8 ms·

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for

> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. > Most people pick their career fairly randomly... And in the truest sense of "most people" I would bet that "most people take whatever work they can get, and sometimes something sticks" is probably more accurate. I know these sentiments are a bit cynical, I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them. I understand we need ideals and motivation to make them a reality, but more flowery advice doesn't seem to be the best tactic. Regardless, Sam is an amazing individual who has done an enormous amount for others and the startup community. This isn't meant to disparage his views or advice; ironically, I think it's just hardest to give truly sage advice when you're trying to be sage.

zan2434 11y ago
Hmm I always default to not "do what you love" but "love what you do" in that most work has some interesting component, and what's really important to develop is the ability to isolate that aspect and motivate yourself with it. That's something I think everyone can use, regardless of their position in life
- AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
  Totally agree. I love programming, and solution design. Working in service IT I get a lot of both; at the same time though, what we build doesn't interest me at all (corporate web services, government intranets etc). I like my job, and I do it well, but I consider that to be in spite of what it produces.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- EGreg 11y ago
  You know that song, "if you can'y be with yhe one you love, love the one you're with?"
- breadbox 11y ago
  That's true, but still, it's advice that's a lot easier and more helpful for us the privileged.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  It's easy to say, but in practice it's difficult to go home satisfied with the concept of a dead end job. Personally I found plenty of little things to love about otherwise horrible dead end jobs, but that wasn't really the reason to keep going back to work, I was there to get paid to live my life outside of work because the job itself was not really fun or fruitful.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I don't think it's about individual jobs; more industries/verticals/skillsets. If you have e.g. plumbing knowledge and not much else, first, learn to love (something about) plumbing. Then, figure out a way to make money doing the specific part of plumbing you love.
  - andyjdavis 11y ago
    >Personally I found plenty of little things to love about otherwise horrible dead end jobs, but that wasn't really the reason to keep going back to work, I was there to get paid to live my life outside of work because the job itself was not really fun or fruitful. I actually think this is a better message for people... Some jobs are going to be great, others are going to suck. That doesn't really matter because for most people its what you do outside of your job that will determine your happiness. Try and find a job/career that you like but sometimes a job is just something you do for money to fund other stuff and that is perfectly ok. Personally I find the increasing emphasis on work as a way to derive personal satisfaction troubling. It looks like a subtle trap to me. A way to convince people to forgo time with their family, hobbies, side ventures and anything else you might possibly derive happiness from in favor of just working more and trying to convince yourself that that is enough. If you love your job then more power to you but sometimes a job is just a means to an end and that is perfectly ok. Just make sure that you are spending the rest of your time doing stuff that makes you happy. Spend time with family and friends, make something, learn something new and make sure you are using the money from your job in ways that will contribute to your long term financial well being.
    - astrocat 11y ago
      >Personally I find the increasing emphasis on work as a way to derive personal satisfaction troubling. It looks like a subtle trap to me. A way to convince people to forgo time with their family, hobbies, side ventures and anything else you might possibly derive happiness from in favor of just working more and trying to convince yourself that that is enough. Extremely well put. This entire concept has troubled me for a long time and you've really nailed it pointing out that we're increasingly advising people to get their joy in life from their work instead of the literally MILLIONS of other things they can enjoy. Thanks for that.
- afterburner 11y ago
  "love what you do"... and have a good manager.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them. This is my take as well. If prompted for advice, I tell people to find satisfation outside of work. Work is a rigged game. It simply will not make you happy outside of some truly edge cases and those cases are often temporary until things change. "New boss took away the pinball table. I miss the noisy environment and need it to work!" "New boss won't take away the pinball table! Its too noisy for me to work!" Its also concerning to make career choices at age 18-22 that will last a lifetime. Young me loved working in tech. Current me could leave it at anytime and kinda wants to. Unfortunately, our employment system isn't set for a mid-life career change, unless you want to take on serious risk and start at the bottom of yet another career mountain to climb, which you may bore of just as fast, if not faster. My personal wish is to migrate society to accept a very young retirement age. Maybe as early as 50. With automation going where it is, I think this is probably inevitable and am happy to think my kids won't be grueling through work until 65-70 like my parents generation did.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Yes it's strange how far our developments in efficiency have progressed yet somehow everyone is still working 60 hour work weeks.. Reminds me of that obscure Bill Murray movie "City of Ember" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSFsbv6eUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSFsbv6eUg
