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Most of the dissonance comes from the fact that a job is much more than the core activity. When we speak of pottery as a hobby, we think of handling clay, sitt

Most of the dissonance comes from the fact that a job is much more than the core activity. When we speak of pottery as a hobby, we think of handling clay, sitting in front of a pottery wheel, choosing a fitting glaze, then admiring our finished work. The focus is on exploring and enjoying the process. You have complete control over the process and you can do as much or as little as you like because there is no delivery pressure. Sounds fun! But a pottery business is a different beast. Now, the act of making the pottery is a much smaller part of the overall workload. You have to deal with marketing, sales, payments, inventory, and communications. Your pottery time is no longer about exploring, but about replenishing inventory or handling custom orders in time to avoid bad reviews. You can't just make a piece and be done with it, you have to carefully pack it, handling shipping, drop it off, and hope that nothing goes wrong. If it does go wrong, you now have to deal with the fallout and handle angry customers. Most customers are fine, but it only takes 1 irrationally outraged customer to ruin your day. Hobbies, by definition, can't be a job. You can try to make a job or business that includes your hobby, but it's a superset of the hobby with numerous other activities that you may or may not enjoy. I do actually know a lot of people who enjoy running businesses. You might say that businesses are their hobby and delivering results to customers is their passion. Not surprisingly, they're doing quite well in both business and the mental health department. Lucky.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
This was the breakthrough my wife had when we were discussing this: there was no way she could do that for a living. She likes experimenting, and that's not part of a chef, except for some very high rated people. I am one of the lucky people that love its profession (software development) and it is also my hobby. I'm not sure how to identify the non-coding parts, I enjoy those in the profession too, but more because I like to do very well and being good at those other parts is an integral part of it. To be fair, making a team more effective goes also to my benefit, where I can do more interesting work.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  There’s still a world of difference between hobby and professional software development. In hobby software you fix the bugs that you fix; in professional software you fix the bugs that your paying customers hit. I think it’s why free software has had limited success in end-user applications.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    I can see that, what I'm trying to say though is that I don't know in which category I fit: hobby and professional are bot very engaging, sometimes I want to work at the stuff fot my job, other times for my pet projects. How would you define this given the premise of the op?
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    A different take: in professional software, you fix the things your boss tells (or allows) you to fix, while in free software, you fix the things that need to be fixed. I think that's why I find most commercial software to be a trash fire compared to free software.
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      In application software? Which ones, specifically?
- starfallg 5y ago
  Loving what you do is the key to having a happy work life, not doing what you love. Your approach seem to embody that concept.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    That could be a thing, but I achieved this unconsciously, so it's all luck. By contrast, I was miserable through the entirety of high school and a good chunk of university: I _really wanted to code_ and nothing else at the time. For the surrounding parts of being a developer, I think I appreciate those more or less by maturing taste. Same way as the first beer you have is terrible, then you discover the interesting parts. Also yes, I'm very happy at work, I was happy even in bad situations for some weird reason. But I'm also very happy in life in general, so it's probably a combination of both.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
  I spent six years working as a lawyer and absolutely despised it. Early on during this hell I rediscovered a curiosity in programming I had as a child. I became obsessed with it and within about six months knew I had to try to do it as a career. It took me four years but I did it. What I will say is this -- I have definitely lost a hobby, in the sense that a hobby should be something that allows you to be creative while not feeling or reminding you of work. While I was still a lawyer, software dev (and learning it) was my hobby. I would be at work dreaming of coming home so I could tweak whatever project I was working on. Now that I'm getting paid for it, I am completely in love with my job. Partly it's that I work for a great company now -- e.g., we get 25 days PTO (and yes, it's an American company, and no, I'm not a senior level). But partly it's that I spent time on the other side -- doing something purely because it provided me with money. Is programming work now? Yes, definitely -- but it's work I love doing. However, I realized quickly after I started that I no longer felt like programming very much when I came home. I know that's kind of a no-no to admit to in this field, but it's true. I still do go through phases where I'll go really deep on some project for a while. But mostly I'm content to let my programming happen on the job. When I do program at home, it's still fun but it's colored by all the new relationships the activity has to work.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Yep. I would never have guessed how little time I would spend coding some weeks.
