- jv22222 9y ago
  Cloning another sucessfull business is extremely sound advice. One only has to look at Capterra to so how often it is done. Sure, some of the clones don't work out but a lot do. Also, there's no reason why you can't start as a clone and then gradually iterated into something original over time. I.E. Solve the money problem and then move on to something more interesting. (The trick is to clone something that is sucessfull not something that is a good idea with no proven success.)
  - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
    Also, if the original fails by decision, you can learn from that and live on.
- jvkersch 9y ago
  My (admittedly extremely limited) experience is that this is a sound strategy _for established entrepreneurs_, not for tentative business owners who are just getting started. My wife and I were thinking about opening a restaurant, and as has been illustrated elsewhere, the costs are staggering and the total profit (if anything) is rather low. We were looking at total revenue of around £200 000, with maybe a 5% profit margin. This did not take into account kinda-expected risks, like staff quitting, which would have sent costs through the roof. By contrast, a little later we talked to a guy who sets up pubs for a living (for a large chain). They have costs down to a minimum, can rotate staff easily, and essentially have a playbook for starting a reasonably succesful, risk-free business in a few months. On top of that, they have departments full of people whose job it is to drive around looking for succesful business to copy (paraphrasing the original quote). This was profoundly depressing to me, since it made me think that even if we'd overcome the odds, we'd probably end up getting cloned by one of these behemoths...
TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
This is the wrong forum for this advice. I think most of the people here are not looking for a median income or a simple business. They want to swing for the fences or transform the world. Having said that, its good advice. Most people underestimate the joy you get from a good solid, routine job that pays well. And they overestimate the joy you get from a giant windfall ... such as you get when you finally take your startup public or sell it off. Also, I have met far more douchebags among the ranks of lawyers and VCs in silicon valley than I have among the ranks of small business owners (my brother owns a couple small businesses and his circle is very down to earth).
- war1025 9y ago
  I think you underestimate the number of people that follow this site because they like the content, but are quite content to have a median income and a nice work-life balance.
  - rabbadabba_99 9y ago
    Or a 1% level income from a "lifestyle" business that's boring and never in the news.
- everdev 9y ago
  I don't agree, I've met plenty in all walks of life. Jealousy certainly plays a part in judgement, so I think the dbag label is probably more equally distributed than you might think. We also tend to surround ourselves with people we like, so I guess that makes sense that you like the circle you and your brother are in and don't like the circle you're not in.
  - TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
    I was a programmer, then a lawyer representing startups, and now I'm a programmer again. I've had one successful exit already, and I'm working on another. I'm not in my brother's circle.
- bhldr 9y ago
grosjona 9y ago
You have to work for companies where capital accumulates quickly and then find a way to sandwich yourself between where the capital is and where the capital wants to go. Follow capital and consumers will follow you.
mrlyc 9y ago
Do what you love, what you are good at and what people are willing to pay for. Sometimes you have to do the first one as a hobby and the last two as a job.
ggm 9y ago
.. except the franchise thing? It's a huge ripoff risk: you pay licence fees up the wazoo for brand value and models which can be terrible. As in any endeavour, you have to do your homework. Lots of franchise holders looking enviously at class action suits to recover
faitswulff 9y ago
> we’ve been sold a bill of goods when we’re told to “Follow your passion, “ or “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Fact is, if you do what you love, you’ll probably starve. I started thinking this somewhere around halfway through college, when my parents were telling me to do what I love and I was trying to figure out what to do for a living - especially when my parents were struggling, themselves. I feel like "do what you love" was a really compelling pipe dream for my parents because they had always done the opposite to get by and improve their circumstances, and it sucked. They wanted better for their kids, but at the same time, it is easily some of the worst advice I've ever received.
- codeulike 9y ago
  Never Give Up is also bad advice that gets bandied around a lot due to survivor bias. Sometimes there's a lot of wisdom in giving up on something.
  - mindentropy 9y ago
    The problem is the absolutes. I have learn that life is not absolutes. It is usually somewhere in the middle. Most of it is heavily dependent on luck.
    - codeulike 9y ago
      Do you mean 'life is not absolutes', or that 'in most cases life is not absolutes'? ; )
      - mindentropy 9y ago
        :-). I was trying to be careful in not using absolutes. Guess I missed this. ;-)
- gh02t 9y ago
  It's give and take. Maybe not "do what you love no matter what" but "try and do something you at least like" is still good advice. If you force yourself to do something you hate just because you think you'll make money not only will you spend your life miserable, but you also likely won't be terribly successful because it's hard not to burn out. Said differently, making money matters and should be considered, but it should not override all other factors when choosing a career.
mellowdream 9y ago
Most people don't have the IQ, psychometric personality profile, and circumstantial history (the right/rich family, friends, networks, etc.) in conjunction to succeed. Romanticism, per Goethe and Nietzsche, has always erred toward the side of spiritual sickness - it's often nothing more than an opiate to distract oneself from the mundaneness, difficulties, and responsibilities of authentic, lived experience. Say what you will of Jordan Peterson, but I believe his experience as a credentialed psychologist and counselor is worth considering as well - one is more likely to preserve his sanity by pursuing (perhaps unpleasant, but stable and providing) responsibility rather than upheaving his life with little more than a mistaken impression via survivorship bias.
- yters 9y ago
  It'd certainly be interesting to see the other side of all the success stories.
paraschopra 9y ago
My entire blog is on this premise: following your passion is a recipe for economic failure as economic value gets created when you help other people follow their passion. I write about this here https://invertedpassion.com https://invertedpassion.com
peppery 9y ago