- emiliobumachar 11y ago
  Early retirement is very hard for most people and borderline impossible for many, but social acceptance is not part of the problem. Money is the problem. If you want to take the money from society, then you have social acceptance issues. Society is generally fine with early retirement, as long as you don't plan on depending on the government.
lighthawk 11y ago
> I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. I think Sam is right to say this, though. There are plenty of people holding themselves back. I hold myself back because I would be sacrificing my family's happiness for my own, and sometimes you have to do your job and get paid until you make and/or are blessed with an opportunity to do better.
strlen 11y ago
> I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. > And in the truest sense of "most people" I would bet that "most people take whatever work they can get, and sometimes something sticks" is probably more accurate. I am glad you've brought up this point, but in some ways this "first world problems" narrative is itself elitist: people who are less wealthy, people who live in poor and authoritarian countries (both are sets my parents and I once belonged to) _still_ have concerns about fulfilling work, about balancing professional and/or academic success with family obligations, and suffer from rejection, feelings of inadequacy, failure to live up to expectations of others, and the like. Even more-so, many of the tradeoffs described play into choices people have to make in regards to joining "the elite". For some, a decision to be happy/fulfilled might mean forsaking the "elite"/"privileged" status. I still remember the waning days of the dot-com boom, when my family's immigration lawyer was horrified that I chose to study CS: "but all the jobs will be outsourced", "computers will program themselves". Programming (or "tech") wasn't held in high esteem when sama and I entered college: class sizes were all times low, (for those who are in Silicon Valley) 237 was the "dot com graveyard", and $1300 for a 2-bedroom within Cupertino school district was considered outrageously high. Nonetheless, There is an important caveat I would add to what sama says -- and I think you've been hinting it in your post -- "liking what you do for work" isn't the same as "following your passion". Factors such as skill and aptitude for the given work, opportunities for finding such work, etc... all contribute to "liking what you do". I don't know if I am misreading sama or if this is an omission in sama's essay (somehow, I believe it's the former!), but often time liking what one does, also requires building some aptitude in things one (thinks) they don't like: e.g., "I hate maths!" (extrapolated from "I dislike continuous maths the way it was taught in (US) high school, so I never approached discrete maths, linear algebra, etc...") had stopped far too many people from building an enjoyable career in a maths-heavy (but not in any way exclusively mathematical, especially as far as industry work goes) fields. Likewise, "fulfilling" isn't the same as "fun". To paraphrase a person much smarter than me that I worked for -- twice -- eating a good meal is fun, going hiking is fun, watching a movie is fun; building software (or, writing a cookbook, exploring/charting a nature preserve to create safe and sustainable hiking trails, writing a screenplay or acting in a movie, watching a movie critically for a review, etc...) is, on the other hand, fulfilling and deeply enjoyable but not necessarily "fun" (even if I'll call it "fun", as I usually do) in the exact same way.
chm 11y ago
I absolutely agree. But even in the elite some take whatever job they can. Not everybody can be a Doctor, Lawyer, Pharmacist, Psychologist, etc. Getting an education doesn't mean you can cherry pick jobs. Edit to add a saying popular in my family: "Ubi amatur non laboratur, aut si laboratur, labor amatur."
- vidarh 11y ago
  Working as a lawyer is actually increasingly a low paid job unless you graduate with top results from a top school. In the UK, the average solicitor earned about 10% less than the UK average as of a few years ago, and that is pulled up by a tiny elite at a small number of the top firms, where starting salaries are twice or more the national average for solicitors in general, and where equity partners can easily earn 100-200 times the average solicitor.
agumonkey 11y ago
>> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about And even when you do care about it, there's no way you know in advance how it's gonna go on the field. A friend is actually pretty sad about his job because of the company structure and workflow even though the domain is almost spot on what he loves. Work and fulfillment seem unrelated to me.
lamuerteflaca 11y ago
I'm not part of the elite. I do what I love even if that means I'm broke. Saying that you cannot do what you love because you are not priviledged are just excuses. Sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed otherwise don't whine. Find a way otherwise you were never meant to do it if you give up too easily. Most people are just talk though. They will do what they love if you hand them everything in a silver platter. Well the universe doesn't give a damn about you. You are just star waste.
