How to Do What You Love 482
fnord_ix writes "Paul Graham has another interesting essay talking about How to Do What You Love. He talks about the lies that adults tell kids about what work is, and how work is equal to pain." From the article: "I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later. "
I don't know about that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really sad that we live in a culture where making a living is a bad thing. Comparing the average US citizen to anyone else in the world, we've got it pretty good. If you hate your job then consider the alternative - living in a war-torn nation where murderous gangs roam the streets and kill folks at random, and you looking for food because of drought. I'd bet that if most people spent 10 minutes in a country like
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Go home to my wife and family. And do whatever we want. Well, afford.
I don't love my job, and I don't expect I ever will, nor will I need to. I do enjoy my job, however, and I'd look elsewhere if I didn't. Wanna do what you love? Try the missus.
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing the average US citizen to anyone else in the world,...
[ironic]Oh right, I forgot, you people in the USA are the only ones who work for a living. All of us here in Europe, all of that people in Japan live in the middle age, fighting constant wars and waiting for someone to slit our throats in the streets.[/ironic]
Maybe you wanted to say "Comparing the average First World citizen with anyone else in a poor country..."
Wait... do you mean like in LA? or more like in NY?
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:3, Funny)
When people say "The USA" in the sense he was talking about they are usually referring to a broad definition that includes protectorates like Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada. The term Americans basically refers to civilized western nations.
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2, Funny)
So, you claim that I'm an American?
Good: time to tell my goverment to remove all those taxes from on gas and get myself a SUV. (Apart from the fact that I really dislike SUVs...)
*sigh* I'm an American. Who would have known?
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:friggin Europeans... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, you think it's really
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
I say encourage kids to do what they want (within reason
Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
People are able to do what they want all the time, and they do need encouragement to pursue these goals. But they also need to be taught the importance of financial stability. My father had a job he never wanted, but it was the only thing he could do to provide for his family at 18. As he got older and his finances became more stable, he was able to pursue his dreams, and had any of them really taken off financially, I'm sure he would have seriously considered doing them full time. But they didn't immediately have money we could live on if he were to quit his proper job, so he never even seriously considered quitting his job.
That sort of situation is a good one, and one that a LOT of people (especially the more artistically inclined) should consider. And many people out there are in such situations. But it's difficult to drum this into teenagers, and so parents/teachers/adults instead go for the "you'll hate your job but you have to do it" route, with some offering the glimmer of hope "but if your lucky you'll be able to do what you want in your spare time." Kids do dream about the improbable, and unfortunately if the dreams aren't kept in check, they'll persue those at the detriment of financial stability. Sure you hear success stories, but for every one, there's an uncountable number of failures.
Difference between SOMETHING and ANYTHING (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, there is a difference between telling kids they can do SOMETHING they love and telling them they can do ANYTHING they love. Otherwise, I would have a
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2, Insightful)
the most important thing.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
SPPH (Score:5, Insightful)
He made sure that he flew them all, too, from fighter jets to the largest commercial planes, from props to jets to helicopters. He never got tired of his job, and would often tell me to do what I enjoyed doing, and that the money would come eventually. He said that while he struggled with making enough money to keep his family going the way that he wanted to, but he never doubted. After I left home for uni, he moved into a better flying position and tripled his salary, finally allowing him and my mother to make the kind of money that they really wanted. It took many years for that to happen, though.
If you ask him, he'll tell you that he loved flying until the end of his career. Sure, he made some errors in judgement and would change some things about his life if he could go back, but he'll still say what he's always said -- "Do what you love to do, and then you'll do it well. When you do something well and it doesn't seem like work, you'll be successful at it." I used to call it "subjective pay per hour (SPPH)," meaning that sitting in a 40 hour a week job where every day feels like an eternity gives a lower SPPH than working twelve hours a day doing what you love and never noticing the time speeding by." I think a lot of people on this site know what I'm talking about.
I have had a lot of problems with my father over the years, but this is one area where I believe he hit the nail right on the head.
Re:SPPH (Score:2)
Re:SPPH (Score:4, Insightful)
And who will be the programmer? (Score:3, Insightful)
As they say, having too many generals and not enough soldiers is not a good thing. Fortunately, not that many people really want to be generals, managers, PHB or whatever position needs to take responsibilities. Just looking around here on
Ehh, I don't know about that (Score:2)
No doubt, you may have to make some sacrifices. Perhaps you need to stay in school longer, perhaps you need to move, perhaps you need to take a crappy job that leads to a good job, or perhaps you need to simply do something you like a lot and are good at... as opposed to "love" and are mediocre at. Moreover, you need to have a plan with feasible and attainable goals. You need to be smart about it, and yo
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
So I figured, damn the torpedoes: I'm going to do work I find interesting and enjoyable, or leave academia. After all, what's the worst thing that could happen? I'd end up doing stuff I hated, and have more money.
