8 ms·

Do What You Love? Screw That

90 points by giis 14y ago

bjhoops1 14y ago
Anyone who thinks about it critically knows that "Follow Your Passion" just won't work for the vast majority of people. What I have found, though, is that expertise breeds passion. Anything can become enjoyable once you become really, really good at it! Most people do not enjoy the early stages of learning something new. My advice: pick something you find reasonably interesting, is potentially profitable, and that you have a good aptitude for, then aggressively pursue mastery of it.
- untothebreach 14y ago
  The flip side of that is, turning a passion into a career is not always a good thing. Before I got into engineering, I thought it would be a great idea to turn my passion for making music into a career. Unfortunately, sometimes when something goes from "I love to do this" to "I have to do this," passion can be lost. I like knowing that whenever I want to make music, I can, but I also like knowing that if I get up tomorrow and don't want to make music, that's ok too.
  - npsimons 14y ago
    As an amateur musician trying to push my abilities, I have to agree, but I think there's another factor at work: How often do we see the glamorous side of musical performance and how often do we see the tedious play it over and over and over until it's perfect practice sessions? If anything, even at the higher levels, the repetitive practice doesn't go away, it has to increase to see ever decreasing return on time invested.
    - untothebreach 14y ago
      That's very true, but at least for me, being an amateur makes the repetitive practice sessions much less boring, and even more importantly, much less stressful, than they would be if I was (still trying to be) a professional. If I hear a song/piece/solo/part that I want to play, I practice it till I get it right because I love it and being able to play it correctly would make me happy. As a professional, you wouldn't (always) have that, you would feel pressured to get it right so you can collect your paycheck at the end of the day. I guess it all comes down to mindset, but I don't tend to _excessively_ push myself when I'm just playing for myself. Yes, that probably means I'm not reaching my full potential, ability-wise, but it also means that I can continue to enjoy playing and making music.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Is the satisfaction of exercising mastery the same as passion? Serious question.
  - bjhoops1 14y ago
    Perhaps a suitable-enough replacement? :)
    - jpwagner 14y ago
      I think Stephen Stills (of Crosby Stills and Nash) would agree.
  - yen223 14y ago
    Maybe that's what passion really is - the satisfaction one gets from 10,000 hours of sweat and tears.
  - ryusage 14y ago
    I don't think so. Passion, in this context, generally means an intense motivation and desire to engage in some activity because it gives you some kind of enjoyment. Since people usually get much more enjoyment from an activity they've mastered than one that they are very clumsy with, they're likely to become more passionate about it as they become better at it. That isn't a guarantee, though. It's entirely possible to be very good at something but not really enjoy doing it.
- digitalengineer 14y ago
  "Most people do not enjoy the early stages of learning something new." I feel most people do, but than fail to proceed all the way and actually finish and master something. They'll start new things indefinitely over and over.
  - DigitalJack 14y ago
    Guilty :) That's where the discipline comes in. When the excitement of the New abates, sometimes you just gotta buckle down and get it done.
- ritchiea 14y ago
  This is huge. It really annoys me when people say "well I've always loved programming." That's great, but you're the exception, both in that you always loved programming and in that the thing you love is quite lucrative. I know a ton of people who are very intelligent and talented that have had to go through a trial and error process of figuring out how their talents will lead them to a career. Telling them to "follow your passion" is putting the cart before the horse. In my experience people find their passion by working hard at something with reasonable potential. If you work hard at something it may not turn out to be the thing you love but it will expose you to other people who value your work, as well as their own and you can find ways to pivot.
Nursie 14y ago
Meh. I enjoyed programming when I knew nothing about it, and I still enjoy it and do it in my spare time now that I'm over a decade into a software career. Does it qualify as a passion? I'm not sure. But a hobby I've always enjoyed and a career that pays me well, yup. --edit-- This is not to say every day at work is an unmitigated pleasure! But I am lucky enough that I get to enjoy what I do for a living from time to time :)
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  Do you stick to the same languages as work?
  - Nursie 14y ago
    Mostly, yes. I find myself using C and python at home, most of my work has been in C and C++ with various other bits and pieces thrown in. At work it's about getting the job done in a stable and quality way, and the language is not usually my choice. After 12(ish) years I'm mostly asked to work on things I already have experience in. At home it's about achieving whatever I'm trying to achieve in the fastest way possible, which usually means I stick to languages I know inside out from using them at work. I suppose this isn't a pure passion for programming as an artform, it's more that I get great pleasure from making the machines do what I want them to.
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  I think we just happen to be a group of people who are fortunate enough to have a very unique passion (puzzle and problem solving) that also nets a very healthy margin.
Dirlewanger 14y ago
Great article. Reassures me that there's nothing wrong with me thinking that, at the beginning of my career in programming, I'm not going to be as "successful" as others out there who claim to "love" it or that it's their "passion". I know I'm good at it (hence why I'm getting paid for it), but I also don't dream in Ruby. Good to see another person saying that passion from work will come with you're good at.
sethbannon 14y ago
I feel like this entire article can be boiled down to this quote: "A passion people won't pay you for is hardly the basis for a career. It's a hobby. You can still love your hobbies--just love them in your spare time. The key as an entrepreneur is to identify a relevant passion." Not saying much.
- redeemedfadi 14y ago
  This is why I come to the comments first! Thanks for saving me 5 minutes :)
- javert 14y ago
  Actually, I think the most important point that may be non-obvious (and is also probably controversial) is: Get good at doing something and making money from it, and you will become passionate about it.
greghinch 14y ago
I think the phrase should be "love what you do". In my experience, professional happiness comes from excelling at something that is valuable to others, and hence you'll be paid well for it. The only way you're going to manage to put in the ten thousand hours to a skill required to get to that level is if you love it
speeder 14y ago
Interesting article. Too bad it does not apply to me :P In fact, during my childhood everyone tried to convince me to do stuff that I did NOT loved, because what I loved (making games) was "useless." Here I am now being CTO of a game company. ;)
- yen223 14y ago
  I'm glad it's working out for you :) It's not for me. Programming has been a passion of mine all my life. I practically learnt Python all by myself, in my own time. Thing was, people have been telling me that I shouldn't do this, that nobody values tech skills, that I should focus on my 'soft' skills, that programmers in my country are doomed to be lowly-paid wage slaves. Turns out, they were right.
  - speeder 14y ago
    I never said people where I live are wrong ;) The professions they wanted me to take still pay 3, 4 times what I am getting. That is, not counting lawyers (that is also a profession much suggested to me), then the multiplier is up to 20x or something like that. But I can pay my bills (barely... but I can).
uptown 14y ago
There's no single right-way to lead any life or approach any career. I wish writers would stop pretending otherwise.
karterk 14y ago
Think about something you're passionate about. Or were passionate about when you were in high school. Write it down. Programming. Then apply this test: Will people pay you for it? Will they pay you a lot for it? YES. Okay, perhaps this post is not for me, but the post comes across as highly anecdotal. E.g: That advice has probably resulted in more failed businesses than all the recessions combined... I hate to ask it, but source?
- venomsnake 14y ago
  Same here. I wanted to be programmer since I was 7 and found out what a computer is. And it pays the bills just fine.
- ditojim 14y ago
  agree. further, now that i have started and run a business based off one of my passions, i see a lot of opportunities to make a successful businesses based on many of my other passions.
- yen223 14y ago
  I suspect that if your passion was 'playing video games', you might find yourself agreeing with the article.
  - imgabe 14y ago
    Tell that to the guys who run Penny Arcade.
    - astine 14y ago