- ddingus 11y ago
  Yeah. Wealth is about our time. When we can purpose more of our time than others purpose for us, we are more wealthy. Lots of ways to get at that condition. Having lots of money is one way. Limiting dependencies and costs is another way. Well put. Wealthy people tend to be happy people. And in the sense of time and purpose, I believe that's fairly true. At least they have a good opportunity to be happy. The other way is to really think about work, potential paths, and then network, until you find an arrangement that resonates. For some, it might be working on contract. For others, it might be a good team that gets along well. Still others might want to be working on something novel, or making things. Whatever. I'm not elite either. And I've managed to spend a lot of my work time doing things I really love. And that's been difficult for me sometimes too. It's never perfect. That's the work part of work. But, it's possible for a lot of people to take steps, one at a time, to get somewhere they feel good about. All comes down to what's worth what. For me, I can't really deal with just living for weekends, or even burning so much time per week. It's gotta all mesh somehow, or I'm on a grind, and it's just not worth it. The other case is being trapped. Being careful about money limits dependencies, and that can help with aligning work, life, love. Been there a time or two as well, and once that was bad decisions, another time it was happenings that ended up falling on me. Took time to dig out from that.
  - sagichmal 11y ago
    This is super off-topic, but what compels you to write like this? Putting paragraph breaks after every sentence, or every other sentence. Did you learn it from someone? Did you fall into the pattern naturally? I've seen it more and more, and it really frustrates me. In my reading it corrupts your ideas with this TED-talky, breathless, pseudo-momentousness, ruining what might otherwise be an interesting point or story. And I guess I'm surprised I'm (apparently) in the minority on this view.
willholloway 11y ago
> I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. We (humanity) are fixing this. Never before in human history has learning the state of the art in any field been freely accessible to anyone. The tools to create a new world have never been this cheap, and there have never been so many helpful people giving away so much knowledge. There has never been so much money available for investment, and investment has never been this founder friendly. There has never been a market of this size this freely reachable, if you have good ideas that are sticky and sharable. So yes, 8/10 are right now, but we can get that number down. I think custom fabrication using all the new tools, FDM 3D printing being just the start, is a serious contender for making a huge dent in the alienated work problem. I'm not feeling cynical, not yet. This isn't the end of the story, this is just the beginning, we are alive during the greatest renaissance humanity has ever known, how awesome can we make the world? I think we can make it pretty awesome.
- bandrami 11y ago
  Never before in human history has learning the state of the art in any field been freely accessible to anyone. Really? I'm working in Mumbai right now (outsourcing has apparently gone dyslexic, as Russel Peters said). I'll be in rural Karnataka this week, and I'm pretty sure they'd disagree that learning the state of the art in any field is freely accessible to them. And there's 65 million people in that (relatively small) Indian state. there have never been so many helpful people giving away so much knowledge. I definitely agree with that, which is why it's hard for people who used to make a living transmitting knowledge. Oh, and a lot of the knowledge being given away so readily includes "how to violently undermine the global capital system that made this information dissemination possible". There has never been so much money available for investment, and investment has never been this founder friendly. Were you working in 1998? I remember those days... There has never been a market of this size this freely reachable, if you have good ideas that are sticky and sharable. I'm very lucky in that I get to use my talents for low-level programming to work on water purification systems. Mumbai has 10,000 deaths per annum (yes, 10,000) from waterborne illnesses, and it's probably the most developed city in India. But this isn't a problem that needs cleverness; it just needs a whole lot of people to do a very lot of hard, low-paid work. Water in particular gets loaded into the "entrepreneur" model all the time, but it doesn't really fit. You need a lot of people to build a lot of public pipes and faucets, and you need a social contract. Gates has been asked why he doesn't work on the global digital divide and usually just says "Maslow", and I think he's got a point.
rifung 11y ago
Is this even easy to achieve in the "startup crowd"? Maybe I can see it for founders but having worked at 3 start ups so far I definitely don't feel like people thought they were living the dream doing what they did. I always bought into this mentality of trying to find a job that I really LOVED. The only thing it made me do was switch jobs frequently. I'd love for someone to convince me I'm wrong but the people who seem happiest have basically told me they get satisfaction outside of work and like their job because it enables them to do other things, not because they necessarily love whatever it is they do at their job.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>I know these sentiments are a bit cynical, I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them. I understand we need ideals and motivation to make them a reality, but more flowery advice doesn't seem to be the best tactic. Very much agreed. In fact, I think it's far more reassuring to tell young people that the "take what you can get" world they actually experience is real, and that "we adults" aren't secretly sneering at them for failing to "do great work" or "change the world". Most people just make a living, and that's ok.