- andykx 5y ago
  I just started my first SWE job and I'm having a similar realization. So much decision making needs to happen before anything is even considered worth working on. As a junior, I sit silently in a ton of meetings about things that I don't even know about, haha. When my direct superior assigns me something, I get it done, ask her questions if necessary, and move on to the next task.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    This is why I like remote. I have no input on these meetings, so I can work instead of being a mushroom.
    - abledon 5y ago
      I like remote because I can work on my mushrooms during work hours
      - mellavora 5y ago
        I've heard that some people like remote because they can work while on mushrooms during work hours.
- irrational 5y ago
  I’ve worked at the same company for 20 years. For the first 17 years another developer and myself were embedded in a business unit. I’d say we spent 90% of our time coding. Then they decided we should be integrated into IT. We since been made to adopt agile practices and all the meetings that go along with it. I’d say I spend about 5% of my work week coding now. The rest of the time is in meetings. I’m absolutely astonished at how many meetings the IT organization manages to create. I still don’t see the purpose. All these agile practices haven’t made our code any better. We are just writing far far far less of it. I’m kind of astonished anyone ever manages to get anything done.
andykx 5y ago
Very well said. A friend of mine worked at a winery and he was very enthusiastic about his work -- he loved making the best wine he possibly could. He recently bought his own winery and, to his (and my) surprise, maybe 5% of his job involves interacting with the winemaking process. The vast majority of his job concerns compliance with regulation, bookkeeping, and communicating with vendors/suppliers. I think it's good to have a holistic view of an industry before you dive into it. There are a ton of "housekeeping" things to be done in every industry, but in a sufficiently large company, you're often shielded from the things that aren't your direct concern.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  I'm surprised that both of you were surprised that most of his job comprises of logistics. That's kind of how things tend to work.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    from outside, when not dealing with the logistics, you do not have an understanding of just how many logistics there are. This is why developers think managers don't do anything.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Developers are inside. We see managers. Some of them in some companies are useful. Others in other companies don't.
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        As a developer I don't think I get to see most of what a manager does, other than they are in meetings all day long that I don't attend. So I am not inside the logistics of what they do. But I guess you attend all the meetings your managers do and you know everything they do? That seems to be a surprisingly inefficient company structure.
taneq 5y ago
I saw an artist friend comment on a "how to freelance" article that "that sounds like running a business, not being an artist." And therein lies the rub - the actual value-creation part of running a consulting business is a tiny part of the work required. I'm slowly starting to find that the business stuff is becoming a hobby as well, which is good because I'm resenting it far less than I used to.
AussieWog93 5y ago
I have turned two of my hobbies into businesses that are now full-time work for myself and part time work for two others (my wife and an employee we hired a couple of months back). For me, the fact that you have to sell/market something isn't what makes it a stressful; I enjoy that aspect of it too. Instead, I find most of the stress coming from the high stakes (if I make mistakes or work slowly, my business will fail and my children will grow up without a present father) and need to hyper-optimise (every single action is about maximising the amount of dollars earned per hour spent working). I've found immense peace in the last few months in cleaning, of all things. It's not a traditional hobby, but the fact that I can make mistakes (or just not do it at all if I'm tired) with minimal consequences makes it so much less stressful than my businesses which do revolve around "traditional" hobbies.