This article presumes the premise that "what you love"/"your passion" is the same as "what you can love"/the set of all "passions" you have not yet discovered. This is untrue. Especially for young people, the amount of time that you have been alive is small compared to your lifetime. What you currently know to be interesting is correspondingly a small subset of the number of things you can find interesting over a lifetime, and an even smaller subset of the things which you could find fulfilling to work on with many lifetimes. (For those who have lived longer, your life experience makes it even more likely you can identify fulfilling connections/facets of the universe to study.) The challenge is to find the intersection between what you can be riveted to work on, and what society values (in whatever its flawed wisdom) or can be invited to value. This is not trivial, but the statistics of the universe are on your side. What sort of society would we be if e.g. Nikola Tesla/Jame Clark Maxwell/Mozart/etc. had followed this advice? To aspire is human, powerful, fulfilling. To eat is practical. It is possible to do both. Society needs people who persist in that pursuit.
- freedomben 9y ago
  > To eat is practical. It is possible to do both. Yes. Even when it comes to development, I find that often the project you are most passionate about is not one that you can be paid for, at least long term. So even if you love software, you may still need to pursue the fun parts in your spare time.
- lancebeet 9y ago
  > This article presumes the premise that "what you love"/"your passion" is the same as "what you can love"/the set of all "passions" you have not yet discovered. This is untrue. A while ago, an article was posted here on HN on paper jam engineering[1] which I believe really demonstrates this point. Few people aspire to become paper jam engineers (or even know of their existence), but it seems to be a very rewarding field. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams-persist https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams...
- sametmax 9y ago
  Also, not only will you change, but if you invest in something, your taste toward it will change as well. It's a nice trick for people looking for a passion: invest yourself in anything that has depth and you don't have, and you may end up getting passionate about it. We often have it backward, trying to "feel like it" to do things. But it's one of the tricky things in life: you may very well have to do things so you can feel like it.
clay_the_ripper 9y ago
Every job comes with pros and cons. I think the software engineers of the world are part of a lucky few who demand high salaries, are able to find good work/life balance and get to work on things they like (in general). For the rest of us (I am not an engineer, but have worked in tech with many engineers) I think there are perhaps more trade offs. I’m generalizing here but in my experience and those I know, you can either : -have an office job that pays well but is not all that fun, or restricts your freedom to do what you want -have a fun job that doesn’t pay well -Strike out on your own and potentially make more money and have fun but have all the downsides of entrepreneurship: stress, no security, demanding clients, high potential for failure etc etc. Choose one that suits you best. All have downsides and all have upsides. Depends on what you value. If it wasn’t work, no one would pay you to do it. No job and unlimited money seems like the best option, but unless you’re born rich that’s not really possible. Such is life.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  The downside of software dev is you typically need to work in a city, and then pay extraordinary costs of living. As a doctor, for example you can earn good money in a town that is no where near as expensive.
  - peterkelly 9y ago
    I see it the other way - software development is one of the few jobs that can be done entirely remotely. You can live in a location which is far cheaper than where your employer is based, and your salary is largely decoupled from the costs of living in your chosen location.
  - war1025 9y ago
    Lots of software jobs in places you wouldn't expect. Not with the big companies, but the world runs on software, so jobs are out there. No shortage of jobs here in the midwest. Nice cost of living too.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Only mediocre devs in the biggest cities have trouble covering costs of living. And you aren't going to make big bucks as a brain surgeon in Ames Iowa. And doctors have to make back 4 years of lost income and 4 years of medical school tuition and 4 years of entry level wages.
haZard_OS 9y ago
I must say I'm puzzled by the author's choice to include environmental work alongside the arts/humanities as being examples of "follow your passion and starve". As a scientist working in the environmental field(s), I can confidently say that there is far more work than there are people to do it. Unless he meant to specify NON-scientific work addressing the environment, I can't fathom what he is referring to.
- dyim 9y ago
  I think he's talking about the Blackfish-style, Greenpeace-ier environmental stuff. My dad's in the environmental field too, and that sounds about right. He spent about 20 years working as a jack-of-all-trades-CTO-type guy for a Western Widget Company, made a six figure salary, and was home every day by 5 PM. I know a lot of my friends' finance-sector parents didn't get to spend nearly as much time with their kids. There's a lot of very good advice in this article.
- wavesounds 9y ago
  Really? I keep hearing about how there are too many science phd's and not enough work outside of low pay post-doc gigs. Can you share some links as too who these companies or industries are in the environmental space that are hiring? Genuinely interested.
- PeterStuer 9y ago
  There is a huge amount of work to be done on the environment, but is our neo-liberal socio-economic model there is no money for it as the benefits tend not to be private.
chillingeffect 9y ago
Time for everyone to remember Ikigai, the overlap between what you like, what you can get paid for, what you're good at and what the world needs: https://www.hyperisland.com/community/news/feeling-drained-at-work https://www.hyperisland.com/community/news/feeling-drained-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai
SCAQTony 9y ago
Yes, you should follow your passion 100% but it does not mean you can't have a "Plan B" to fund your belly, family and shelter. It worked for me and I happily doing "Plan A" right now. Why do people believe it is all or nothing when choosing a career?
- throwa_way_ 9y ago
  If you're hedging with other plans then you're not really following your first passion 100% are you?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - SCAQTony 9y ago
    It's not hedging, it's being industrious. Imaging working on your passion just 2-4 hours a day seven days a week? You get really good, FAST! My day day job was at Nuance, (I quit the end of January) and I was UI designer there. "Plan A" is doing fine art and I got really good at it for I was always doing something art related 10-12 hours a day. http://www.gkaustin.com/ http://www.gkaustin.com/
illnewsthat 9y ago
Interesting take on passion vs. money. Does anyone else think "requires a reasonable commute" doesn't fit on the list of "keys to career contentment"?
- rabidrat 9y ago
  An unreasonable commute is stressful at best, dangerous at worst. https://lifehacker.com/ditching-your-commute-is-the-happiness-equivalent-of-a-1679698849 https://lifehacker.com/ditching-your-commute-is-the-happines... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2347274/The-secret-happiness-DONT-commute-Workers-long-journeys-work-worry-more.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2347274/The-secret...
- geezerjay 9y ago
  Speaking as someone who left his job in an fonantially solid startup due to the long commute time, I have to say that the tradeoff between keeping a nice job (not great but nice) and having no personal or family life is very dangerous in the medium and long term.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  I think it is! A reasonable (as opposed to unreasonable) commute makes your day-to-day life much more pleasant.