- grimp 11y ago
  Yeah, I'm starting to realise more and more after fighting my way to the bottom rung of a tech industry where options and upward mobility are slim at the age of 24, that taking what i can get and not 'changing the world' or 'doing great work' is still even better than half my friends who can't even get jobs or are working in a cafe or something.
paulhauggis 11y ago
"I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right." Privileged? Hardly. I worked a regular job for many years while spending years of my free time and weekends to create a business where I can now choose what I work on. Most people aren't willing to sacrifice time now to enjoy comforts later. I don't consider it privilege that I did..and neither should the many people working on startups.
- thret 11y ago
  There's a privilege here you are not seeing: ability. Just being capable of pursuing a startup puts you in an elite minority. Hard work and sacrifice are familiar to many people in the 8/10.
- quanticle 11y ago
  >I worked a regular job for many years while spending years of my free time and weekends to create a business where I can now choose what I work on. Then you did not have a regular job. You had a job that paid you enough to support yourself while retaining enough free time and mental energy to pursue your startup idea. For most people, this is not the case (esp. the mental energy bit).
  - johnnycarcin 11y ago
    I don't think that's a very fair statement. Some people are just "doers" and get off on working all the time. Some people also understand that you don't owe your life to your company (unless it is your own company) which means you make sure they don't take over every waking hour. I guess maybe the issue is in the definition of what a "regular job" is... Over the past 15 years I've always worked at what I would call regular jobs, full-time jobs at large companies where people build careers. Many of these jobs included an on-call rotation. Until our first child came into the picture I was able to, and did, work on various other projects outside of work with the hopes of one of them making it big. None of them did but that work put me in a place where within the last couple of years I have been able to essentially pick my job and work at my desired pay. Now that our child is a bit older I've also gone back to working on smaller projects outside of my daily work schedule.
onewaystreet 11y ago
You're not wrong, but Sam isn't writing for those people. He's writing for the people that read HN. Not all advice has to be targeted to the least privileged.
pkaler 11y ago
> I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. Maybe. Maybe not. My less "book smart" friends that learned blue-collar trades like being a welder or carpenter are much happier than the ones that found white-collar data entry and sales jobs. They have to put up with crap like unions and graveyard shifts, but in general, they are happier because they get the satisfaction of making things.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  I know it's not the case for everyone but I actually prefer graveyard shifts. There's less going on so it can be just me and the job without the outside distractions. I worked for myself for 2 years and I found I always defaulted back to a nocturnal state.
hkmurakami 11y ago
If you think that is privileged, think about the "money buys you freedom" line (which is my line as well, fwiw). Most people in this country and the world do not make nearly enough money to even begin to think like this.
d_luaz 11y ago
No one say it would be easy to work on the things you love: sacrifice have to be made, and there shall be big challenges. We could argue it's impossible for someone to do it due to external circumstances of being less privilege; think about some of the public figures who made it? Are these people doing the impossible more privileged than you are?
vishnugupta 11y ago
I agree with you mostly. This article was an eye-opener for me which reinforces your thoughts : https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/
ub 11y ago
Agreed.Read a meme somewhere that if only hardwork and perseverance resulted in success, then African village women would have been millionaires.
atmosx 11y ago
Totally agreed, but you have to put everything you read from this kind of people into perspective otherwise you miss the point. What troubles though is the following: Most people (if not all people) know already that, eating well, sleeping well, being organised, etc. is paramount to live a good life, have a good work and so on. All of these things are more personal than anything. Why, do we still don't do these things? What is about human nature that makes us weak enough NOT to do the right thing?
ckozlowski 11y ago
Agreed. A friend of mine once wrote something similar to your sentiments. May have been posted here in the past. "I don’t like advice like “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Not because it isn’t true, but because it’s a monkey’s paw: it’s true under the right circumstances with the right people, and for everyone else, it’s just bad advice." http://rachelnabors.com/2014/08/19/dont-do-what-you-love/ http://rachelnabors.com/2014/08/19/dont-do-what-you-love/

