20 ms·
If your passions don't pay well, you're probably not making something people want.
by pdog 13y ago
If your passions don't pay well, you're probably not making something people want.
- adamnemecek 13y agoThis is possibly the most misguided comment I've read on HN.
- nightski 13y agoWhat are some passions that people have, which other people greatly desire, that are not paid well? I am genuinely curious.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- adamnemecek 13y agoIf nothing else, he kind of slipped in the 'people desire'. Why is that a requirement for a passion? As in, why is the requirement that one should be making it for other people? E.g. what if you are really into scuba diving?
- nightski 13y agoBecause that is the premise in pdog's comment which you were refuting as misguided. You are free to do whatever you want (and not what other people desire) if you are self sufficient enough to not need anything from others (highly unlikely).
- tedunangst 13y agoSo if I like to go scuba diving, which doesn't pay me well at all, I must therefore not be making something people want?
- collyw 13y agoProbably not while you are scuba diving. Unless you are an instructor and someone wants lessons from you.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- graue 13y agoMusic. You can have hundreds of thousands of fans and still not be able to quit your day job.
- nightski 13y agoWhat is a fan? Someone who gave your music a thumbs up? Or something willing to pay for the music you produced because they desire it so much? I have a feeling if you have hundreds of thousands of the latter you'd be in good shape.
- rm999 13y agoAcademia/research. I was making more than some of my world class professors a few years into my career, where I was using research they developed and improved upon.
- jjoonathan 13y agoA thousand times this. Markets automatically value knowledge and discoveries at nothing because you typically have to possess knowledge (sometimes for 100 years) before you can estimate its value. If the development of a new industry goes through stages "A B C D ... X Y Z," where A-M are academic discoveries, the market awards 100% of the profit to N-Z and maybe a percent or two to M if they got lucky with patents, even though A-M required significant capital expenditure to carry out. Everything we care about has been touched by uncompensated academics in some way (uncompensated = rewarded with <1% of the produced value for the purposes of argument). Much of the Nitrogen in your body comes from the Haber process. The air you breathe has benefited from emission reduction chemistry figured out by academics. The basis for the chemistry that produced the plastics around you was all figured out by academics (albeit tested, refined, and implemented by better paid engineers). Academic physicists made semiconductor models that formed the basis of simulations that made the industry practical. If you're not on Windows, academics wrote a healthy chunk of the OS on your computer. Physicists figured out the details of nuclear energy (in the US, 20% of the energy you are using right now) and built models that are used to a significant degree in the engineering of all of the others. Scientists are going to be responsible for pulling our collective asses out of the fire wrt global warming. The more I write the more I realize (and hopefully you realize) just how silly this train of thought is. As for mathematics, where would engineers be without linear algebra or calculus? How much less efficient would industry be without linear programming (programming = schedule making in this context)? It's impossible to even formulate these thoughts correctly because everything is interrelated. I challenge you (great?-grandparent libertarian) to find an industry that does not inextricably depend upon some kind of model or fact produced by uncompensated academics (as defined above -- use any threshold for value capture you deem appropriate). Whatever the market rewards people for, it is not value creation. It is value creation multiplied by a long list of factors which often go to 0 for arbitrary reasons (your customers are too poor, your product is not excludable, etc.) --------- Fortunately, people are not rational actors wrt accumulating money. Here's what future career paths very roughly look like for new grads (based on my own perceptions, not glassdoor): Helping the poor: $0 (maybe $12k if you count a fellowship) Trying to Cure Cancer: $25k/yr, bump to $40k after 6 years Engineering Medical Devices, Airplanes, etc: $60k/yr Trying to Build the Next Twitter: $100k/yr-$150k/yr Helping Rich People Game the System to Get Richer: $150k/yr, $300k/yr after a few years if successful What disturbs me is that if I were to prioritize this list based on benefit to humanity, it would take the exact opposite ordering. There was <1% chance of that happening randomly.
- wxs 13y agoI can't tell how serious the question is, but: how about anything that serves the poor, such as providing warm clothing for the homeless in the winter? Providing dental care for drug addicts?
- btgeekboy 13y agoCommercial pilot. Pays well once you've invested your life in it. Starting out, though, you're looking at $50k+ to get the required ratings, while being paid $25k/yr to start.
- nightski 13y agoThat is simply because no one desires an inexperienced pilot (ATP requires 1500 hours). I went to Embry Riddle and many of my friends are pilots. I understand how rough it is.
- davidy123 13y agoCaring for family.