  - illnewsthat 9y ago
    I guess it makes sense thinking of it as reasonable vs. unreasonable. It didn't make sense to me at first, because I think working from home could add to quality of life, and it felt as if they were specifically saying you NEED to commute. But it probably just means, if you do commute, don't make it 2 hours each way.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  People have different priorities and financial means. I chose a 2 hour (each way) commute because I work in the Bay Area and don’t want to live in a dumpster in San Jose or a shoebox in Mountain View. Also I want a relatively good school for my kid. That pretty much limits me to the far outskirts of the area. I would love a less grueling commute but not more than the benefits of living in the sticks.
rebuilder 9y ago
In the arts, the advice I've heard repeated over and over again is: If you can live without this, do something else. And it's pretty good advice in my experience. The visual arts / media sector at least has such an overabundance of desperate workers that a sane working environment seems impossible to achieve. So if you don't have an inner drive that absolutely forces you to go into a field like that, do something else.
- fyfy18 9y ago
  Sounds like working for early stage startups... There are plenty of good enough engineers willing to work long hours, often with low pay and minimal equity, on the romantic idea of changing the world and the promise of getting rich.
- jurassic 9y ago
  I got the same basic memo when I was a PhD student in science, and I think I would have quit sooner if not for the emotionally coercive aspects of this advice. This advice replaces the rational question of "is this going to get me to the economic future I want for myself?" and puts it into the emotional space of "do I love this enough?". It implies that if you quit, you didn't really love it. It makes it easier for those who benefit from this exploitation to rationalize it when you leave, saying "Well, they must not have been cut out for this anyway." For the young people making these do-I-stay-or-do-I-go decisions, it means that in order to quit they must not only be ready to give up their dream but also signal to their community that they never really loved it anyway. As an external observer of course it is ridiculous to say someone can't love something and also recognize the disastrous financial implications of pursuing a particular type of career. The turning point for me was recognizing that the "expected value" outcome of the path I was not going to get me anywhere close to a middle class lifestyle.
- musage 9y ago
  Another way to look at it is on the level of works. If the thought of not ever starting/finishing a specific project doesn't give you "sleepless nights", keep looking.
hnzix 9y ago
...and that is the story of why I quit graphic design to program CRUD webapps for boring enterprise customers. Now moving towards part-time consulting and setting up some passive income streams to try and create the space to work on my creative projects before I get old and die.
nicodjimenez 9y ago
Life is way too complex and it's hard to generalize. Telling people that by following their passion they will be starve is dangerous advice. So what if people fail? Why is everyone so afraid of failure? And then telling people to replicate instead of innovating! I do agree the passion thing is oversold but now people are going too much in the opposite direction, especially after Cal Newport's book.
throwaway84742 9y ago
My experience is, stuff you love is best done as a hobby, not professionally unless you can’t live without doing it professionally. I have ended up doing what I love professionally twice, and hated it both times, because guess what, if you do it professionally you don’t get to do just the sexy parts, you have to go whole hog and do the unpleasant ones as well. And worse, you can’t lay it off for a while if you’re bored. This kills the “love” part right there and then.
prawn 9y ago
Derek Sivers had a blog entry the other year where he suggested finding a tolerable, well-paying job, then a passion. And then keep your passion as an evening/weekend distraction rather than trying to turn it into a financially viable thing you can live off. Earn money from the job, not your hobby. Otherwise you end up forcing your art/passion through a sieve of viability (struggling to sell your music, for example), or becoming disillusioned with an otherwise unremarkable job.
- scarecrowbob 9y ago
  True: I found a 30/h a week remote programming job and now I can afford to play music professionally. LOL
p3llin0r3 9y ago
What a crock of crap. "Don't be ambitious: be mediocre and replaceable." He's right. Don't try to be a youtube star or a professional athlete, or an actor. Do something realistic. But I mean... do something ambitious for god's sake! Be an accountant! Be a doctor! Be a computer programmer! Hell: Be a lawyer. These are not crazy pipe dreams. Lets say someone makes $120k as a programmer a year taking out NO debt, and having NO risk invested in the company they work for. That is a damn healthy small business.
- corndoge 9y ago
  being a programmer is pretty far from ambitious these days, I am already beginning to regret my career choice just a few years into it and I make six figures doing exactly the programming I always wanted to do and more. I am already bored of what can be done with computers and the entire tech culture that I grew up in and loved. it is so repetitive.
  - mnm1 9y ago
    So are most other jobs that pay a fraction of what programming pays. When I think of that, I'm still willing to put up with all the repetitiveness, bullshit, and literal pain of programming. Jobs suck. Otherwise they wouldn't be jobs.
  - brookside 9y ago
    Join the financial independence movement. Spend little and save much, and with a programmer salary you can not have to work again in a few short years. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
  - neffy 9y ago
    A lot of programming, especially in industry, is horribly boring unfortunately (it shouldn't be) - but computers and what can be done with them, is anything but. It's just a question of somehow keeping your imagination from getting bogged down by the job.
bitL 9y ago
I absolutely despise the advice about cloning; why do we need dozens of clones of the same idea, all of them executed poorly, so that somebody can build their business quicker and have safe returns? What's the point of such life?
JulianMorrison 9y ago
UBI, do what you love and prosper.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rossdavidh 9y ago
One thing rarely said: if you are trying to get into a career where more people want to do it, than the market can give jobs to, in order to get a spot you will have to kill somebody else's dreams. The harsh math is, if there were 2 people for every 1 position, and you get 1, then somebody else gets to be a loser because you got that spot. It's not your job to make that person a winner, of course. But that helps to balance out the propaganda part of "follow your dreams". If you pick a career where more people want to find someone who does it, than there are people doing it, you don't need sharp elbows to keep others out of your spot. Careers in acting, singing, non-profits that actually pay a salary, etc. tend to have harsh internal politics. This is why.
nerdponx 9y ago
I prefer "do what you like enough to keep doing it every day, so that you can earn enough income and time to do what you really love after-hours."