- generaljelly 5y ago
  My grandma used to say that happy people don't clean. People clean, and then they are happy. I think it is a form of craftmanship like any other.
waynesonfire 5y ago
The moment you start accepting paymeny your hobby is no longer. You are now engaged in a business transaction. You now have deadlines and expectation aka responsibility. The beauty of a hobby is there is none.
brtkdotse 5y ago
In the same vein, I followed a few hobbyist beer brewers on a local home brewing forum go pro and the came to the same conclusion - making it your job takes all the fun out brewing. You’re no longer experimenting or putting taste first, you want to convert grains into bottled beer as fast and cheap as possible so you can make a profit.
Crazyontap 5y ago
I think one trick to get around this is by delegating and if possible automating the parts you don't like. Unfortunately its much easier said than done because it takes meticulous planning and long time to set it up. But it can be done and after that you can spend a good amount of time doing what you love and get a lot of help with the parts you don't enjoy. As a matter of fact if you are able to successfully delegate the parts you don't enjoy the overall result is much much better.
hughrr 5y ago
So much this. I tried starting a business doing something I love and I found out I don’t love doing accounts and supply chain management for it. I canned it and a £20k investment within a year. Now I do something I dislike that I’m good at. This is the best balance I have found as the contrast from work is vast when I do the things I love and that is important. Also it forces your motivations to be efficient and decisions to be in favour of things you love which inevitably ends up with more time to do them.
irrational 5y ago
One of my hobby is board gaming. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen decide that they love board games so much that they open their own FLGS (friendly local game store). I’ve learned that the quickest way to come to hate board games is opening your own board game store. If you want to start hating your hobby, make it into a business.
- Ieghaehia9 5y ago
  > If you want to start hating your hobby, make it into a business. Or as I've heard it phrased: "If you turn your vacation into your vocation, you'll never have a vacation again".
bongoman37 5y ago
Yes, when I hire new people in Machine Learning they are uniformly surprised by how little time they spend modelling and how much time is spent gathering business requirements, refining what needs to be optimized, cleaning the incoming data, thinking about edge cases and so on.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  This blows my mind. How does one get the skills to do ML without spending an infinitude of time cleaning data? Like the other stuff makes sense (general business process), but the lack of understanding around cleaning data from many juniors just stuns me.
greggman3 5y ago
What you say is somewhat true but I also know plenty of people who love what they do. I suspect famous examples are say Brad Bird or Steven Spielberg. I have a feeling they loved directing. I know Sid Meier, when he was still at Microprose, he made a deal with his partner, Bill Stealey, to give up he direct business interest in the company so he could focus on game dev. They'd pay him $$$$$$$$ for each game and he no longer had to deal with the business decisions. The point is you can find a way to delegate the parts you don't like. I have plenty of friends that run their own game dev companies. They love it. One has 150 employees, one has 10, another 20, one has 3, another has 10. They're are still doing dev, not just managing, even the one with 150 people and they love it.
- cies 5y ago
  > The point is you can find a way to delegate the parts you don't like. So it is possible to do what you like (without considering the compensation), but probably not for everyone. Likely only for a lucky few. Is that what your saying? Because that what I think is whats going on in the current economic model we live in.
  - greggman3 5y ago
    I'm not sure your point. If your point was the delegating the parts you don't like means someone else has to do no fun parts, another solution is to find someone that likes those other parts. For example, Sid Meier's partner, Bill Stealey, loved doing the business side of things.
cloudedcordial 5y ago
Well said. There are substantial business related activities related to the product/hobby that you may not love to do. I used to worked part-time in a ballet school. My boss and her business partner are highly trained ballet dancers. On top of teaching the classes, they do marketing, bookkeeping, dealing with difficult students/parents, hiring and cleaning in the very early days of the school. After the business took off, my boss hired administrative help so that she could take on more students.
mbrodersen 5y ago
Totally agree. I found out myself when I started a software business. It was doing well, I employed a number of people, we were making nice profits, but I decided to shut it down. Because it was destroying my joy of developing software.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