      How about the thousands of guys who tried to imitate Penny Arcade's success with their own comic strips? Most webcomics aren't that profitable and gamer oriented comics are probably the most saturated market. It's like acting, some hit it big, most struggle in obscurity for years.
  - kds 14y ago
    I believe the multi-millionaire publisher Felix Dennis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dennis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dennis) in a certain sense would not quite agree... In his book "How to Get Rich" he related his hint to pioneer PC-magazines publishing to his interest in early PC-games. This seems to be the case PG wrote recently in his latest essay - when someone is experiencing a new thing purely as a user, not developer, and feeling and thinking about what's still missing that could be useful to others like him.
toddmorey 14y ago
This article is flawed. The author sees the right problem but draws the wrong conclusions. I agree that great passions rarely make great businesses. Doing what you love is absolutely not a guaranteed path to profit. But I feel the answer offered is to work hard and the passion will follow with the success. Except it doesn't. Not always. There are some things you can have complete mastery of and still not enjoy. (The best contract negotiator I've ever met in my life came to me for personal advice. He hates negotiating. But he's mastered it, so everyone asks him to do it.) To make sure you'll enjoy your work, don't focus on the end product at all--focus on exactly what you'll be doing in the day to day to create it. For example, you may love food, but a catering business is much more about customer service, management, and logistics. Do you love that? Do you love making the trains run on time? Then you'll enjoy a successful catering business--even if you don't love food. Meanwhile, if you love building products, but pick something that requires a bunch of contract negotiations with a ton of suppliers, you'll likely not enjoy your work, even when it results in a successful product. Maybe the reason you love building things is because you feel control over the process. Perhaps it's better to pick something you can create in a very hands on environment with a small team.
mdkess 14y ago
Passion leads to hours of practice, and hours of practice leads to success. While you can't force yourself to be passionate about your current job, if you follow your passions - sincerely - I think that more often than not, it'll lead to a successful existence. I can think of very few passions where people can't at least maintain their existences. Maybe not get rich, I think in general that takes luck, but feed themselves and I think live happier as a result. And honestly, what's the point of doing anything else? Be someone else's servant, because you want ... money? Recognition? You are going to die one day, and that's it. The purpose of life, as best I can tell, is self actualization. It's stupid. You want money? Why? So your kids can follow in your footsteps and chase money so that their kids can follow in your footsteps and chase money so their kids can... And then are you just blaming your children for your lack of ambition and risk taking? Would you say to your kids "I would have figured out what I loved, but then you were born". Would you think it, though? If you want money, go work in finance. Otherwise you're not sincere in even chasing money, you're just treading water.
- jenius 14y ago
  I cannot agree with this more. This guy is just totally missing that one incredibly important equation: more passion = more practice = more skills = more money Doesn't matter what you do, you can make money at it if you are good. There are professional video gamers ffs.
- larsberg 14y ago
  > If you want money, go work in finance. This (and its converse) are exactly the advice I give to undergrads who, here at the University of Chicago, are heavily recruited by both local and NY finance firms. I like to point out that if you love money, you will be among others who do and will probably enjoy your job and especially the pay. And if you don't, hearing about a trader's addition to his Rolex collection or figuring out "opportunities" in an exchange's rules or implementation will destroy your soul. BTW, I don't give this advice in a loaded way - my wife and many of my friends work in finance.
  - dxbydt 14y ago
    As a recent uchicago grad, let me say your advice, while well intentioned, isn't quite sound. Work in finance is not as lucrative as work with finance. I was in finance for about a decade....at gs, bofa etc...the thing is, firms don't let you daytrade, or buy/sell naked calls, or short sell equities, or flout 90 day holding period rules, or trade stocks in the restricted blacklist, or...I could give you an dozen ways ib's ringfence you. Otoh, if you work in the valley and you know your shit, you can pull in 200k and wear shorts and torn tshirts to work, not be subject to any bureaucracy, and get your tradestation account and go nuts. Sell naked calls all day and nobody will bug you.
LatvjuAvs 14y ago
I live my life, you live your life, what works for you do not work for others and vice verse. Finding ultimate grail that works for everyone, good luck on that. But deeeem, the opinions, I have dem!
arbuge 14y ago
My gut instinct is that both following one's passion and having one's passion follow oneself could work. There are clearly documented cases of the former - Warren Buffet for instance, as he is fond of repeating. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/warren-buffett-career-advice-independently-wealthy_n_2158317.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/warren-buffett-care... On the other hand there's the Koch brothers who simply carried on with their father's rather mundane raw materials business and made it into a mega-empire. When asked about that I remember one of them saying in an interview "That's just the hand we were dealt."
jstalin 14y ago
A friend who has risen to the top of his area of expertise in the world, and who does it on the side, recently told me, "there's nothing like doing what you love and not having to rely on it for a pay check."
orangethirty 14y ago
I think the better point to make is to not build a business doing something that you are absolutely in love with. It clouds your judgement and could drive you to build something people don't want. You can definitely love what you do. I love programming and marketing, and those are my businesses. But I don't let the love cloud my judgement (well, not anymore). Its like when we fall in love for the first time with a new person. They are perfect in our eyes, There is no way anything they do is seen as negative. But little by little, as time passes, we start seeing the real person and not the fantasy. Sometimes that makes the love grow stronger, and sometimes it drives us to break the relationship. Same with business. What you need to realize that the reason business failures hurt so much is because we fall in love with it. And then get our heart broken when it doesn't work. Don't fall in love with it.
- ansgri 14y ago
  I think this is the most important point (I remember coming to a similar conclusion some years ago), but now I think there are a couple of ways around this caveat (mostly applicable to business, but also of some use in personal relationships). So, the problem with loving your work passionately you stop caring about what other people think of it, what is its (monetary) value to them. First way: use your love as a hook to which all youd business is tied. E.g. you are eventually aiming at completing some big thing, and in reaching it you could make use of such-and-such services which a lot of people also would pay for. Second way (now I think it's just a variation of the above one): use your career as a carrier that carries you to your goal. E.g. use your job to accumulate wealth to finance your work later and as a learning experience (you don't want to fail your beloved project, better fail 'with the cats' and be prepared). Frankly, I have some experience strictly following these advice in personal relationships, the result is weird (unfinished story yet), so use at your own risk :) But in getting satisfaction from work, they do work.
  - orangethirty 14y ago
    Great points. Though my post only applied to businesses. Personal relations are still voodoo to me. Its a miracle I got married, more so that I'm happily married. :)
mixmax 14y ago
According to research, what is the strongest predictor of a person seeing her work as a calling? The number of years spent on the job. The more experience you have the more likely you are to love your work. Or it could be that people that don't like what they do change jobs...
- Cl4rity 14y ago
  I don't believe it's that easy for most people.
  - kposehn 14y ago
    I think it is easier to do, but harder to muster up the commitment. People will come up with all manner of reasons to remain in a job where they are unhappy.
lis 14y ago
I started my career because I love programming. That was a big mistake for me. Not because it didn't pay well, but because I lost the passion. When I spend 8 hours a day programming, I don't want to do it at home. It's probably because I don't want to sit in front of a computer all day, or I am lacking social interaction at work. That's why I am currently trying to change my position. While I still love IT and everything tech-related, I want programming to become a hobby again. I admire everyone who is programming after work, tinkering around, building stuff. I promised my nephew to build a quadrocopter with him, but I haven't done so, just because I am already programming and doing techy things each day again and again.
