When To Do What You Love
Can someone help me understand the first footnote?
>[1] These examples show why it's a mistake to assume that economic inequality must be evidence of some kind of brokenness or unfairness. It's obvious that different people have different interests, and that some interests yield far more money than others, so how can it not be obvious that some people will end up much richer than others? In a world where some people like to write enterprise software and others like to make studio pottery, economic inequality is the natural outcome.
Yes, clearly different passions lead to different industries which mean different economic outcomes.
But when people talk about "fairness", it usually means quality of life right? The ability to afford good healthcare, high quality food, housing, security, providing for a family, social opportunities. How are we defining fairness?
I have no idea of how to solve this or create the perfect utopia, btw. I'm just confused on the point of the footnote.
This is something I think about a lot and I thought the article was pretty solid. My father is a musician, so he always told me to do what I love. I tried to do that by becoming a research mathematician, that didn't work on and now I do something I don't love (but like some days) that consists of sitting at a computer writing code.
>One useful trick for judging different kinds of work is to look at who your colleagues will be. You'll become like whoever you work with. Do you want to become like these people?
I've had 3 careers: working with high school students in low income areas, being an academic research mathematician, and now being a data scientist. The people I liked the best and who I would like to become like were the teachers I worked with at the high schools in low income areas.
>Indeed, the difference in character between different kinds of work is magnified by the fact that everyone else is facing the same decisions as you. If you choose a kind of work mainly for how well it pays, you'll be surrounded by other people who chose it for the same reason, and that will make it even more soul-sucking than it seems from the outside. Whereas if you choose work you're genuinely interested in, you'll be surrounded mostly by other people who are genuinely interested in it, and that will make it extra inspiring.
This pretty well states the soul-suckingness of working in industry.
Maybe it's the youth in me, but I wholly and fully agree with PG here, and I strive to live by it. However, there's another fascinating school of thought that I read about back when I was an undergrad. It comes from Richard Muller, who used to be quite active on Quora back in the day:
> “Follow your passion” or the similar “Follow your dreams.” I’ve seen this advice lead people into paths in which they could not have productive lives or support themselves or families.
> With this advice, many kids will choose to become professional athletes, and then fail. My daughter (Elizabeth Muller) once wanted to become a professional dancer. I think she is very glad now that she instead went to UC San Diego, majored in math and literature, and got a masters degree in international management. (She is now the CEO of our non-profit BerkeleyEarth.org.) One of her friends, in contrast, decided to become a professional bicycle racer (encouraged by her parents) and she now supports herself by selling and repairing bicycles. Nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think it was what she envisioned when she took this career path.
> I suggest to children that before they set out on a career path, they consider what will happen if they are the 1000th best in the field. If your field is boxing, you will either be completely out of work, be a sparring partner, or (if you are lucky) be running your own gym. (Or, maybe, you’ll be an enforcer for some mob.) If you are a ballet dancer, it is unlikely that you will be performing; you will probably be teaching children how to dance ballet. If your field is physics or math, you will have very good income, have the respect of your neighbors (maybe they’ll think you are a genius), and a good diverse and productive life.
> I suggest instead that you teach children to try to plan their future lives, to design their futures. They should approach it as they would a challenging homework problem. Learn more about possible careers, and what they are like. Don’t choose too early, since many careers (running Berkeley Earth?) are not obvious to a youngster. Get a broad education, and do a good job at it. Study hard and learn. Get familiar with the world. Beware of childhood passions; they are based on a limited experience, and may not be a good choice for a career.
I'm not sure how to share the link to the post itself: https://www.quora.com/What-is-in-your-opinion-the-most-damag...
When friends say they are "going to start a business", I ask them "Why? Do you know why, do you know what your goal is?".
In most cases people can't really explain exactly why, and that's fine and normal. Only after years of being in business did certain things come clear to me. Are you there to make money, to follow your passion, to succeed with something, anything, to own your own time and life? The naive might say "all of the above", but they are not compatible.
You may find that you care more about owning your own time than working on stuff you are passionate about.
I've seen quite a few people start a business to work on something they are passionate about and then go out of business, when they COULD have stayed in business if they had been prepared to make money doing stuff they didn't love. What is more important in this case, being in business or doing stuff you love?
I'm young and at a pivotal point in my life, where I need to decide whether to remain in my well-paying job in software engineering or pursue my dream of becoming an entrepreneur. This article has deeply inspired me, hitting at just the right moment to encourage me to aim higher and take the leap.