199 points by exolymph 9y ago

Heh, I don't know how I feel about this, at least for people who are highly talented. Intelligent hard working people at this day in age often choose practical career paths that they like, which lead to ample job opportunity.

hprotagonist 9y ago

Where to find a business to copy? Drive around to find a simple business at which customers are lined up out the door. For example, see a successful burrito shop or espresso cart? Open a similar one in a similar neighborhood. Your chances of success will be a helluva lot higher than 20%. ... says the man who has obviously never done business in the food service industry. The failure rate of restaurants is shockingly high.

rich_ard 9y ago
Down on your luck? Open a coffee shop!
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  Best buisness ideas come from hollywood- open a bookshop or a boutique - where you get to squander all your wealth in months on stuff of your personal taste.
- wyclif 9y ago
  That's even worse advice than opening a restaurant: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...
  - ForRealsies 9y ago
    Want to get rich quick? Open a brewery!
D_Alex 9y ago
Plus, I don't think you can build a great society on the back of burrito and espresso shops...
- coldtea 9y ago
  Actually you could build a mighty fine one. A great society is not presupposed on some advanced tech of shit.
  - D_Alex 9y ago
    I completely disagree, but maybe we have different ideas of what a "great society" is.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Perhaps you imagine some kind of high tech megacity. I'm content with a peaceful population with understanding, love for one another, sense of justice, and free burritos.
- sooheon 9y ago
  Why not? We have 8 billion people to build a great society with, I think 1/8 billionth of human effort could be directed to a great local burrito shop. Great societies are built by people doing their part and loving their lives, not by everyone trying to "change the world".
  - dhbradshaw 9y ago
    I love this comment. It's really refreshing.
  - mantas 9y ago
    A good burrito (or any good food for that matter) can "change the world" much more than yet another "instuber for X" startup...
  - D_Alex 9y ago
yters 9y ago
I see lots of burrito trucks that seem to have survived awhile. Probably because they don't need to pay all the taxes and such involved with owning a building. Just buy a van, cook some food, and park somewhere people need to eat.
- kbenson 9y ago
  This is also highly locale dependent. Have fun getting ticketed for operating in the wrong area without checking local laws. "You're in a truck, just move" sounds like a good idea until you realize you're back to square one marketing wise and nobody knows you're there.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    > Have fun getting ticketed for operating in the wrong area without checking local laws. I've seen more than one food truck which eventually became a stationary establishment because there was only one (desirable) place they could work out legal status. It's pretty common for local laws to include "no selling food from a non-storefront within X feet of a restaurant", which can quickly close off all the good territory.
ACow_Adonis 9y ago
Yeah,that is absolutely horrible advice. I live in a neighborhood where there's businesses with lines out the door, and a reliable number of new businesses springing up each year, seemingly under the advice of "it would be cool to open up a business in neighborhood X because it's super popular". These businesses are inevitably dead within 3 - 12 months, and what's not said/perceived is that they guy with lines or the door runs an incredibly tight ship and has 15 to 20 years of international cooking and restaurant experience under his/her belt. You open up a burrito/coffee shop next to him, and you're going to get the same number of customers as before you opened your business...
- chillingeffect 9y ago
  > You open up a burrito/coffee shop next to him ISTR the article saying something like "located far enough from my store that he wouldn’t fear my competition."
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    That may not help. The assumption is that Successful Business is successful because of the product it sells, and therefore if you sell the same product you will be successful too. Someone who doesn’t understand why this isn’t guaranteed or what the other relevant variables are probably shouldn’t be giving business advice.
  - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
    Ok. But firstly, he/she doesn't fear your competition now, or when you open. Secondly, this seems to assume that his product is easily replicable, and that you'll be able to find some untouched environment in which to plonk yourself down and get free business. Far enough away from his store is likely in a position where there is no business. Plus we have a phrase for easily replicable businesses in economics: low barriers to entry. And they're exactly the kind of businesses that have the longest tails of miserable wages and miserable returns. What's more, because every man and his dog can do them, there is no untouched environment in which to plonk yourself down and you have competition from everyone. Those who invested in their skills over the long term, are talented, grow their skills, understand