- Nursie 14y ago
  I seem to have managed a mental separation between 'programming I have to do' and 'programming I want to do'. The latter category only happens sporadically because, like you, I don't often have the energy to code all evening when I've coded all day. But I do find some time for it. Social interaction definitely takes precedence though.
samspot 14y ago
I'm not sure who this article is for. I think most reasonable people silently add "that can make money" to "do something you are passionate about." After all, we don't see many businesses trying to make money with the idea "Watch the owner eat delicious chocolate!"
- adamkiss 14y ago
  Even then would work (on youtube, for instance) if the owner was entertaining enough, while eating delicious chocolate.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    You could even give this hypothetical show a name like Good Eats.
    - samspot 14y ago
      Not having cable, I had completely forgotten about the food network.
jenius 14y ago
I think where this article falls flat is in it's assumption that there are many hobby passions with which you can't make money. I don't believe this for a second - if you are good enough, you can make money off anything. And being really good at something, in addition to genetics, talent, etc, is a result of being passionate - since you like something you naturally put in a lot of work and get better. I challenge someone to come up with any hobby you can't make money from if you're good at it. Even the most ridiculous ones, playing video games, watching movies, etc. all have associated careers in which you can make plenty of money if you are good and put in work. And if you aren't putting in work or don't think you can be good enough, it's probably not a passion. Then on top of that is the whole part where making money is just not as important to you when you're doing something you enjoy for most of your waking hours. How much money is your happiness for ~40 hours a week worth? For me, it would be pretty steep.
- the_gastropod 14y ago
  What percentage of video game players make a living from it? Skateboarders? Gardeners? Musicians? Poker players? Actresses? Hobbies are rarely viable career paths. What separates SOME hobbies (computer programming, for instance) is that they're still relatively obscure. Out of 1,000 random people, maybe 3 can program, and all of them likely suck. So if you're passionate about programming, it's not difficult to make a career out of it. This article doesn't seem to be targeted at STEM-type careers. It's more targeted at the lofty ideas. Roughly 6 degree programs account for over 50% of the Bachelor degrees earned these days. These students are creating an extremely competitive environment for themselves by chasing their very popular ideal careers. If you're able to get a good-paying job doing what you enjoyed as a hobby, you're lucky. Not everyone has such obscure hobbies as you and I.
- acuozzo 14y ago
  Challenge accepted! The hobby? Collecting and watching laserdiscs. Check out http://www.lddb.com/ http://www.lddb.com/ and http://forum.lddb.com/ http://forum.lddb.com/ for a look into the hobby and community surrounding it, respectively. Also, I don't think any of the LDDB shop owners are making a living off of LD sales alone.
marknutter 14y ago
An apt analogy might be arranged marriages. In Western culture, the idea of an arranged marriage seems absurd and backwards, and the common belief is that a good marriage is based on love and mutual attraction. In arranged marriages, however, love grows with time and these types of marriages end up in divorce at a far lower rate.
- Nursie 14y ago
  This could also be because the social pressure to stay together on people in arranged marriages is immense, and divorce still seen as a mortal sin that would probably result in social ostracism (at the least).
- mdkess 14y ago
  And this has nothing to do with cultural biases against divorce, and subjugation of women, right? There was a far lower attrition with slave labor as well.
- mdda 14y ago
  There's also the aspect that in arranged marriage societies, the purpose and expectations of marriage are different. There, marriage may be an institution for the creation of a stable family for children. If Western love happens between the married couple, then so much the better (this type of love may be catered for by the married people having affairs). But don't presume that marriage has a universal 'love' basis. It can be more like forming a partnership to build a business. Imagine someone from another culture telling you that your startup was a sham because you didn't love your cofounder(s).
figurify 14y ago
There is a subtle line there between what you actually love, and what is practical to be worked on. I am not saying they cannot coincide, but they are rarely so. What one can try to achieve is a transition from one to another. That's why hackers are in big advantage these days. They can build stuff which can make money to fund the stuff they love doing... Struggling is always bad, but struggling on stuff you love would make it even worse. Don't let that happen...
roc 14y ago
It seems to me the relevant advice buried in this is: most people need to try before they know. So get a job to pay the bills, so you can afford to try out your passions part time and have some professional experience to help you along/fall back on. Then pursue whatever sticks. Because expecting people to be able to accurately weigh which of their passions is the "relevant" one, before they have any experience at anything is going to fail just as much as telling them to pick a passion at random. Unless you're just saying "relevant" as code for "pick a white collar career path that -- if you squint real hard -- looks kinda/sorta like your passion."
JonSkeptic 14y ago
apply this test: Will people pay you for it? Will they pay you a lot for it? I answered "yes." I'm off to be happily self employed doing what I love....great article, btw, but the logic needs some work and the wetware could use a tuneup.
randomsearch 14y ago
A relative of mine has experience advising hundreds of small business start-ups. She would definitely tell people that they have to be passionate about what they do. It's the passion that keeps you going when things are really tough. If you're working as part of a larger company, maybe passion doesn't matter as much, but personally if I were doing a job I didn't love or feel passionate about then I'd leave that job and try something different (and I have done just that in the past). RS
hudell 14y ago
It's not about doing something you love, it's about not doing something you hate.
saddino 14y ago
Fucking nonsense. If you are passionate enough you will apply yourself and master your love until you (and perhaps only you) can figure out how to succeed from it. Contrary to the article, abandoning one's passion is what sucks the fun out of people's lives and careers. Everybody does it. Don't fall for it.
azjkeipo 14y ago
STUPID ARTICLE. PASSION GAVE ME EVERYTHING. FUCK THE AUTHOR, HE JUST FAILED.
wpietri 14y ago
Holy shit do I hate straw-man pseudo-contrarian articles like this. Nobody who says "do what you love" means "do what you love without consideration for your needing food and a roof over your head". Nobody. Everybody I know who is really good at what they do is doing something they loved. I have never met a great developer who said, "Yeah, I just went into this because it paid well." They loved something about it and made a career out of it. And thinking about my various successful friends, it's true about all of them, no matter the career.
jasonkester 14y ago
Well said. I'm gonna go ahead and quote me from four years ago. Skip on if you've read this before: Not all passions monetize. At the moment, I'm passionate about rock climbing, travel, surfing and computer programming. If it weren't for that 4th one, I'd be screwed. I currently run maybe the 3rd most popular Travel Blogging site out there. It's had a good 5 years of passion poured in now, off and on, and if I were to slap ads on it today I'd pull in a buck thirtyfive a day. I also run a little service that processes the draconian logfiles that Amazon provides for its webservices and spits out pretty analytics. It's a subject that no human being could ever be passionate about and it pays my rent. Sometimes it's better to monetize something boring that people are willing to pay for. [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1324610 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1324610]
- kordless 14y ago
  $135/day or $1.35/day?
  - Cl4rity 14y ago
    I was wondering the same myself, but at any rate, neither would pay his rent. However, I am curious because I know a few travel bloggers out there who make a decent amount of money on their blogs, as well as getting lots of trips paid for by companies like Expedia and Orbitz and other travel companies and agencies.
    - jonathlee 14y ago
      If $4000/month won't pay his rent, he's (or maybe you) are living in the wrong country/region.
pcote 14y ago