This was the breakthrough my wife had when we were discussing this: there was no way she could do that for a living. She likes experimenting, and that's not part of a chef, except for some very high rated people. I am one of the lucky people that love its profession (software development) and it is also my hobby. I'm not sure how to identify the non-coding parts, I enjoy those in the profession too, but more because I like to do very well and being good at those other parts is an integral part of it. To be fair, making a team more effective goes also to my benefit, where I can do more interesting work.

spoonjim 5y ago
There’s still a world of difference between hobby and professional software development. In hobby software you fix the bugs that you fix; in professional software you fix the bugs that your paying customers hit. I think it’s why free software has had limited success in end-user applications.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  I can see that, what I'm trying to say though is that I don't know in which category I fit: hobby and professional are bot very engaging, sometimes I want to work at the stuff fot my job, other times for my pet projects. How would you define this given the premise of the op?
- foxfluff 5y ago
  A different take: in professional software, you fix the things your boss tells (or allows) you to fix, while in free software, you fix the things that need to be fixed. I think that's why I find most commercial software to be a trash fire compared to free software.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    In application software? Which ones, specifically?
starfallg 5y ago
Loving what you do is the key to having a happy work life, not doing what you love. Your approach seem to embody that concept.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  That could be a thing, but I achieved this unconsciously, so it's all luck. By contrast, I was miserable through the entirety of high school and a good chunk of university: I _really wanted to code_ and nothing else at the time. For the surrounding parts of being a developer, I think I appreciate those more or less by maturing taste. Same way as the first beer you have is terrible, then you discover the interesting parts. Also yes, I'm very happy at work, I was happy even in bad situations for some weird reason. But I'm also very happy in life in general, so it's probably a combination of both.
Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
I spent six years working as a lawyer and absolutely despised it. Early on during this hell I rediscovered a curiosity in programming I had as a child. I became obsessed with it and within about six months knew I had to try to do it as a career. It took me four years but I did it. What I will say is this -- I have definitely lost a hobby, in the sense that a hobby should be something that allows you to be creative while not feeling or reminding you of work. While I was still a lawyer, software dev (and learning it) was my hobby. I would be at work dreaming of coming home so I could tweak whatever project I was working on. Now that I'm getting paid for it, I am completely in love with my job. Partly it's that I work for a great company now -- e.g., we get 25 days PTO (and yes, it's an American company, and no, I'm not a senior level). But partly it's that I spent time on the other side -- doing something purely because it provided me with money. Is programming work now? Yes, definitely -- but it's work I love doing. However, I realized quickly after I started that I no longer felt like programming very much when I came home. I know that's kind of a no-no to admit to in this field, but it's true. I still do go through phases where I'll go really deep on some project for a while. But mostly I'm content to let my programming happen on the job. When I do program at home, it's still fun but it's colored by all the new relationships the activity has to work.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Yep. I would never have guessed how little time I would spend coding some weeks.

andykx 5y ago
I just started my first SWE job and I'm having a similar realization. So much decision making needs to happen before anything is even considered worth working on. As a junior, I sit silently in a ton of meetings about things that I don't even know about, haha. When my direct superior assigns me something, I get it done, ask her questions if necessary, and move on to the next task.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  This is why I like remote. I have no input on these meetings, so I can work instead of being a mushroom.
  - abledon 5y ago
    I like remote because I can work on my mushrooms during work hours
    - mellavora 5y ago
      I've heard that some people like remote because they can work while on mushrooms during work hours.
irrational 5y ago
I’ve worked at the same company for 20 years. For the first 17 years another developer and myself were embedded in a business unit. I’d say we spent 90% of our time coding. Then they decided we should be integrated into IT. We since been made to adopt agile practices and all the meetings that go along with it. I’d say I spend about 5% of my work week coding now. The rest of the time is in meetings. I’m absolutely astonished at how many meetings the IT organization manages to create. I still don’t see the purpose. All these agile practices haven’t made our code any better. We are just writing far far far less of it. I’m kind of astonished anyone ever manages to get anything done.

andykx 5y ago

Very well said. A friend of mine worked at a winery and he was very enthusiastic about his work -- he loved making the best wine he possibly could. He recently bought his own winery and, to his (and my) surprise, maybe 5% of his job involves interacting with the winemaking process. The vast majority of his job concerns compliance with regulation, bookkeeping, and communicating with vendors/suppliers. I think it's good to have a holistic view of an industry before you dive into it. There are a ton of "housekeeping" things to be done in every industry, but in a sufficiently large company, you're often shielded from the things that aren't your direct concern.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
I'm surprised that both of you were surprised that most of his job comprises of logistics. That's kind of how things tend to work.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  from outside, when not dealing with the logistics, you do not have an understanding of just how many logistics there are. This is why developers think managers don't do anything.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Developers are inside. We see managers. Some of them in some companies are useful. Others in other companies don't.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      As a developer I don't think I get to see most of what a manager does, other than they are in meetings all day long that I don't attend. So I am not inside the logistics of what they do. But I guess you attend all the meetings your managers do and you know everything they do? That seems to be a surprisingly inefficient company structure.

taneq 5y ago

I saw an artist friend comment on a "how to freelance" article that "that sounds like running a business, not being an artist." And therein lies the rub - the actual value-creation part of running a consulting business is a tiny part of the work required. I'm slowly starting to find that the business stuff is becoming a hobby as well, which is good because I'm resenting it far less than I used to.