the market, get lucky, and/or used their privileged advantages wisely take the prime real estate/positions, and they thrive there. And for the most part, they do not care about some upstart newbie who thinks "making coffee/food is easy" opening up next door, any more than tom hanks loses sleep about all the wannabe actors turning up in LA. You move far enough away, and you lose out on all reasons that the original business person wants that position specifically. And if you're good enough to induce demand where-ever you set up, odds are its because you're good enough (probably through 30+ years of experience) to do so. By all means, imitate successful strategies. But my first advice is not some fantasy regarding being able to find a magical good-transmission person (how do you identify them with your lack of knowledge? How do you know the restraunter isn't barely making minimum wage or burning through his inheritance like so many I see around here despite big lines?) or a magical good-transmission-owning-consultant (again, how do you know one, all consultants will tell you they're good and will be willing to take your money as long as you pay them). No. My advice would simply be to find a couple of fields/skills, preferably ones that aren't looking like they're already going the way of the dodo already, and work your butt off getting good at them. If you think you want to run a restaurant/coffee cart, start working in restaurants, or as a barrister/roaster. If you think you want to run a transmission joint, go work in one. And if you want to turn it into a business, learn some basic economics/business on the side. Low barrier to entry businesses have the lowest expected returns, and every successful business is more complicated than it looks.
jv22222 9y ago
Cloning another sucessfull business is extremely sound advice. One only has to look at Capterra to so how often it is done. Sure, some of the clones don't work out but a lot do. Also, there's no reason why you can't start as a clone and then gradually iterated into something original over time. I.E. Solve the money problem and then move on to something more interesting. (The trick is to clone something that is sucessfull not something that is a good idea with no proven success.)
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  Also, if the original fails by decision, you can learn from that and live on.
jvkersch 9y ago
My (admittedly extremely limited) experience is that this is a sound strategy _for established entrepreneurs_, not for tentative business owners who are just getting started. My wife and I were thinking about opening a restaurant, and as has been illustrated elsewhere, the costs are staggering and the total profit (if anything) is rather low. We were looking at total revenue of around £200 000, with maybe a 5% profit margin. This did not take into account kinda-expected risks, like staff quitting, which would have sent costs through the roof. By contrast, a little later we talked to a guy who sets up pubs for a living (for a large chain). They have costs down to a minimum, can rotate staff easily, and essentially have a playbook for starting a reasonably succesful, risk-free business in a few months. On top of that, they have departments full of people whose job it is to drive around looking for succesful business to copy (paraphrasing the original quote). This was profoundly depressing to me, since it made me think that even if we'd overcome the odds, we'd probably end up getting cloned by one of these behemoths...

TheMagicHorsey 9y ago

This is the wrong forum for this advice. I think most of the people here are not looking for a median income or a simple business. They want to swing for the fences or transform the world. Having said that, its good advice. Most people underestimate the joy you get from a good solid, routine job that pays well. And they overestimate the joy you get from a giant windfall ... such as you get when you finally take your startup public or sell it off. Also, I have met far more douchebags among the ranks of lawyers and VCs in silicon valley than I have among the ranks of small business owners (my brother owns a couple small businesses and his circle is very down to earth).

war1025 9y ago
I think you underestimate the number of people that follow this site because they like the content, but are quite content to have a median income and a nice work-life balance.
- rabbadabba_99 9y ago
  Or a 1% level income from a "lifestyle" business that's boring and never in the news.
everdev 9y ago
I don't agree, I've met plenty in all walks of life. Jealousy certainly plays a part in judgement, so I think the dbag label is probably more equally distributed than you might think. We also tend to surround ourselves with people we like, so I guess that makes sense that you like the circle you and your brother are in and don't like the circle you're not in.
- TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
  I was a programmer, then a lawyer representing startups, and now I'm a programmer again. I've had one successful exit already, and I'm working on another. I'm not in my brother's circle.
bhldr 9y ago

grosjona 9y ago

You have to work for companies where capital accumulates quickly and then find a way to sandwich yourself between where the capital is and where the capital wants to go. Follow capital and consumers will follow you.