Doing what you love may well be good for your career. However, that doesn't mean the thing you love will BE your career. You could spend your teen years pursuing your passion of music for example. Maybe it leads you to think about how the brain responds to music. Maybe from there, that ends up turning you on to neuroscience. Maybe from there, you end up in a career as a brain surgeon. It happens. So chasing your passion can lead you to a very good place in the world so long as your keeping your eyes and mind open while doing so. Pursuing or NOT pursuing your dreams with a closed mind will probably not get you far regardless.
michaelochurch 14y ago
The biggest problem with "follow your passion" is that, in truth, if you're passionate about something, you'll absolutely fucking hate doing it as a subordinate. This means you'll probably never reach the level of autonomy at which work becomes fun, and your "passion" will die. Occasionally you're lucky and fall into a mentor/protege relationship where you don't feel like a subordinate, but that's not common. You shouldn't count on that, especially in the "cool" careers that are spam-clogged with incompetent wannabes and in which it's hard to distinguish oneself.
- ansgri 14y ago
  Today we've had an interesting discussion at our startup about subordination, and stumbled into a question where do good technical leaders come from. Our CTO's thesis was that no sane technical person wants to be a boss; rather, he'd be doing "real interesting stuff", real science and technology, but someone needs to take responsibility for the project, and it also pays well. My answer to this was that yes, being chief is not much fun, but if you really care about "real interesting stuff", you'll want to do it in the best possible way, and you quickly realize that you could make use of some subordinates, then teach some engineers... Eventually you find yourself in director's seat. To which our CTO replied, this was his case ^)
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    In the top-down management context, being a manager is almost as bad as being managed. You're still a subordinate in truth, but you are now responsible for motivating other people to do things they don't want to do. You don't get to set priorities, but your career has been bet on the work of other people (your subordinates). So it's the worst of both worlds. Additionally, managers in a top-down world are constantly struggling to establish themselves as legitimate leaders of the group (without resorting to, "Fuck you, I can fire you.") They're puppet leaders picked from above, and often not the leaders the group would pick. This often creates a lot of tension. There's good and bad in management. The good aspect is mentoring others, coordinating efforts, building teams, and solving large-scale problems. The bad is the extortionate kind, which is the "if I don't like you, no one here does" idiocy (seen in high-stakes performance review games) that causes so many people to hate management. But when the boss has a bad boss there are no other options for him.
ef4 14y ago
The real question is: at what level of abstraction are you passionate about your work? If you're passionate about writing great software that people love, the world is your oyster and there are lots of ways to make money. But if you insist on writing software that solves problems you are passionate about, you're going to have a much harder time. Because problems that programmers are passionate about are exactly the problems that programmers solve for free with open-source. To take another example, don't open a coffee shop because you're passionate about coffee. That's a very small part of what you'll actually be doing. Open a coffee shop because you're passionate about building a great local business.
mimiflynn 14y ago
I remember one of my co-workers (a developer or engineer or whatever we are called these days) on a particularly frustrating day, smiling broadly and saying "I'm a guitarist. Programming was my HOBBY. I went to school for music. This was supposed to be fun." What made the comment even funnier is that we all know he loves his work as a developer / engineer. Its almost all he talks about. He followed one passion (music), but the other, more lucrative passion (development) is the one that caught him as a career. As frustrating as that day was, the funny part is that we live for the kinds of problem solving we were facing.
lubujackson 14y ago
The mistake people make is to work on a TOPIC they love, when what they should do instead is find WORK that they love, regardless of topic. So if you enjoy programming, maybe you can do that writing bank software and still have fun, but if you love chemistry you might not like the day-to-day of a normal chemist.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Weird little factoid from the cognitive behavior folks -- action comes first, then motivation. So it's impossible to be excited about something that you have not spent some time with. And the more time you spend, the more likely you'll feel excited by it. People think it's the other way around, that you feel motivated and then go do stuff, but it's not. So everything you've ever gotten excited about started off with you not being very interested at all, but giving something a shot, whether it was a book, a lecture, a website, or so forth.
- wumpushunter 14y ago
  Daniel, I'm interested in reading more about this. Where did you discover this factoid?
  - DanielBMarkham 14y ago
    A self-help book I read a long time ago -- http://amzn.to/VXjT8j http://amzn.to/VXjT8j
thenomad 14y ago
Hmm. Fails the anecdata test for me. I know a lot of people who do things they're passionate about - linguists, filmmakers (including me) and novelists. Nearly all of them struggled for years to get to the point where they're full-time at their passion, taking various other jobs of varying degrees of crappiness. All of them are very happy with what they're doing now, and - crucially - also loved pursuing their passion when it wasn't bringing in the bacon. There's a good idea here - "If you're passionate about something, consider doing something else that pays better to bring money in, at least whilst you're getting good at your passion" - but the "if you want to do something that is hard to achieve full-time status in, abandon it and do something easier" message is, from my experience, a massive overreach.
Ingaz 14y ago
>> "If you practice hard, soon you might find you're the best in your group of students," I strongly disagree. When I was young I wanted to became a great guitarist. I've practiced a lot, but when I was near 18 I understood a simple thing: "I will never be Freep, Clapton or Hendrix, no matter how I will try harder". I put aside my guitar for years. I'd thought that time: "I will never became great musician, but I can be a good engineer". My wife was amazed that I can play guitar after two years of our marriage. Hard work is not definitive factor in all cases. Sometimes you just must have inherent ability to do the work. For example: everybody could be trained to run marathon. But it's not possible to be trained as good marathon runner. One must have genetic ability for this.
tunesmith 14y ago
It's probably worth considering... p(able-to-make-money-at-passion | general-public) = x p(able-to-make-money-at-passion | hn-reading public) = y y is probably greater than x, so that might color the general conclusion of people reading the article, on this board anyway. In other words, "In my experience, having a lifelong passion of hacking/programming computers to do valuable functional things, this article is wrong!" might be based on a faulty premise.
wellpast 14y ago
I've spent many years developing skills that pay well, that I'm good at, that offer an easy flow and easy productivity. But at the end of the day I don't want this to be what my life is about. I wish I'd started earlier following my passions; I've been dragged to date in golden handcuffs. This is the advice I'd give to myself ten years ago: If you know what you want to do, what you want your life to be about, and you believe you can develop the talents to do it, pursue that goal aggressively and immediately, don't waste time.
Communitivity 14y ago
This guy has some good thoughts, but his main points are way off (from 20+ years in sw engineering). Here's why. Passion might follow mastery sometimes, but usually it is the other way around. My advice is to figure out what you're passionate about-then figure out if there is a way to monetize that passion that makes sense for the lifestyle you want. He has a good description when he says "Roughly speaking, work can be broken down into a job, a career, or a calling. A job pays the bills; a career is a path towards increasingly better work; a calling is work that is an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.". Then he adds"(Clearly most people want their work to be a calling.)". Nope. There are lots of people for whom their work is not even in their top two priorities. There's nothing wrong with them or the folks for whom their work is a calling. However, food for thought...as a founder in the tech business, do you really want to hire anyone in a tech or marketing position who's work is not their calling? That said, people who's work is their calling are rare, and they tend to be very good, which makes them expensive. However, I don't think that 10 bad devs are not better than one really good one - so the old saying 'you get what you pay for holds true', they're worth it. In short...find your calling, and follow it - just realize it might not be your work.