So I stopped worrying about what I thought other people would find interesting, and started working on problems that fascinated me. These days, I love my work and for the first time I really feel like I have a future in science. The thing is, if you find your work incredibly interesting, others may or may not find it exciting. But if you are an intelligent, curious person and you find your work boring, odds are damn good that other people will find it boring. And as far as I'm concerned, there are too many fascinating problems out there to waste time on the boring ones. These days, I wake up, and run over the dozen or so research projects I'm dabbling on, and say, "What do I want to work on today?", closely followed by, "And how long can I stall on this dissertation thing before my advisor kills me?"
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2)
Perhaps I'm in the fortunate position to be doing something I love, but I got here through working my butt off. So perhaps a realistic piece of advise is that you can get to do what you love (if you live in the West), but you may have to work damn hard to get it, and you may have to make sacrifices. The point is that our options are wide open, and it's up to the individual to determine whether the hard work and sacrifices a
Jean Jaques Rousseau (Score:2)
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:5, Insightful)
(A) you have a roof over your head, and can get food in your belly when you're hungry, and nobody is about to beat you up or murder you...
AND
(B) this is not going to change in the immediate future...
THEN
(C) Any further problems you have are in your head.
This is true on multiple levels. On one hand, people fail to enjoy the work they have in front of them -- sometimes work they chose for themselves -- because it doesn't match their ideal of perfection. They're weighed down with "shoulds" ("I should have a better boss than this idiot") and "mights" ("The project might fail and they might blame me") and wild inferences ("The fact they didn't take my suggestion to use Linux means they disrespect me.").
On the other hand, people also mishandle priorities. This is what I think a lot of people talk about when they tell you you should "do what you love".
Suppose you have the talent to be a professional musician. Trying to become on is risky, but it's important to understand the scope and character of the risk. Failure doesn't mean for people with middle class backgrounds that they'll starve or die of exposure on the street. What it means is that they won't be able to live in as nice a house or in as a desirable suburb as their parents; or at the very least that their path to those ends might be delayed by four or five years. If you can break into your second choice field several years late, I don't think it hurts you at all to have trod a road less travelled. When you throw in the towel and go to law school like dad wanted, maybe you'll specialize in intellecual property law, or maybe you'll have a particular interest in contracts. Or if it's med school, maybe you'll become a hand surgeon, or a psychiatrist interested in art therapy. What will happen is that whatever you do you'll bring more of your personal uniqueness to it than if you did what was expected.
In any case, going straight to law school is, in my opinion, a mishandling of priorities. At the age when this decision faces people, the things that a successful law career (and Dad's connections) would bring aren't all that important to you. Some would argue this is immaturity, but I'd say that immaturity is appropriate for young people, who having the slack that more years ahead and no family to provide for have no rational reason, in my opinion, not to stock away memories that will last a lifetime and deepen the individuality they bring to their mid-life career.
Re:I don't know about that... (Score:2)
Actually, in reading PG's articles, I have to say that the thing that I think I disagree most with him on is his opinions about LISP. He comes off as if he's spent *way* too many hours having to be defensive about his favorite language and now it's wormed its way into his personality.
LISP may have some nice features, but it just isn't *that* big a deal, and he gives it way too much credit for stunning returns in
getting them to know what they might love is hard! (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhere along the way I chose things electronic (and computational) and here I am...
What does the education system expose your kids to today?
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:2)
Calculus has been remove from the maths GCSE syllabus
I can't express how glad I am that I went through that stage of the UK education system in the last year that they still did 'O'-levels. I pity those who have had to put up with that GCSE bollocks.
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:2)
I've asked both my parents (aged 40) who've both led fairly different lives professionally, and both of them learnt calculus. Neither have ever had to use calculus in their life. Now sure, there are some professions where it will be needed, but I think I'd find that if I asked the average person, they would tell me they haven't used it since high s
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:2)
Solution: Teach physics students calculus.
Most people will aspire to do a business, law or arts degreee in university, simply because these lead on to higher paying careers. They will never use calculus again once they leave second level education. Most of them will never even use trigonometry. They wi
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:5, Funny)
STDs mostly. I'm not kidding, 25% of Americans age 15-39 have genital herpes.