zan2434 11y ago

Hmm I always default to not "do what you love" but "love what you do" in that most work has some interesting component, and what's really important to develop is the ability to isolate that aspect and motivate yourself with it. That's something I think everyone can use, regardless of their position in life

AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
Totally agree. I love programming, and solution design. Working in service IT I get a lot of both; at the same time though, what we build doesn't interest me at all (corporate web services, government intranets etc). I like my job, and I do it well, but I consider that to be in spite of what it produces.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
EGreg 11y ago
You know that song, "if you can'y be with yhe one you love, love the one you're with?"
breadbox 11y ago
That's true, but still, it's advice that's a lot easier and more helpful for us the privileged.
nosuchthing 11y ago
It's easy to say, but in practice it's difficult to go home satisfied with the concept of a dead end job. Personally I found plenty of little things to love about otherwise horrible dead end jobs, but that wasn't really the reason to keep going back to work, I was there to get paid to live my life outside of work because the job itself was not really fun or fruitful.
- derefr 11y ago
  I don't think it's about individual jobs; more industries/verticals/skillsets. If you have e.g. plumbing knowledge and not much else, first, learn to love (something about) plumbing. Then, figure out a way to make money doing the specific part of plumbing you love.
- andyjdavis 11y ago
  >Personally I found plenty of little things to love about otherwise horrible dead end jobs, but that wasn't really the reason to keep going back to work, I was there to get paid to live my life outside of work because the job itself was not really fun or fruitful. I actually think this is a better message for people... Some jobs are going to be great, others are going to suck. That doesn't really matter because for most people its what you do outside of your job that will determine your happiness. Try and find a job/career that you like but sometimes a job is just something you do for money to fund other stuff and that is perfectly ok. Personally I find the increasing emphasis on work as a way to derive personal satisfaction troubling. It looks like a subtle trap to me. A way to convince people to forgo time with their family, hobbies, side ventures and anything else you might possibly derive happiness from in favor of just working more and trying to convince yourself that that is enough. If you love your job then more power to you but sometimes a job is just a means to an end and that is perfectly ok. Just make sure that you are spending the rest of your time doing stuff that makes you happy. Spend time with family and friends, make something, learn something new and make sure you are using the money from your job in ways that will contribute to your long term financial well being.
  - astrocat 11y ago
    >Personally I find the increasing emphasis on work as a way to derive personal satisfaction troubling. It looks like a subtle trap to me. A way to convince people to forgo time with their family, hobbies, side ventures and anything else you might possibly derive happiness from in favor of just working more and trying to convince yourself that that is enough. Extremely well put. This entire concept has troubled me for a long time and you've really nailed it pointing out that we're increasingly advising people to get their joy in life from their work instead of the literally MILLIONS of other things they can enjoy. Thanks for that.
afterburner 11y ago
"love what you do"... and have a good manager.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

>I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them. This is my take as well. If prompted for advice, I tell people to find satisfation outside of work. Work is a rigged game. It simply will not make you happy outside of some truly edge cases and those cases are often temporary until things change. "New boss took away the pinball table. I miss the noisy environment and need it to work!" "New boss won't take away the pinball table! Its too noisy for me to work!" Its also concerning to make career choices at age 18-22 that will last a lifetime. Young me loved working in tech. Current me could leave it at anytime and kinda wants to. Unfortunately, our employment system isn't set for a mid-life career change, unless you want to take on serious risk and start at the bottom of yet another career mountain to climb, which you may bore of just as fast, if not faster. My personal wish is to migrate society to accept a very young retirement age. Maybe as early as 50. With automation going where it is, I think this is probably inevitable and am happy to think my kids won't be grueling through work until 65-70 like my parents generation did.

nosuchthing 11y ago
Yes it's strange how far our developments in efficiency have progressed yet somehow everyone is still working 60 hour work weeks.. Reminds me of that obscure Bill Murray movie "City of Ember" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSFsbv6eUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSFsbv6eUg
emiliobumachar 11y ago
Early retirement is very hard for most people and borderline impossible for many, but social acceptance is not part of the problem. Money is the problem. If you want to take the money from society, then you have social acceptance issues. Society is generally fine with early retirement, as long as you don't plan on depending on the government.