90 points by giis 14y ago

Anyone who thinks about it critically knows that "Follow Your Passion" just won't work for the vast majority of people. What I have found, though, is that expertise breeds passion. Anything can become enjoyable once you become really, really good at it! Most people do not enjoy the early stages of learning something new. My advice: pick something you find reasonably interesting, is potentially profitable, and that you have a good aptitude for, then aggressively pursue mastery of it.

untothebreach 14y ago
The flip side of that is, turning a passion into a career is not always a good thing. Before I got into engineering, I thought it would be a great idea to turn my passion for making music into a career. Unfortunately, sometimes when something goes from "I love to do this" to "I have to do this," passion can be lost. I like knowing that whenever I want to make music, I can, but I also like knowing that if I get up tomorrow and don't want to make music, that's ok too.
- npsimons 14y ago
  As an amateur musician trying to push my abilities, I have to agree, but I think there's another factor at work: How often do we see the glamorous side of musical performance and how often do we see the tedious play it over and over and over until it's perfect practice sessions? If anything, even at the higher levels, the repetitive practice doesn't go away, it has to increase to see ever decreasing return on time invested.
  - untothebreach 14y ago
    That's very true, but at least for me, being an amateur makes the repetitive practice sessions much less boring, and even more importantly, much less stressful, than they would be if I was (still trying to be) a professional. If I hear a song/piece/solo/part that I want to play, I practice it till I get it right because I love it and being able to play it correctly would make me happy. As a professional, you wouldn't (always) have that, you would feel pressured to get it right so you can collect your paycheck at the end of the day. I guess it all comes down to mindset, but I don't tend to _excessively_ push myself when I'm just playing for myself. Yes, that probably means I'm not reaching my full potential, ability-wise, but it also means that I can continue to enjoy playing and making music.
jacques_chester 14y ago
Is the satisfaction of exercising mastery the same as passion? Serious question.
- bjhoops1 14y ago
  Perhaps a suitable-enough replacement? :)
  - jpwagner 14y ago
    I think Stephen Stills (of Crosby Stills and Nash) would agree.
- yen223 14y ago
  Maybe that's what passion really is - the satisfaction one gets from 10,000 hours of sweat and tears.
- ryusage 14y ago
  I don't think so. Passion, in this context, generally means an intense motivation and desire to engage in some activity because it gives you some kind of enjoyment. Since people usually get much more enjoyment from an activity they've mastered than one that they are very clumsy with, they're likely to become more passionate about it as they become better at it. That isn't a guarantee, though. It's entirely possible to be very good at something but not really enjoy doing it.
digitalengineer 14y ago
"Most people do not enjoy the early stages of learning something new." I feel most people do, but than fail to proceed all the way and actually finish and master something. They'll start new things indefinitely over and over.
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  Guilty :) That's where the discipline comes in. When the excitement of the New abates, sometimes you just gotta buckle down and get it done.
ritchiea 14y ago
This is huge. It really annoys me when people say "well I've always loved programming." That's great, but you're the exception, both in that you always loved programming and in that the thing you love is quite lucrative. I know a ton of people who are very intelligent and talented that have had to go through a trial and error process of figuring out how their talents will lead them to a career. Telling them to "follow your passion" is putting the cart before the horse. In my experience people find their passion by working hard at something with reasonable potential. If you work hard at something it may not turn out to be the thing you love but it will expose you to other people who value your work, as well as their own and you can find ways to pivot.

Nursie 14y ago

Meh. I enjoyed programming when I knew nothing about it, and I still enjoy it and do it in my spare time now that I'm over a decade into a software career. Does it qualify as a passion? I'm not sure. But a hobby I've always enjoyed and a career that pays me well, yup. --edit-- This is not to say every day at work is an unmitigated pleasure! But I am lucky enough that I get to enjoy what I do for a living from time to time :)

DigitalJack 14y ago
Do you stick to the same languages as work?
- Nursie 14y ago
  Mostly, yes. I find myself using C and python at home, most of my work has been in C and C++ with various other bits and pieces thrown in. At work it's about getting the job done in a stable and quality way, and the language is not usually my choice. After 12(ish) years I'm mostly asked to work on things I already have experience in. At home it's about achieving whatever I'm trying to achieve in the fastest way possible, which usually means I stick to languages I know inside out from using them at work. I suppose this isn't a pure passion for programming as an artform, it's more that I get great pleasure from making the machines do what I want them to.
dclowd9901 14y ago
I think we just happen to be a group of people who are fortunate enough to have a very unique passion (puzzle and problem solving) that also nets a very healthy margin.

Dirlewanger 14y ago

Great article. Reassures me that there's nothing wrong with me thinking that, at the beginning of my career in programming, I'm not going to be as "successful" as others out there who claim to "love" it or that it's their "passion". I know I'm good at it (hence why I'm getting paid for it), but I also don't dream in Ruby. Good to see another person saying that passion from work will come with you're good at.

sethbannon 14y ago

I feel like this entire article can be boiled down to this quote: "A passion people won't pay you for is hardly the basis for a career. It's a hobby. You can still love your hobbies--just love them in your spare time. The key as an entrepreneur is to identify a relevant passion." Not saying much.

redeemedfadi 14y ago
This is why I come to the comments first! Thanks for saving me 5 minutes :)
javert 14y ago
Actually, I think the most important point that may be non-obvious (and is also probably controversial) is: Get good at doing something and making money from it, and you will become passionate about it.

greghinch 14y ago

I think the phrase should be "love what you do". In my experience, professional happiness comes from excelling at something that is valuable to others, and hence you'll be paid well for it. The only way you're going to manage to put in the ten thousand hours to a skill required to get to that level is if you love it

speeder 14y ago

Interesting article. Too bad it does not apply to me :P In fact, during my childhood everyone tried to convince me to do stuff that I did NOT loved, because what I loved (making games) was "useless." Here I am now being CTO of a game company. ;)

yen223 14y ago
I'm glad it's working out for you :) It's not for me. Programming has been a passion of mine all my life. I practically learnt Python all by myself, in my own time. Thing was, people have been telling me that I shouldn't do this, that nobody values tech skills, that I should focus on my 'soft' skills, that programmers in my country are doomed to be lowly-paid wage slaves. Turns out, they were right.
- speeder 14y ago
  I never said people where I live are wrong ;) The professions they wanted me to take still pay 3, 4 times what I am getting. That is, not counting lawyers (that is also a profession much suggested to me), then the multiplier is up to 20x or something like that. But I can pay my bills (barely... but I can).

uptown 14y ago

There's no single right-way to lead any life or approach any career. I wish writers would stop pretending otherwise.

karterk 14y ago

Think about something you're passionate about. Or were passionate about when you were in high school. Write it down. Programming. Then apply this test: Will people pay you for it? Will they pay you a lot for it? YES. Okay, perhaps this post is not for me, but the post comes across as highly anecdotal. E.g: That advice has probably resulted in more failed businesses than all the recessions combined... I hate to ask it, but source?