mrlyc 9y ago

Do what you love, what you are good at and what people are willing to pay for. Sometimes you have to do the first one as a hobby and the last two as a job.

ggm 9y ago

.. except the franchise thing? It's a huge ripoff risk: you pay licence fees up the wazoo for brand value and models which can be terrible. As in any endeavour, you have to do your homework. Lots of franchise holders looking enviously at class action suits to recover

faitswulff 9y ago

> we’ve been sold a bill of goods when we’re told to “Follow your passion, “ or “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Fact is, if you do what you love, you’ll probably starve. I started thinking this somewhere around halfway through college, when my parents were telling me to do what I love and I was trying to figure out what to do for a living - especially when my parents were struggling, themselves. I feel like "do what you love" was a really compelling pipe dream for my parents because they had always done the opposite to get by and improve their circumstances, and it sucked. They wanted better for their kids, but at the same time, it is easily some of the worst advice I've ever received.

codeulike 9y ago
Never Give Up is also bad advice that gets bandied around a lot due to survivor bias. Sometimes there's a lot of wisdom in giving up on something.
- mindentropy 9y ago
  The problem is the absolutes. I have learn that life is not absolutes. It is usually somewhere in the middle. Most of it is heavily dependent on luck.
  - codeulike 9y ago
    Do you mean 'life is not absolutes', or that 'in most cases life is not absolutes'? ; )
    - mindentropy 9y ago
      :-). I was trying to be careful in not using absolutes. Guess I missed this. ;-)
gh02t 9y ago
It's give and take. Maybe not "do what you love no matter what" but "try and do something you at least like" is still good advice. If you force yourself to do something you hate just because you think you'll make money not only will you spend your life miserable, but you also likely won't be terribly successful because it's hard not to burn out. Said differently, making money matters and should be considered, but it should not override all other factors when choosing a career.

mellowdream 9y ago

Most people don't have the IQ, psychometric personality profile, and circumstantial history (the right/rich family, friends, networks, etc.) in conjunction to succeed. Romanticism, per Goethe and Nietzsche, has always erred toward the side of spiritual sickness - it's often nothing more than an opiate to distract oneself from the mundaneness, difficulties, and responsibilities of authentic, lived experience. Say what you will of Jordan Peterson, but I believe his experience as a credentialed psychologist and counselor is worth considering as well - one is more likely to preserve his sanity by pursuing (perhaps unpleasant, but stable and providing) responsibility rather than upheaving his life with little more than a mistaken impression via survivorship bias.

yters 9y ago
It'd certainly be interesting to see the other side of all the success stories.

paraschopra 9y ago

My entire blog is on this premise: following your passion is a recipe for economic failure as economic value gets created when you help other people follow their passion. I write about this here https://invertedpassion.com https://invertedpassion.com

peppery 9y ago

This article presumes the premise that "what you love"/"your passion" is the same as "what you can love"/the set of all "passions" you have not yet discovered. This is untrue. Especially for young people, the amount of time that you have been alive is small compared to your lifetime. What you currently know to be interesting is correspondingly a small subset of the number of things you can find interesting over a lifetime, and an even smaller subset of the things which you could find fulfilling to work on with many lifetimes. (For those who have lived longer, your life experience makes it even more likely you can identify fulfilling connections/facets of the universe to study.) The challenge is to find the intersection between what you can be riveted to work on, and what society values (in whatever its flawed wisdom) or can be invited to value. This is not trivial, but the statistics of the universe are on your side. What sort of society would we be if e.g. Nikola Tesla/Jame Clark Maxwell/Mozart/etc. had followed this advice? To aspire is human, powerful, fulfilling. To eat is practical. It is possible to do both. Society needs people who persist in that pursuit.

freedomben 9y ago
> To eat is practical. It is possible to do both. Yes. Even when it comes to development, I find that often the project you are most passionate about is not one that you can be paid for, at least long term. So even if you love software, you may still need to pursue the fun parts in your spare time.
lancebeet 9y ago
> This article presumes the premise that "what you love"/"your passion" is the same as "what you can love"/the set of all "passions" you have not yet discovered. This is untrue. A while ago, an article was posted here on HN on paper jam engineering[1] which I believe really demonstrates this point. Few people aspire to become paper jam engineers (or even know of their existence), but it seems to be a very rewarding field. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams-persist https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/why-paper-jams...
sametmax 9y ago
Also, not only will you change, but if you invest in something, your taste toward it will change as well. It's a nice trick for people looking for a passion: invest yourself in anything that has depth and you don't have, and you may end up getting passionate about it. We often have it backward, trying to "feel like it" to do things. But it's one of the tricky things in life: you may very well have to do things so you can feel like it.