lighthawk 11y ago

> I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. I think Sam is right to say this, though. There are plenty of people holding themselves back. I hold myself back because I would be sacrificing my family's happiness for my own, and sometimes you have to do your job and get paid until you make and/or are blessed with an opportunity to do better.

strlen 11y ago

> I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. > And in the truest sense of "most people" I would bet that "most people take whatever work they can get, and sometimes something sticks" is probably more accurate. I am glad you've brought up this point, but in some ways this "first world problems" narrative is itself elitist: people who are less wealthy, people who live in poor and authoritarian countries (both are sets my parents and I once belonged to) _still_ have concerns about fulfilling work, about balancing professional and/or academic success with family obligations, and suffer from rejection, feelings of inadequacy, failure to live up to expectations of others, and the like. Even more-so, many of the tradeoffs described play into choices people have to make in regards to joining "the elite". For some, a decision to be happy/fulfilled might mean forsaking the "elite"/"privileged" status. I still remember the waning days of the dot-com boom, when my family's immigration lawyer was horrified that I chose to study CS: "but all the jobs will be outsourced", "computers will program themselves". Programming (or "tech") wasn't held in high esteem when sama and I entered college: class sizes were all times low, (for those who are in Silicon Valley) 237 was the "dot com graveyard", and $1300 for a 2-bedroom within Cupertino school district was considered outrageously high. Nonetheless, There is an important caveat I would add to what sama says -- and I think you've been hinting it in your post -- "liking what you do for work" isn't the same as "following your passion". Factors such as skill and aptitude for the given work, opportunities for finding such work, etc... all contribute to "liking what you do". I don't know if I am misreading sama or if this is an omission in sama's essay (somehow, I believe it's the former!), but often time liking what one does, also requires building some aptitude in things one (thinks) they don't like: e.g., "I hate maths!" (extrapolated from "I dislike continuous maths the way it was taught in (US) high school, so I never approached discrete maths, linear algebra, etc...") had stopped far too many people from building an enjoyable career in a maths-heavy (but not in any way exclusively mathematical, especially as far as industry work goes) fields. Likewise, "fulfilling" isn't the same as "fun". To paraphrase a person much smarter than me that I worked for -- twice -- eating a good meal is fun, going hiking is fun, watching a movie is fun; building software (or, writing a cookbook, exploring/charting a nature preserve to create safe and sustainable hiking trails, writing a screenplay or acting in a movie, watching a movie critically for a review, etc...) is, on the other hand, fulfilling and deeply enjoyable but not necessarily "fun" (even if I'll call it "fun", as I usually do) in the exact same way.

chm 11y ago

I absolutely agree. But even in the elite some take whatever job they can. Not everybody can be a Doctor, Lawyer, Pharmacist, Psychologist, etc. Getting an education doesn't mean you can cherry pick jobs. Edit to add a saying popular in my family: "Ubi amatur non laboratur, aut si laboratur, labor amatur."

vidarh 11y ago
Working as a lawyer is actually increasingly a low paid job unless you graduate with top results from a top school. In the UK, the average solicitor earned about 10% less than the UK average as of a few years ago, and that is pulled up by a tiny elite at a small number of the top firms, where starting salaries are twice or more the national average for solicitors in general, and where equity partners can easily earn 100-200 times the average solicitor.

agumonkey 11y ago

>> On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about And even when you do care about it, there's no way you know in advance how it's gonna go on the field. A friend is actually pretty sad about his job because of the company structure and workflow even though the domain is almost spot on what he loves. Work and fulfillment seem unrelated to me.

lamuerteflaca 11y ago

I'm not part of the elite. I do what I love even if that means I'm broke. Saying that you cannot do what you love because you are not priviledged are just excuses. Sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed otherwise don't whine. Find a way otherwise you were never meant to do it if you give up too easily. Most people are just talk though. They will do what they love if you hand them everything in a silver platter. Well the universe doesn't give a damn about you. You are just star waste.