venomsnake 14y ago
Same here. I wanted to be programmer since I was 7 and found out what a computer is. And it pays the bills just fine.
ditojim 14y ago
agree. further, now that i have started and run a business based off one of my passions, i see a lot of opportunities to make a successful businesses based on many of my other passions.
yen223 14y ago
I suspect that if your passion was 'playing video games', you might find yourself agreeing with the article.
- imgabe 14y ago
  Tell that to the guys who run Penny Arcade.
  - astine 14y ago
    How about the thousands of guys who tried to imitate Penny Arcade's success with their own comic strips? Most webcomics aren't that profitable and gamer oriented comics are probably the most saturated market. It's like acting, some hit it big, most struggle in obscurity for years.
- kds 14y ago
  I believe the multi-millionaire publisher Felix Dennis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dennis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dennis) in a certain sense would not quite agree... In his book "How to Get Rich" he related his hint to pioneer PC-magazines publishing to his interest in early PC-games. This seems to be the case PG wrote recently in his latest essay - when someone is experiencing a new thing purely as a user, not developer, and feeling and thinking about what's still missing that could be useful to others like him.

toddmorey 14y ago

This article is flawed. The author sees the right problem but draws the wrong conclusions. I agree that great passions rarely make great businesses. Doing what you love is absolutely not a guaranteed path to profit. But I feel the answer offered is to work hard and the passion will follow with the success. Except it doesn't. Not always. There are some things you can have complete mastery of and still not enjoy. (The best contract negotiator I've ever met in my life came to me for personal advice. He hates negotiating. But he's mastered it, so everyone asks him to do it.) To make sure you'll enjoy your work, don't focus on the end product at all--focus on exactly what you'll be doing in the day to day to create it. For example, you may love food, but a catering business is much more about customer service, management, and logistics. Do you love that? Do you love making the trains run on time? Then you'll enjoy a successful catering business--even if you don't love food. Meanwhile, if you love building products, but pick something that requires a bunch of contract negotiations with a ton of suppliers, you'll likely not enjoy your work, even when it results in a successful product. Maybe the reason you love building things is because you feel control over the process. Perhaps it's better to pick something you can create in a very hands on environment with a small team.

mdkess 14y ago

Passion leads to hours of practice, and hours of practice leads to success. While you can't force yourself to be passionate about your current job, if you follow your passions - sincerely - I think that more often than not, it'll lead to a successful existence. I can think of very few passions where people can't at least maintain their existences. Maybe not get rich, I think in general that takes luck, but feed themselves and I think live happier as a result. And honestly, what's the point of doing anything else? Be someone else's servant, because you want ... money? Recognition? You are going to die one day, and that's it. The purpose of life, as best I can tell, is self actualization. It's stupid. You want money? Why? So your kids can follow in your footsteps and chase money so that their kids can follow in your footsteps and chase money so their kids can... And then are you just blaming your children for your lack of ambition and risk taking? Would you say to your kids "I would have figured out what I loved, but then you were born". Would you think it, though? If you want money, go work in finance. Otherwise you're not sincere in even chasing money, you're just treading water.

jenius 14y ago
I cannot agree with this more. This guy is just totally missing that one incredibly important equation: more passion = more practice = more skills = more money Doesn't matter what you do, you can make money at it if you are good. There are professional video gamers ffs.
larsberg 14y ago
> If you want money, go work in finance. This (and its converse) are exactly the advice I give to undergrads who, here at the University of Chicago, are heavily recruited by both local and NY finance firms. I like to point out that if you love money, you will be among others who do and will probably enjoy your job and especially the pay. And if you don't, hearing about a trader's addition to his Rolex collection or figuring out "opportunities" in an exchange's rules or implementation will destroy your soul. BTW, I don't give this advice in a loaded way - my wife and many of my friends work in finance.
- dxbydt 14y ago
  As a recent uchicago grad, let me say your advice, while well intentioned, isn't quite sound. Work in finance is not as lucrative as work with finance. I was in finance for about a decade....at gs, bofa etc...the thing is, firms don't let you daytrade, or buy/sell naked calls, or short sell equities, or flout 90 day holding period rules, or trade stocks in the restricted blacklist, or...I could give you an dozen ways ib's ringfence you. Otoh, if you work in the valley and you know your shit, you can pull in 200k and wear shorts and torn tshirts to work, not be subject to any bureaucracy, and get your tradestation account and go nuts. Sell naked calls all day and nobody will bug you.

LatvjuAvs 14y ago

I live my life, you live your life, what works for you do not work for others and vice verse. Finding ultimate grail that works for everyone, good luck on that. But deeeem, the opinions, I have dem!

arbuge 14y ago

My gut instinct is that both following one's passion and having one's passion follow oneself could work. There are clearly documented cases of the former - Warren Buffet for instance, as he is fond of repeating. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/warren-buffett-career-advice-independently-wealthy_n_2158317.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/warren-buffett-care... On the other hand there's the Koch brothers who simply carried on with their father's rather mundane raw materials business and made it into a mega-empire. When asked about that I remember one of them saying in an interview "That's just the hand we were dealt."

jstalin 14y ago

A friend who has risen to the top of his area of expertise in the world, and who does it on the side, recently told me, "there's nothing like doing what you love and not having to rely on it for a pay check."

orangethirty 14y ago

I think the better point to make is to not build a business doing something that you are absolutely in love with. It clouds your judgement and could drive you to build something people don't want. You can definitely love what you do. I love programming and marketing, and those are my businesses. But I don't let the love cloud my judgement (well, not anymore). Its like when we fall in love for the first time with a new person. They are perfect in our eyes, There is no way anything they do is seen as negative. But little by little, as time passes, we start seeing the real person and not the fantasy. Sometimes that makes the love grow stronger, and sometimes it drives us to break the relationship. Same with business. What you need to realize that the reason business failures hurt so much is because we fall in love with it. And then get our heart broken when it doesn't work. Don't fall in love with it.

ansgri 14y ago
I think this is the most important point (I remember coming to a similar conclusion some years ago), but now I think there are a couple of ways around this caveat (mostly applicable to business, but also of some use in personal relationships). So, the problem with loving your work passionately you stop caring about what other people think of it, what is its (monetary) value to them. First way: use your love as a hook to which all youd business is tied. E.g. you are eventually aiming at completing some big thing, and in reaching it you could make use of such-and-such services which a lot of people also would pay for. Second way (now I think it's just a variation of the above one): use your career as a carrier that carries you to your goal. E.g. use your job to accumulate wealth to finance your work later and as a learning experience (you don't want to fail your beloved project, better fail 'with the cats' and be prepared). Frankly, I have some experience strictly following these advice in personal relationships, the result is weird (unfinished story yet), so use at your own risk :) But in getting satisfaction from work, they do work.
- orangethirty 14y ago
  Great points. Though my post only applied to businesses. Personal relations are still voodoo to me. Its a miracle I got married, more so that I'm happily married. :)

mixmax 14y ago

According to research, what is the strongest predictor of a person seeing her work as a calling? The number of years spent on the job. The more experience you have the more likely you are to love your work. Or it could be that people that don't like what they do change jobs...

Cl4rity 14y ago
I don't believe it's that easy for most people.
- kposehn 14y ago
  I think it is easier to do, but harder to muster up the commitment. People will come up with all manner of reasons to remain in a job where they are unhappy.

lis 14y ago

I started my career because I love programming. That was a big mistake for me. Not because it didn't pay well, but because I lost the passion. When I spend 8 hours a day programming, I don't want to do it at home. It's probably because I don't want to sit in front of a computer all day, or I am lacking social interaction at work. That's why I am currently trying to change my position. While I still love IT and everything tech-related, I want programming to become a hobby again. I admire everyone who is programming after work, tinkering around, building stuff. I promised my nephew to build a quadrocopter with him, but I haven't done so, just because I am already programming and doing techy things each day again and again.