AussieWog93 5y ago

I have turned two of my hobbies into businesses that are now full-time work for myself and part time work for two others (my wife and an employee we hired a couple of months back). For me, the fact that you have to sell/market something isn't what makes it a stressful; I enjoy that aspect of it too. Instead, I find most of the stress coming from the high stakes (if I make mistakes or work slowly, my business will fail and my children will grow up without a present father) and need to hyper-optimise (every single action is about maximising the amount of dollars earned per hour spent working). I've found immense peace in the last few months in cleaning, of all things. It's not a traditional hobby, but the fact that I can make mistakes (or just not do it at all if I'm tired) with minimal consequences makes it so much less stressful than my businesses which do revolve around "traditional" hobbies.

generaljelly 5y ago
My grandma used to say that happy people don't clean. People clean, and then they are happy. I think it is a form of craftmanship like any other.

waynesonfire 5y ago

The moment you start accepting paymeny your hobby is no longer. You are now engaged in a business transaction. You now have deadlines and expectation aka responsibility. The beauty of a hobby is there is none.

brtkdotse 5y ago

In the same vein, I followed a few hobbyist beer brewers on a local home brewing forum go pro and the came to the same conclusion - making it your job takes all the fun out brewing. You’re no longer experimenting or putting taste first, you want to convert grains into bottled beer as fast and cheap as possible so you can make a profit.

Crazyontap 5y ago

I think one trick to get around this is by delegating and if possible automating the parts you don't like. Unfortunately its much easier said than done because it takes meticulous planning and long time to set it up. But it can be done and after that you can spend a good amount of time doing what you love and get a lot of help with the parts you don't enjoy. As a matter of fact if you are able to successfully delegate the parts you don't enjoy the overall result is much much better.

hughrr 5y ago

So much this. I tried starting a business doing something I love and I found out I don’t love doing accounts and supply chain management for it. I canned it and a £20k investment within a year. Now I do something I dislike that I’m good at. This is the best balance I have found as the contrast from work is vast when I do the things I love and that is important. Also it forces your motivations to be efficient and decisions to be in favour of things you love which inevitably ends up with more time to do them.

irrational 5y ago

One of my hobby is board gaming. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen decide that they love board games so much that they open their own FLGS (friendly local game store). I’ve learned that the quickest way to come to hate board games is opening your own board game store. If you want to start hating your hobby, make it into a business.

Ieghaehia9 5y ago
> If you want to start hating your hobby, make it into a business. Or as I've heard it phrased: "If you turn your vacation into your vocation, you'll never have a vacation again".

bongoman37 5y ago

Yes, when I hire new people in Machine Learning they are uniformly surprised by how little time they spend modelling and how much time is spent gathering business requirements, refining what needs to be optimized, cleaning the incoming data, thinking about edge cases and so on.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
This blows my mind. How does one get the skills to do ML without spending an infinitude of time cleaning data? Like the other stuff makes sense (general business process), but the lack of understanding around cleaning data from many juniors just stuns me.

greggman3 5y ago

What you say is somewhat true but I also know plenty of people who love what they do. I suspect famous examples are say Brad Bird or Steven Spielberg. I have a feeling they loved directing. I know Sid Meier, when he was still at Microprose, he made a deal with his partner, Bill Stealey, to give up he direct business interest in the company so he could focus on game dev. They'd pay him $$$$$$$$ for each game and he no longer had to deal with the business decisions. The point is you can find a way to delegate the parts you don't like. I have plenty of friends that run their own game dev companies. They love it. One has 150 employees, one has 10, another 20, one has 3, another has 10. They're are still doing dev, not just managing, even the one with 150 people and they love it.

cies 5y ago
> The point is you can find a way to delegate the parts you don't like. So it is possible to do what you like (without considering the compensation), but probably not for everyone. Likely only for a lucky few. Is that what your saying? Because that what I think is whats going on in the current economic model we live in.
- greggman3 5y ago
  I'm not sure your point. If your point was the delegating the parts you don't like means someone else has to do no fun parts, another solution is to find someone that likes those other parts. For example, Sid Meier's partner, Bill Stealey, loved doing the business side of things.

cloudedcordial 5y ago

Well said. There are substantial business related activities related to the product/hobby that you may not love to do. I used to worked part-time in a ballet school. My boss and her business partner are highly trained ballet dancers. On top of teaching the classes, they do marketing, bookkeeping, dealing with difficult students/parents, hiring and cleaning in the very early days of the school. After the business took off, my boss hired administrative help so that she could take on more students.

mbrodersen 5y ago

Totally agree. I found out myself when I started a software business. It was doing well, I employed a number of people, we were making nice profits, but I decided to shut it down. Because it was destroying my joy of developing software.