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I think generally people should be a little more nuanced. If your passion is violin-making or oceanography or accounting, you’ll probably be fine by following y

by d--b 8y ago

I think generally people should be a little more nuanced. If your passion is violin-making or oceanography or accounting, you’ll probably be fine by following your passion. If you like dancing, you may want start as a dancer, and then find that you’re better at doing the accounting of the dance company you joined, and do that instead. It’s true though that “follow your passion” as a blanket statement is not a good advice (for all the reason in the article). But so is the blanket statement of “find a niche craft where you can excel”. First, you never know whether you will excel at a skill or not before spending a really long time doing it. Second, craft is not for everyone. If you’re a people’s person, HR, management or politics is likely a better orientation. You could say that you have developed “managerial skills”, but then the question becomes how to chose one’s skill? I believe a better advice is “follow what you already know you’re good at”. And “if you’re not good at anything yet, just keep trying things you may enjoy and see if you’re good at them”

slx26 8y ago
Yes, in my opinion they are two different things: following your passions is almost always good, but expecting that to also guarantee you a job can be, many times, naive. I think the key point is understanding that difference, and being able to decide for yourself how the two should intersect in your life. And that always needs to be done realistically. I will also say that I personally dislike the idea of having a job related to my passions. They are my passions and in many cases taking a job related to them can condition the way I have to approach them. This tends to happen more with "creative" passions, but you know. Always working, not always for money.
robaato 8y ago
Have quite a few friends who are dancers - and they are taken advantage of! One recently commented that she had been working as a dance teacher, but was considering joining the police because she realised when a recent administrator was taken on that the admin salary was twice what hers was. And yet supposedly she was one of the core enablers for her organisation - without which it couldn't function, and yet the admin postion was generic...
- beat 8y ago
  The arts are generally grossly underpaid. That's because people want to do the work. If your goal is making money, you find something that's uninteresting, unfulfilling, and maybe unethical, but solves big problems for people who have money. If your goal is creative fulfillment, prepare yourself to be poor, or work a boring job to pay for your art.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> First, you never know whether you will excel at a skill or not before spending a really long time doing it. That's a very good point- mastering a skill requires a great investment and investment always comes with risk. By the time one trains their chosen skill to mastery, their skill might have lost the majority of the value it had when they first chose it- therefore, it's very risky to rely on the current market value of a skill as a guide to specialise oneself. One of my computer science teachers at uni, had a library full of books on the Ada programming language. When I met him, he was supervising undergraduates learning to program in ... Java. I never found the courage to ask but I bet he had basically spent most of the '80s and '90s learning Ada, because of various historical reasons, then his university switched its teaching to Java, again because of historical reasons- and then he was left with a big library full of books that didn't even register as programming books to most of his students. (OK, I think Ada is still widely used, in the same way COBOL is etc. but it's certainly not the language most new programmers learn first; just like Java isn't anymore; etc)
- mindentropy 8y ago
  You spoke my mind. I am in a complete dilemma as to what to devote my personal time on. On the one hand I want to get familiar with Android AOSP so that I can get into companies which require board bring up for Android devices. On the other hand I would want to get my algorithmic skills up by doing a lot of coding competitions. It is very hard to master both. Time is limited and both the topics are enormous. It is extremely difficult to select a subject to master in the hopes of it having a value in the future. It is similar to selecting something which you think will earn a huge value later such as stocks or startups for that matter.

by d--b 8y ago

slx26 8y ago

Yes, in my opinion they are two different things: following your passions is almost always good, but expecting that to also guarantee you a job can be, many times, naive. I think the key point is understanding that difference, and being able to decide for yourself how the two should intersect in your life. And that always needs to be done realistically. I will also say that I personally dislike the idea of having a job related to my passions. They are my passions and in many cases taking a job related to them can condition the way I have to approach them. This tends to happen more with "creative" passions, but you know. Always working, not always for money.

robaato 8y ago

Have quite a few friends who are dancers - and they are taken advantage of! One recently commented that she had been working as a dance teacher, but was considering joining the police because she realised when a recent administrator was taken on that the admin salary was twice what hers was. And yet supposedly she was one of the core enablers for her organisation - without which it couldn't function, and yet the admin postion was generic...

beat 8y ago
The arts are generally grossly underpaid. That's because people want to do the work. If your goal is making money, you find something that's uninteresting, unfulfilling, and maybe unethical, but solves big problems for people who have money. If your goal is creative fulfillment, prepare yourself to be poor, or work a boring job to pay for your art.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> First, you never know whether you will excel at a skill or not before spending a really long time doing it. That's a very good point- mastering a skill requires a great investment and investment always comes with risk. By the time one trains their chosen skill to mastery, their skill might have lost the majority of the value it had when they first chose it- therefore, it's very risky to rely on the current market value of a skill as a guide to specialise oneself. One of my computer science teachers at uni, had a library full of books on the Ada programming language. When I met him, he was supervising undergraduates learning to program in ... Java. I never found the courage to ask but I bet he had basically spent most of the '80s and '90s learning Ada, because of various historical reasons, then his university switched its teaching to Java, again because of historical reasons- and then he was left with a big library full of books that didn't even register as programming books to most of his students. (OK, I think Ada is still widely used, in the same way COBOL is etc. but it's certainly not the language most new programmers learn first; just like Java isn't anymore; etc)

mindentropy 8y ago
You spoke my mind. I am in a complete dilemma as to what to devote my personal time on. On the one hand I want to get familiar with Android AOSP so that I can get into companies which require board bring up for Android devices. On the other hand I would want to get my algorithmic skills up by doing a lot of coding competitions. It is very hard to master both. Time is limited and both the topics are enormous. It is extremely difficult to select a subject to master in the hopes of it having a value in the future. It is similar to selecting something which you think will earn a huge value later such as stocks or startups for that matter.