Nursie 14y ago
I seem to have managed a mental separation between 'programming I have to do' and 'programming I want to do'. The latter category only happens sporadically because, like you, I don't often have the energy to code all evening when I've coded all day. But I do find some time for it. Social interaction definitely takes precedence though.

samspot 14y ago

I'm not sure who this article is for. I think most reasonable people silently add "that can make money" to "do something you are passionate about." After all, we don't see many businesses trying to make money with the idea "Watch the owner eat delicious chocolate!"

adamkiss 14y ago
Even then would work (on youtube, for instance) if the owner was entertaining enough, while eating delicious chocolate.
- Evbn 14y ago
  You could even give this hypothetical show a name like Good Eats.
  - samspot 14y ago
    Not having cable, I had completely forgotten about the food network.

jenius 14y ago

I think where this article falls flat is in it's assumption that there are many hobby passions with which you can't make money. I don't believe this for a second - if you are good enough, you can make money off anything. And being really good at something, in addition to genetics, talent, etc, is a result of being passionate - since you like something you naturally put in a lot of work and get better. I challenge someone to come up with any hobby you can't make money from if you're good at it. Even the most ridiculous ones, playing video games, watching movies, etc. all have associated careers in which you can make plenty of money if you are good and put in work. And if you aren't putting in work or don't think you can be good enough, it's probably not a passion. Then on top of that is the whole part where making money is just not as important to you when you're doing something you enjoy for most of your waking hours. How much money is your happiness for ~40 hours a week worth? For me, it would be pretty steep.

the_gastropod 14y ago
What percentage of video game players make a living from it? Skateboarders? Gardeners? Musicians? Poker players? Actresses? Hobbies are rarely viable career paths. What separates SOME hobbies (computer programming, for instance) is that they're still relatively obscure. Out of 1,000 random people, maybe 3 can program, and all of them likely suck. So if you're passionate about programming, it's not difficult to make a career out of it. This article doesn't seem to be targeted at STEM-type careers. It's more targeted at the lofty ideas. Roughly 6 degree programs account for over 50% of the Bachelor degrees earned these days. These students are creating an extremely competitive environment for themselves by chasing their very popular ideal careers. If you're able to get a good-paying job doing what you enjoyed as a hobby, you're lucky. Not everyone has such obscure hobbies as you and I.
acuozzo 14y ago
Challenge accepted! The hobby? Collecting and watching laserdiscs. Check out http://www.lddb.com/ http://www.lddb.com/ and http://forum.lddb.com/ http://forum.lddb.com/ for a look into the hobby and community surrounding it, respectively. Also, I don't think any of the LDDB shop owners are making a living off of LD sales alone.

marknutter 14y ago

An apt analogy might be arranged marriages. In Western culture, the idea of an arranged marriage seems absurd and backwards, and the common belief is that a good marriage is based on love and mutual attraction. In arranged marriages, however, love grows with time and these types of marriages end up in divorce at a far lower rate.

Nursie 14y ago
This could also be because the social pressure to stay together on people in arranged marriages is immense, and divorce still seen as a mortal sin that would probably result in social ostracism (at the least).
mdkess 14y ago
And this has nothing to do with cultural biases against divorce, and subjugation of women, right? There was a far lower attrition with slave labor as well.
mdda 14y ago
There's also the aspect that in arranged marriage societies, the purpose and expectations of marriage are different. There, marriage may be an institution for the creation of a stable family for children. If Western love happens between the married couple, then so much the better (this type of love may be catered for by the married people having affairs). But don't presume that marriage has a universal 'love' basis. It can be more like forming a partnership to build a business. Imagine someone from another culture telling you that your startup was a sham because you didn't love your cofounder(s).

figurify 14y ago

There is a subtle line there between what you actually love, and what is practical to be worked on. I am not saying they cannot coincide, but they are rarely so. What one can try to achieve is a transition from one to another. That's why hackers are in big advantage these days. They can build stuff which can make money to fund the stuff they love doing... Struggling is always bad, but struggling on stuff you love would make it even worse. Don't let that happen...

roc 14y ago

It seems to me the relevant advice buried in this is: most people need to try before they know. So get a job to pay the bills, so you can afford to try out your passions part time and have some professional experience to help you along/fall back on. Then pursue whatever sticks. Because expecting people to be able to accurately weigh which of their passions is the "relevant" one, before they have any experience at anything is going to fail just as much as telling them to pick a passion at random. Unless you're just saying "relevant" as code for "pick a white collar career path that -- if you squint real hard -- looks kinda/sorta like your passion."

JonSkeptic 14y ago

apply this test: Will people pay you for it? Will they pay you a lot for it? I answered "yes." I'm off to be happily self employed doing what I love....great article, btw, but the logic needs some work and the wetware could use a tuneup.

randomsearch 14y ago

A relative of mine has experience advising hundreds of small business start-ups. She would definitely tell people that they have to be passionate about what they do. It's the passion that keeps you going when things are really tough. If you're working as part of a larger company, maybe passion doesn't matter as much, but personally if I were doing a job I didn't love or feel passionate about then I'd leave that job and try something different (and I have done just that in the past). RS

hudell 14y ago

It's not about doing something you love, it's about not doing something you hate.

saddino 14y ago

Fucking nonsense. If you are passionate enough you will apply yourself and master your love until you (and perhaps only you) can figure out how to succeed from it. Contrary to the article, abandoning one's passion is what sucks the fun out of people's lives and careers. Everybody does it. Don't fall for it.

azjkeipo 14y ago

STUPID ARTICLE. PASSION GAVE ME EVERYTHING. FUCK THE AUTHOR, HE JUST FAILED.

wpietri 14y ago

Holy shit do I hate straw-man pseudo-contrarian articles like this. Nobody who says "do what you love" means "do what you love without consideration for your needing food and a roof over your head". Nobody. Everybody I know who is really good at what they do is doing something they loved. I have never met a great developer who said, "Yeah, I just went into this because it paid well." They loved something about it and made a career out of it. And thinking about my various successful friends, it's true about all of them, no matter the career.

jasonkester 14y ago

Well said. I'm gonna go ahead and quote me from four years ago. Skip on if you've read this before: Not all passions monetize. At the moment, I'm passionate about rock climbing, travel, surfing and computer programming. If it weren't for that 4th one, I'd be screwed. I currently run maybe the 3rd most popular Travel Blogging site out there. It's had a good 5 years of passion poured in now, off and on, and if I were to slap ads on it today I'd pull in a buck thirtyfive a day. I also run a little service that processes the draconian logfiles that Amazon provides for its webservices and spits out pretty analytics. It's a subject that no human being could ever be passionate about and it pays my rent. Sometimes it's better to monetize something boring that people are willing to pay for. [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1324610 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1324610]

kordless 14y ago
$135/day or $1.35/day?
- Cl4rity 14y ago
  I was wondering the same myself, but at any rate, neither would pay his rent. However, I am curious because I know a few travel bloggers out there who make a decent amount of money on their blogs, as well as getting lots of trips paid for by companies like Expedia and Orbitz and other travel companies and agencies.
  - jonathlee 14y ago
    If $4000/month won't pay his rent, he's (or maybe you) are living in the wrong country/region.