clay_the_ripper 9y ago

Every job comes with pros and cons. I think the software engineers of the world are part of a lucky few who demand high salaries, are able to find good work/life balance and get to work on things they like (in general). For the rest of us (I am not an engineer, but have worked in tech with many engineers) I think there are perhaps more trade offs. I’m generalizing here but in my experience and those I know, you can either : -have an office job that pays well but is not all that fun, or restricts your freedom to do what you want -have a fun job that doesn’t pay well -Strike out on your own and potentially make more money and have fun but have all the downsides of entrepreneurship: stress, no security, demanding clients, high potential for failure etc etc. Choose one that suits you best. All have downsides and all have upsides. Depends on what you value. If it wasn’t work, no one would pay you to do it. No job and unlimited money seems like the best option, but unless you’re born rich that’s not really possible. Such is life.

quickthrower2 9y ago
The downside of software dev is you typically need to work in a city, and then pay extraordinary costs of living. As a doctor, for example you can earn good money in a town that is no where near as expensive.
- peterkelly 9y ago
  I see it the other way - software development is one of the few jobs that can be done entirely remotely. You can live in a location which is far cheaper than where your employer is based, and your salary is largely decoupled from the costs of living in your chosen location.
- war1025 9y ago
  Lots of software jobs in places you wouldn't expect. Not with the big companies, but the world runs on software, so jobs are out there. No shortage of jobs here in the midwest. Nice cost of living too.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Only mediocre devs in the biggest cities have trouble covering costs of living. And you aren't going to make big bucks as a brain surgeon in Ames Iowa. And doctors have to make back 4 years of lost income and 4 years of medical school tuition and 4 years of entry level wages.

haZard_OS 9y ago

I must say I'm puzzled by the author's choice to include environmental work alongside the arts/humanities as being examples of "follow your passion and starve". As a scientist working in the environmental field(s), I can confidently say that there is far more work than there are people to do it. Unless he meant to specify NON-scientific work addressing the environment, I can't fathom what he is referring to.

dyim 9y ago
I think he's talking about the Blackfish-style, Greenpeace-ier environmental stuff. My dad's in the environmental field too, and that sounds about right. He spent about 20 years working as a jack-of-all-trades-CTO-type guy for a Western Widget Company, made a six figure salary, and was home every day by 5 PM. I know a lot of my friends' finance-sector parents didn't get to spend nearly as much time with their kids. There's a lot of very good advice in this article.
wavesounds 9y ago
Really? I keep hearing about how there are too many science phd's and not enough work outside of low pay post-doc gigs. Can you share some links as too who these companies or industries are in the environmental space that are hiring? Genuinely interested.
PeterStuer 9y ago
There is a huge amount of work to be done on the environment, but is our neo-liberal socio-economic model there is no money for it as the benefits tend not to be private.

chillingeffect 9y ago

Time for everyone to remember Ikigai, the overlap between what you like, what you can get paid for, what you're good at and what the world needs: https://www.hyperisland.com/community/news/feeling-drained-at-work https://www.hyperisland.com/community/news/feeling-drained-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

SCAQTony 9y ago

Yes, you should follow your passion 100% but it does not mean you can't have a "Plan B" to fund your belly, family and shelter. It worked for me and I happily doing "Plan A" right now. Why do people believe it is all or nothing when choosing a career?

throwa_way_ 9y ago
If you're hedging with other plans then you're not really following your first passion 100% are you?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SCAQTony 9y ago
  It's not hedging, it's being industrious. Imaging working on your passion just 2-4 hours a day seven days a week? You get really good, FAST! My day day job was at Nuance, (I quit the end of January) and I was UI designer there. "Plan A" is doing fine art and I got really good at it for I was always doing something art related 10-12 hours a day. http://www.gkaustin.com/ http://www.gkaustin.com/

illnewsthat 9y ago

Interesting take on passion vs. money. Does anyone else think "requires a reasonable commute" doesn't fit on the list of "keys to career contentment"?

rabidrat 9y ago
An unreasonable commute is stressful at best, dangerous at worst. https://lifehacker.com/ditching-your-commute-is-the-happiness-equivalent-of-a-1679698849 https://lifehacker.com/ditching-your-commute-is-the-happines... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2347274/The-secret-happiness-DONT-commute-Workers-long-journeys-work-worry-more.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2347274/The-secret...
geezerjay 9y ago
Speaking as someone who left his job in an fonantially solid startup due to the long commute time, I have to say that the tradeoff between keeping a nice job (not great but nice) and having no personal or family life is very dangerous in the medium and long term.
ForHackernews 9y ago
I think it is! A reasonable (as opposed to unreasonable) commute makes your day-to-day life much more pleasant.
- illnewsthat 9y ago
  I guess it makes sense thinking of it as reasonable vs. unreasonable. It didn't make sense to me at first, because I think working from home could add to quality of life, and it felt as if they were specifically saying you NEED to commute. But it probably just means, if you do commute, don't make it 2 hours each way.
ryandrake 9y ago
People have different priorities and financial means. I chose a 2 hour (each way) commute because I work in the Bay Area and don’t want to live in a dumpster in San Jose or a shoebox in Mountain View. Also I want a relatively good school for my kid. That pretty much limits me to the far outskirts of the area. I would love a less grueling commute but not more than the benefits of living in the sticks.