> One useful trick for judging different kinds of work is to look at who your colleagues will be. You'll become like whoever you work with. Do you want to become like these people?
Reminded me of this gem: https://moxie.org/2013/01/07/career-advice.html
When you work for money, you'd rather do something else, and you aspire to save up enough so that you can stop and do something else.
When you love your work, it doesn't feel like work, and you don't want to stop.
(having said this, I know some people who started out wanting money in order to do something useful with it later, however now they are so hooked to optimize their income more and more -- money has become their main driver and primary motivation.)
Have you ever been in a situation where you really want to do what you love to do, but simply don't have the money to exist and have to do something else?
Does anyone who has successfully followed their passion project and has been financially successful as well provide some comments on this article? Is it just PG's way of luring in wannabe-enterpreneurs with words or does it hold some value? I am in no position to judge this since I am still working a day job.
Probably the culture of where I live is very different from the other side of the ocean, but... why is money such a big point in this article? I love my work and I'm decently paid and... I don't really want to be rich. With the given title, I would advocate for/stress on contentment rather than monetary richness.
Please if you are young and still in full-time education and reading this, please please please take it with a pinch of salt.
What you are reading is essentially a sales-pitch trying to lure you in. This has the tell-tale signs of classic hard sales pitches - playing on the fear of losing out, offering big rewards, comparing to a negative stereotypes, appealing to your ego/self-worth about not being ignorant, flattery by dismissing it as not greed but an intellectual puzzle for smart people like you etc etc. Your internal alarm bells that stop you getting suckered into things should be going crazy about now!
He has a vested interest in getting as many people as possible to throw themselves and their lives 110% into doing a start-up so that he can invest in it and make money off of your work.
For every successful billionaire (or hell even millionaire) that comes out of his "sales funnel", there will be hundreds if not thousands of people whose full-potential/career-potential/earning-potential will be severely curtailed as a result. They'll waste many of their most productive years, potentially building up massive debts in the process, chasing some start-up dream before eventually capitulating and failing before trying to get a "steady job" when they find themselves burnt-out and debt-ridden with nothing to show for it after 5-10 years of slog.
Meanwhile 5-10 years at a FAANG you would have pocketed several million in total-comp (probably in the region of 5+mil USD in the bay area I guess), working in low-stress environments with some of the best engineers, researchers, PMs, and leaders in the world while still having time and energy to live your life too.
It is a numbers game for him. Think carefully about what you are getting into before throwing your future life away. Good luck.
This article assumes your passions are highly monetizable.
Personally I feel that "Beating the averages" was an awesome article that was of technical interest and can apply to many things not just making money, and worth reading perhaps by every s/w developer. Whereas this article is of nothing like the same quality, it seems largely money oriented to me.
>you have to choose between working on what interests you the most and something else
I think this is where most people are and it can be common for all effort to amount to nothing more than "survival activities", with fewer options than normal occurring under increasing macro economic challenges.
In that case I would think it's good to never completely stop doing what you love most that is realistically within reach. Even if you can not give it very much of the full dedication it might deserve.
If you can't be fully "in the game" due to insufficient resources or something like that, maybe you can function somewhat adjacent in an even more sustainable way, maintaining better readiness through time for some rare opportunities that are almost never attainable, or for very long.
And keep it in perspective for opportunities to up the priority or focus, even as less-elusive things might come more easily within reach along the way.
Passion is too generic of a word and that gets confusing when it comes to advice like this. It could be someone is passionate about the activity itself, passionate about the idea of being successful, obsessed intellectually with a question, passionate about wanting to prove something…
If you aren’t young, you aren’t worth Paul taking a moment to write a sentence about you, though, so go to hell.
Apparently.
> Bill gates
A typical YC example. Why not take Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson or Brian Kernighan as an example?
I wonder what Paul's definition of "young" is in the sentence and why he qualifies this as only applicable to "young" people. Is he proposing that "old" people will have misaligned thinking about what needs to be built?
I am 41 with two kids.
> if you're young and good at technology, your unconscious instincts about what would be interesting to work on are very well aligned with what needs to be built
I gladens me to see that the sentiment here on HN is getting increasingly critical of PG and other VCs and Silicon Valley figures. Let's just hope that PG doesn't decide to pull the plug on HN some day.