ddingus 11y ago
Yeah. Wealth is about our time. When we can purpose more of our time than others purpose for us, we are more wealthy. Lots of ways to get at that condition. Having lots of money is one way. Limiting dependencies and costs is another way. Well put. Wealthy people tend to be happy people. And in the sense of time and purpose, I believe that's fairly true. At least they have a good opportunity to be happy. The other way is to really think about work, potential paths, and then network, until you find an arrangement that resonates. For some, it might be working on contract. For others, it might be a good team that gets along well. Still others might want to be working on something novel, or making things. Whatever. I'm not elite either. And I've managed to spend a lot of my work time doing things I really love. And that's been difficult for me sometimes too. It's never perfect. That's the work part of work. But, it's possible for a lot of people to take steps, one at a time, to get somewhere they feel good about. All comes down to what's worth what. For me, I can't really deal with just living for weekends, or even burning so much time per week. It's gotta all mesh somehow, or I'm on a grind, and it's just not worth it. The other case is being trapped. Being careful about money limits dependencies, and that can help with aligning work, life, love. Been there a time or two as well, and once that was bad decisions, another time it was happenings that ended up falling on me. Took time to dig out from that.
- sagichmal 11y ago
  This is super off-topic, but what compels you to write like this? Putting paragraph breaks after every sentence, or every other sentence. Did you learn it from someone? Did you fall into the pattern naturally? I've seen it more and more, and it really frustrates me. In my reading it corrupts your ideas with this TED-talky, breathless, pseudo-momentousness, ruining what might otherwise be an interesting point or story. And I guess I'm surprised I'm (apparently) in the minority on this view.

willholloway 11y ago

> I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. We (humanity) are fixing this. Never before in human history has learning the state of the art in any field been freely accessible to anyone. The tools to create a new world have never been this cheap, and there have never been so many helpful people giving away so much knowledge. There has never been so much money available for investment, and investment has never been this founder friendly. There has never been a market of this size this freely reachable, if you have good ideas that are sticky and sharable. So yes, 8/10 are right now, but we can get that number down. I think custom fabrication using all the new tools, FDM 3D printing being just the start, is a serious contender for making a huge dent in the alienated work problem. I'm not feeling cynical, not yet. This isn't the end of the story, this is just the beginning, we are alive during the greatest renaissance humanity has ever known, how awesome can we make the world? I think we can make it pretty awesome.

bandrami 11y ago
Never before in human history has learning the state of the art in any field been freely accessible to anyone. Really? I'm working in Mumbai right now (outsourcing has apparently gone dyslexic, as Russel Peters said). I'll be in rural Karnataka this week, and I'm pretty sure they'd disagree that learning the state of the art in any field is freely accessible to them. And there's 65 million people in that (relatively small) Indian state. there have never been so many helpful people giving away so much knowledge. I definitely agree with that, which is why it's hard for people who used to make a living transmitting knowledge. Oh, and a lot of the knowledge being given away so readily includes "how to violently undermine the global capital system that made this information dissemination possible". There has never been so much money available for investment, and investment has never been this founder friendly. Were you working in 1998? I remember those days... There has never been a market of this size this freely reachable, if you have good ideas that are sticky and sharable. I'm very lucky in that I get to use my talents for low-level programming to work on water purification systems. Mumbai has 10,000 deaths per annum (yes, 10,000) from waterborne illnesses, and it's probably the most developed city in India. But this isn't a problem that needs cleverness; it just needs a whole lot of people to do a very lot of hard, low-paid work. Water in particular gets loaded into the "entrepreneur" model all the time, but it doesn't really fit. You need a lot of people to build a lot of public pipes and faucets, and you need a social contract. Gates has been asked why he doesn't work on the global digital divide and usually just says "Maslow", and I think he's got a point.

rifung 11y ago

Is this even easy to achieve in the "startup crowd"? Maybe I can see it for founders but having worked at 3 start ups so far I definitely don't feel like people thought they were living the dream doing what they did. I always bought into this mentality of trying to find a job that I really LOVED. The only thing it made me do was switch jobs frequently. I'd love for someone to convince me I'm wrong but the people who seem happiest have basically told me they get satisfaction outside of work and like their job because it enables them to do other things, not because they necessarily love whatever it is they do at their job.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

>I know these sentiments are a bit cynical, I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them. I understand we need ideals and motivation to make them a reality, but more flowery advice doesn't seem to be the best tactic. Very much agreed. In fact, I think it's far more reassuring to tell young people that the "take what you can get" world they actually experience is real, and that "we adults" aren't secretly sneering at them for failing to "do great work" or "change the world". Most people just make a living, and that's ok.