rebuilder 9y ago

In the arts, the advice I've heard repeated over and over again is: If you can live without this, do something else. And it's pretty good advice in my experience. The visual arts / media sector at least has such an overabundance of desperate workers that a sane working environment seems impossible to achieve. So if you don't have an inner drive that absolutely forces you to go into a field like that, do something else.

fyfy18 9y ago
Sounds like working for early stage startups... There are plenty of good enough engineers willing to work long hours, often with low pay and minimal equity, on the romantic idea of changing the world and the promise of getting rich.
jurassic 9y ago
I got the same basic memo when I was a PhD student in science, and I think I would have quit sooner if not for the emotionally coercive aspects of this advice. This advice replaces the rational question of "is this going to get me to the economic future I want for myself?" and puts it into the emotional space of "do I love this enough?". It implies that if you quit, you didn't really love it. It makes it easier for those who benefit from this exploitation to rationalize it when you leave, saying "Well, they must not have been cut out for this anyway." For the young people making these do-I-stay-or-do-I-go decisions, it means that in order to quit they must not only be ready to give up their dream but also signal to their community that they never really loved it anyway. As an external observer of course it is ridiculous to say someone can't love something and also recognize the disastrous financial implications of pursuing a particular type of career. The turning point for me was recognizing that the "expected value" outcome of the path I was not going to get me anywhere close to a middle class lifestyle.
musage 9y ago
Another way to look at it is on the level of works. If the thought of not ever starting/finishing a specific project doesn't give you "sleepless nights", keep looking.

hnzix 9y ago

...and that is the story of why I quit graphic design to program CRUD webapps for boring enterprise customers. Now moving towards part-time consulting and setting up some passive income streams to try and create the space to work on my creative projects before I get old and die.

nicodjimenez 9y ago

Life is way too complex and it's hard to generalize. Telling people that by following their passion they will be starve is dangerous advice. So what if people fail? Why is everyone so afraid of failure? And then telling people to replicate instead of innovating! I do agree the passion thing is oversold but now people are going too much in the opposite direction, especially after Cal Newport's book.

throwaway84742 9y ago

My experience is, stuff you love is best done as a hobby, not professionally unless you can’t live without doing it professionally. I have ended up doing what I love professionally twice, and hated it both times, because guess what, if you do it professionally you don’t get to do just the sexy parts, you have to go whole hog and do the unpleasant ones as well. And worse, you can’t lay it off for a while if you’re bored. This kills the “love” part right there and then.

prawn 9y ago

Derek Sivers had a blog entry the other year where he suggested finding a tolerable, well-paying job, then a passion. And then keep your passion as an evening/weekend distraction rather than trying to turn it into a financially viable thing you can live off. Earn money from the job, not your hobby. Otherwise you end up forcing your art/passion through a sieve of viability (struggling to sell your music, for example), or becoming disillusioned with an otherwise unremarkable job.

scarecrowbob 9y ago
True: I found a 30/h a week remote programming job and now I can afford to play music professionally. LOL

p3llin0r3 9y ago

What a crock of crap. "Don't be ambitious: be mediocre and replaceable." He's right. Don't try to be a youtube star or a professional athlete, or an actor. Do something realistic. But I mean... do something ambitious for god's sake! Be an accountant! Be a doctor! Be a computer programmer! Hell: Be a lawyer. These are not crazy pipe dreams. Lets say someone makes $120k as a programmer a year taking out NO debt, and having NO risk invested in the company they work for. That is a damn healthy small business.

corndoge 9y ago
being a programmer is pretty far from ambitious these days, I am already beginning to regret my career choice just a few years into it and I make six figures doing exactly the programming I always wanted to do and more. I am already bored of what can be done with computers and the entire tech culture that I grew up in and loved. it is so repetitive.
- mnm1 9y ago
  So are most other jobs that pay a fraction of what programming pays. When I think of that, I'm still willing to put up with all the repetitiveness, bullshit, and literal pain of programming. Jobs suck. Otherwise they wouldn't be jobs.
- brookside 9y ago
  Join the financial independence movement. Spend little and save much, and with a programmer salary you can not have to work again in a few short years. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
- neffy 9y ago
  A lot of programming, especially in industry, is horribly boring unfortunately (it shouldn't be) - but computers and what can be done with them, is anything but. It's just a question of somehow keeping your imagination from getting bogged down by the job.

bitL 9y ago

I absolutely despise the advice about cloning; why do we need dozens of clones of the same idea, all of them executed poorly, so that somebody can build their business quicker and have safe returns? What's the point of such life?

JulianMorrison 9y ago

UBI, do what you love and prosper.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rossdavidh 9y ago

One thing rarely said: if you are trying to get into a career where more people want to do it, than the market can give jobs to, in order to get a spot you will have to kill somebody else's dreams. The harsh math is, if there were 2 people for every 1 position, and you get 1, then somebody else gets to be a loser because you got that spot. It's not your job to make that person a winner, of course. But that helps to balance out the propaganda part of "follow your dreams". If you pick a career where more people want to find someone who does it, than there are people doing it, you don't need sharp elbows to keep others out of your spot. Careers in acting, singing, non-profits that actually pay a salary, etc. tend to have harsh internal politics. This is why.

nerdponx 9y ago

I prefer "do what you like enough to keep doing it every day, so that you can earn enough income and time to do what you really love after-hours."