I love his point about following your passion if your passion is in a narrow niche (especially if it involves technology). Trying to be the best at something popular will probably lead to failure, but I think people would be surprised how easy it is to become top 100 at something niche.
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Also worth thinking about whether you want to be in the bridge of a ship with lots of other people on board, prefer working in a different deck like Engineering, or flying your own light shuttle craft about!
From a commencement speech by a young person called Grant Sanderson:
> Influence is not distributed uniformly in the population and I for one would feel a lot more comfortable if it was you who were at the helm guiding this crazy ship that we're all riding.
> If you step into the next chapter of life with an implacable focus on adding values to others, you're more likely to be the ones at the helm.
> If you recognize that action precedes motivation, you're more likely to be at the helm.
> And if you ask what's possible now that wasn't 10 years ago, you're more likely to be at the helm.
> If you appreciate just how much power you have to shape the lives of the generation that follows you, you're more likely to be at the helm.
> And if you remain adaptable to a changing world, treating passion not as a destination but as a fuel, following not dreams but opportunities, you're more likely to be at the helm.
new twist on capitalist pitch: "There are even some people who have a genuine intellectual interest in making money. This is distinct from mere greed. They just can't help noticing when something is mispriced, and can't help doing something about it. It's like a puzzle for them."
the older Paul gets, he sounds just like rest of his club mates!
it’s dangerous to take advice from those with superlative ability if you are only slightly above average
often times it’s not for you
be honest of your place in this world
enjoy the luck you have it’s better than most
When your goal is to make a modest or steady income, you often have to focus on what the market values. It's like a big luck when your interests align with market demand
> you don't know what makes you happy, what the various kinds of work are really like, or how well you could do them
A very succinct explanation of complex emotional challenge.
Don't wait. Don't wait till the end of college to figure out what to work on. Don't even wait for internships during college. You don't necessarily need a job doing x in order to work on x; often you can just start doing it in some form yourself.
What silly advice. I didn’t even know my “what to work on” existed until I was near the end of my junior year of college. XD
Extremely out of touch and not useful at all. He needs to learn how to tell when he has something important to say and when he’s just yapping. How can he think making just a little bit of money is even an option? I have a very high income and I still can’t afford a home. I can’t even imagine how terrible my life would be if I took risks.
Work is what you do to keep society and your place in it going.
Hence it's an intersection of what society needs and what you are capable of.
The issue with modern degenerate society is that nobody'll tell you what society needs - you're supposed to figure it out through gossip.
This is extremely stupid.
People who write articles attempting to solve collective problems at an individual level are blaming the victim and giving terrible advice without realizing it. So it goes.
More self-serving feel-good from pg
The way to make billions, or even millions, is OWNERSHIP.
Own the profits or some of the profits of other people's hard work and creativity in some way, either directly or indirectly (eg property), or the promise of such profits (stocks), and trade that.
That's not to say you shouldn't work hard or create, yourself. Just that hard work, creativity, etc, in and of itself, doesn't pay. It pays off when you work harder (or smarter, or just luckier) than other people, in order to win or create ownership, that other people will then contribute to. Just like pg did.
From an investors perspective looking at a group of people with randomly distributed interests, it seems like great advice to motivate each and every one of them to pursue their interest with all their energy and waste their lives on it. Some might get lucky and make the world a better place.
From the perspective of an individual who only gets assigned one or a few subjects to be interested in, not knowing whether these will bring fortune or not, not so useful advice. Chances are that you will fail, lose money and friends, and forget to spend time with your loved ones.
the question is when
I didn't find any new terms here, but it was a great synthesis of a lot of his work. I also really enjoy the shorter length of the recent essays.
Here's my user test: https://news.pub/?try=https://www.loom.com/embed/9ac3f3b85fd...
> if you're young and good at technology...
> ... but if you want to become super rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most interested in becomes a good idea again.
It's sad to me that the wealth inequality manifested and upheld by the current structure of capitalism, that people like Graham full throatily endorse, creates this mentality.
"If you're young" is a euphemism for "if you are free from the necessities of responsibility, and so are able to forego the lack of consistent income (and if you're in the states, a lack of employer provided health care".
pg, encourage the companies you give money to pay an equal portion of profits to their employees, and maybe even the "olds" can be free do what they love; rather than the fear induced indentured servitude currently so predominant.
May even give us better products and solutions, or as you say, allow people to do actual "great work".
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tldr: be young.
why the hell arent you young!
it's cool.
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