grimp 11y ago
Yeah, I'm starting to realise more and more after fighting my way to the bottom rung of a tech industry where options and upward mobility are slim at the age of 24, that taking what i can get and not 'changing the world' or 'doing great work' is still even better than half my friends who can't even get jobs or are working in a cafe or something.

paulhauggis 11y ago

"I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right." Privileged? Hardly. I worked a regular job for many years while spending years of my free time and weekends to create a business where I can now choose what I work on. Most people aren't willing to sacrifice time now to enjoy comforts later. I don't consider it privilege that I did..and neither should the many people working on startups.

thret 11y ago
There's a privilege here you are not seeing: ability. Just being capable of pursuing a startup puts you in an elite minority. Hard work and sacrifice are familiar to many people in the 8/10.
quanticle 11y ago
>I worked a regular job for many years while spending years of my free time and weekends to create a business where I can now choose what I work on. Then you did not have a regular job. You had a job that paid you enough to support yourself while retaining enough free time and mental energy to pursue your startup idea. For most people, this is not the case (esp. the mental energy bit).
- johnnycarcin 11y ago
  I don't think that's a very fair statement. Some people are just "doers" and get off on working all the time. Some people also understand that you don't owe your life to your company (unless it is your own company) which means you make sure they don't take over every waking hour. I guess maybe the issue is in the definition of what a "regular job" is... Over the past 15 years I've always worked at what I would call regular jobs, full-time jobs at large companies where people build careers. Many of these jobs included an on-call rotation. Until our first child came into the picture I was able to, and did, work on various other projects outside of work with the hopes of one of them making it big. None of them did but that work put me in a place where within the last couple of years I have been able to essentially pick my job and work at my desired pay. Now that our child is a bit older I've also gone back to working on smaller projects outside of my daily work schedule.

onewaystreet 11y ago

You're not wrong, but Sam isn't writing for those people. He's writing for the people that read HN. Not all advice has to be targeted to the least privileged.

pkaler 11y ago

> I get that this is aimed at the startup crowd, but I've always felt that this sentiment is pretty privileged. We, the elite, get to cherry pick our work and do what we like. But I bet 9/10 people will never feel they have this luxury, and 8/10 will be right. Maybe. Maybe not. My less "book smart" friends that learned blue-collar trades like being a welder or carpenter are much happier than the ones that found white-collar data entry and sales jobs. They have to put up with crap like unions and graveyard shifts, but in general, they are happier because they get the satisfaction of making things.

Omniusaspirer 11y ago
I know it's not the case for everyone but I actually prefer graveyard shifts. There's less going on so it can be just me and the job without the outside distractions. I worked for myself for 2 years and I found I always defaulted back to a nocturnal state.

hkmurakami 11y ago

If you think that is privileged, think about the "money buys you freedom" line (which is my line as well, fwiw). Most people in this country and the world do not make nearly enough money to even begin to think like this.

d_luaz 11y ago

No one say it would be easy to work on the things you love: sacrifice have to be made, and there shall be big challenges. We could argue it's impossible for someone to do it due to external circumstances of being less privilege; think about some of the public figures who made it? Are these people doing the impossible more privileged than you are?

vishnugupta 11y ago

I agree with you mostly. This article was an eye-opener for me which reinforces your thoughts : https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/

ub 11y ago

Agreed.Read a meme somewhere that if only hardwork and perseverance resulted in success, then African village women would have been millionaires.

atmosx 11y ago

Totally agreed, but you have to put everything you read from this kind of people into perspective otherwise you miss the point. What troubles though is the following: Most people (if not all people) know already that, eating well, sleeping well, being organised, etc. is paramount to live a good life, have a good work and so on. All of these things are more personal than anything. Why, do we still don't do these things? What is about human nature that makes us weak enough NOT to do the right thing?

ckozlowski 11y ago

Agreed. A friend of mine once wrote something similar to your sentiments. May have been posted here in the past. "I don’t like advice like “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Not because it isn’t true, but because it’s a monkey’s paw: it’s true under the right circumstances with the right people, and for everyone else, it’s just bad advice." http://rachelnabors.com/2014/08/19/dont-do-what-you-love/ http://rachelnabors.com/2014/08/19/dont-do-what-you-love/