pcote 14y ago

Doing what you love may well be good for your career. However, that doesn't mean the thing you love will BE your career. You could spend your teen years pursuing your passion of music for example. Maybe it leads you to think about how the brain responds to music. Maybe from there, that ends up turning you on to neuroscience. Maybe from there, you end up in a career as a brain surgeon. It happens. So chasing your passion can lead you to a very good place in the world so long as your keeping your eyes and mind open while doing so. Pursuing or NOT pursuing your dreams with a closed mind will probably not get you far regardless.

michaelochurch 14y ago

The biggest problem with "follow your passion" is that, in truth, if you're passionate about something, you'll absolutely fucking hate doing it as a subordinate. This means you'll probably never reach the level of autonomy at which work becomes fun, and your "passion" will die. Occasionally you're lucky and fall into a mentor/protege relationship where you don't feel like a subordinate, but that's not common. You shouldn't count on that, especially in the "cool" careers that are spam-clogged with incompetent wannabes and in which it's hard to distinguish oneself.

ansgri 14y ago
Today we've had an interesting discussion at our startup about subordination, and stumbled into a question where do good technical leaders come from. Our CTO's thesis was that no sane technical person wants to be a boss; rather, he'd be doing "real interesting stuff", real science and technology, but someone needs to take responsibility for the project, and it also pays well. My answer to this was that yes, being chief is not much fun, but if you really care about "real interesting stuff", you'll want to do it in the best possible way, and you quickly realize that you could make use of some subordinates, then teach some engineers... Eventually you find yourself in director's seat. To which our CTO replied, this was his case ^)
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  In the top-down management context, being a manager is almost as bad as being managed. You're still a subordinate in truth, but you are now responsible for motivating other people to do things they don't want to do. You don't get to set priorities, but your career has been bet on the work of other people (your subordinates). So it's the worst of both worlds. Additionally, managers in a top-down world are constantly struggling to establish themselves as legitimate leaders of the group (without resorting to, "Fuck you, I can fire you.") They're puppet leaders picked from above, and often not the leaders the group would pick. This often creates a lot of tension. There's good and bad in management. The good aspect is mentoring others, coordinating efforts, building teams, and solving large-scale problems. The bad is the extortionate kind, which is the "if I don't like you, no one here does" idiocy (seen in high-stakes performance review games) that causes so many people to hate management. But when the boss has a bad boss there are no other options for him.

ef4 14y ago

The real question is: at what level of abstraction are you passionate about your work? If you're passionate about writing great software that people love, the world is your oyster and there are lots of ways to make money. But if you insist on writing software that solves problems you are passionate about, you're going to have a much harder time. Because problems that programmers are passionate about are exactly the problems that programmers solve for free with open-source. To take another example, don't open a coffee shop because you're passionate about coffee. That's a very small part of what you'll actually be doing. Open a coffee shop because you're passionate about building a great local business.

mimiflynn 14y ago

I remember one of my co-workers (a developer or engineer or whatever we are called these days) on a particularly frustrating day, smiling broadly and saying "I'm a guitarist. Programming was my HOBBY. I went to school for music. This was supposed to be fun." What made the comment even funnier is that we all know he loves his work as a developer / engineer. Its almost all he talks about. He followed one passion (music), but the other, more lucrative passion (development) is the one that caught him as a career. As frustrating as that day was, the funny part is that we live for the kinds of problem solving we were facing.

lubujackson 14y ago

The mistake people make is to work on a TOPIC they love, when what they should do instead is find WORK that they love, regardless of topic. So if you enjoy programming, maybe you can do that writing bank software and still have fun, but if you love chemistry you might not like the day-to-day of a normal chemist.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Weird little factoid from the cognitive behavior folks -- action comes first, then motivation. So it's impossible to be excited about something that you have not spent some time with. And the more time you spend, the more likely you'll feel excited by it. People think it's the other way around, that you feel motivated and then go do stuff, but it's not. So everything you've ever gotten excited about started off with you not being very interested at all, but giving something a shot, whether it was a book, a lecture, a website, or so forth.

wumpushunter 14y ago
Daniel, I'm interested in reading more about this. Where did you discover this factoid?
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  A self-help book I read a long time ago -- http://amzn.to/VXjT8j http://amzn.to/VXjT8j

thenomad 14y ago

Hmm. Fails the anecdata test for me. I know a lot of people who do things they're passionate about - linguists, filmmakers (including me) and novelists. Nearly all of them struggled for years to get to the point where they're full-time at their passion, taking various other jobs of varying degrees of crappiness. All of them are very happy with what they're doing now, and - crucially - also loved pursuing their passion when it wasn't bringing in the bacon. There's a good idea here - "If you're passionate about something, consider doing something else that pays better to bring money in, at least whilst you're getting good at your passion" - but the "if you want to do something that is hard to achieve full-time status in, abandon it and do something easier" message is, from my experience, a massive overreach.

Ingaz 14y ago

>> "If you practice hard, soon you might find you're the best in your group of students," I strongly disagree. When I was young I wanted to became a great guitarist. I've practiced a lot, but when I was near 18 I understood a simple thing: "I will never be Freep, Clapton or Hendrix, no matter how I will try harder". I put aside my guitar for years. I'd thought that time: "I will never became great musician, but I can be a good engineer". My wife was amazed that I can play guitar after two years of our marriage. Hard work is not definitive factor in all cases. Sometimes you just must have inherent ability to do the work. For example: everybody could be trained to run marathon. But it's not possible to be trained as good marathon runner. One must have genetic ability for this.

tunesmith 14y ago

It's probably worth considering... p(able-to-make-money-at-passion | general-public) = x p(able-to-make-money-at-passion | hn-reading public) = y y is probably greater than x, so that might color the general conclusion of people reading the article, on this board anyway. In other words, "In my experience, having a lifelong passion of hacking/programming computers to do valuable functional things, this article is wrong!" might be based on a faulty premise.

wellpast 14y ago

I've spent many years developing skills that pay well, that I'm good at, that offer an easy flow and easy productivity. But at the end of the day I don't want this to be what my life is about. I wish I'd started earlier following my passions; I've been dragged to date in golden handcuffs. This is the advice I'd give to myself ten years ago: If you know what you want to do, what you want your life to be about, and you believe you can develop the talents to do it, pursue that goal aggressively and immediately, don't waste time.

Communitivity 14y ago

This guy has some good thoughts, but his main points are way off (from 20+ years in sw engineering). Here's why. Passion might follow mastery sometimes, but usually it is the other way around. My advice is to figure out what you're passionate about-then figure out if there is a way to monetize that passion that makes sense for the lifestyle you want. He has a good description when he says "Roughly speaking, work can be broken down into a job, a career, or a calling. A job pays the bills; a career is a path towards increasingly better work; a calling is work that is an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.". Then he adds"(Clearly most people want their work to be a calling.)". Nope. There are lots of people for whom their work is not even in their top two priorities. There's nothing wrong with them or the folks for whom their work is a calling. However, food for thought...as a founder in the tech business, do you really want to hire anyone in a tech or marketing position who's work is not their calling? That said, people who's work is their calling are rare, and they tend to be very good, which makes them expensive. However, I don't think that 10 bad devs are not better than one really good one - so the old saying 'you get what you pay for holds true', they're worth it. In short...find your calling, and follow it - just realize it might not be your work.