While I generally don't admit it in face-to-face settings, I too fall into that statistic... but I'm not foolish enough to kid myself into blaming the educational system. Even at a young age I understood some of the negative consequences some actions might carry. Most generations since the '80s AIDS scare have grown up with a more realistic perception about sex.
Yes, since the day I found out, I've learned far more about STDs than I ever have at school. And yes, I wish the hassles of living daily with this was imprinted more on me back then, it might of made me more paranoid. But I certainly knew I was taking some chances redeeming those glory hole coupons at the fair last year.
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:5, Funny)
Uh-huh. And are they getting it from their teachers?
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:2)
OK firstly, citation please. And secondly, what makes you think the situation would be any different without the school system?
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:4, Informative)
They would tend to suggest the figures are closer to 1.4% in males and 2.2% in females. But if there's any conflicting data on this, I'm more than happy to accept it!
PS The Pubmed ID of the article is 16026639. You can get the abstract here [nih.gov]
Re:getting them to know what they might love is ha (Score:5, Funny)
I used to work on dull stuff. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I worked on interesting stuff.
They they took the interesting stuff and made it dull stuff in a foreign land.
Now I work on dull stuff.
As you work, remember who's creating the value, and who's getting paid for it without creating value.
Percentage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Percentage? (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone from NW-Europe, this kind of story always amazes me. Visiting Americans from the company HQ are always absolutely shocked when people are muttering obscenities while programming. On the other hand, people here would NEVER put up with a manager raising his voice. Cultural differences?
when i grow up... (Score:5, Funny)
also, my other car is a cubical.
Re:when i grow up... (Score:2)
Blah. (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly Graham's own actions are a large part of the reason why he's independently wealthy, but if he or anyone else thinks that luck was not an incredibly huge portion of it, they're wrong. And yet he (and other people like him) constantly preach on "here's how to succeed", as if, following their own advice, they themselves would actually succeed in any meaningful number of independent test runs of reality.
I don't mean to denigrate Graham, what he accomplished, or the fact that his own talents and efforts helped tremendously in those accomplishments. But these sorts of articles always strike me as unwarranted general conclusions from absurdly small sample sizes.
Re:Blah. (Score:5, Interesting)
choice quote:
"These essays and this writing style are tempting to people outside the subculture at hand because of their engaging personal tone and idiosyncratic, insider's view. But after a while, you begin to notice that all the essays are an elaborate set of mirrors set up to reflect different facets of the author, in a big distributed act of participatory narcissism."
The whole essay, "Dabblers and Blowhards" is here:
http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blo
Matt
Parent has a great link, check it out (Score:2)
Check out the parent's link if you have a moment, and throw modpoints his way if you're so inclined.
Re:Parent has a great link, check it out (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Blah. (Score:4, Informative)
"But the emailed links continued, and over the next two years Paul Graham steadily ramped up his output while moving definitively away from subjects he had expertise in (like Lisp) to topics like education, essay writing, history, and of course painting. Sometime last year I noticed he had started making bank from an actual print book of collected essays, titled (of course) "Hackers and Painters". I felt it was time for me to step up.
So let me say it simply - hackers are nothing like painters."
From the wiki on Paul Graham:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham [wikipedia.org]
"Graham has an A.B. from Cornell and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, and studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence."
Luck (Score:2)
There's a nonzero amount of truth in the saying "The harder I work, the luckier I get".
Re:Luck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blah. (Score:2)
As the saying goes, I've found that some people make their own luck...
Risk-takers (Score:5, Insightful)
This personality trade is also shared with most of the "losers" in the world.
Re:Risk-takers (Score:3, Funny)
Double-shot of scotch and a demotivator, stat! (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.despair.com/potential.html [despair.com]
The Puritan Work Ethic (Score:5, Informative)
blah blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, that's an incorrect statement, and I wish it would die. It's simplistic and not based in reality and just gives lazy people and excuse to dodge doing important work. I'm sick of hearing it.
Look at the flip side, if you find something you love doing, will you still love it if you get paid to do it?
More specifically, would you still love it if you had deadlines to deal with?
People who love their jobs either thrive on the pressure, or have 'easy' jobs that they don't have to take home with them. For example, my mom loves her job because it's low stress, and when she goes home, she doesn't have to worry about work at all. I love my job because I'm an integral part of my company. We both have hobbies we do outside of work that neither of us could ever make a living doing (or would want to!). Sure, in bizzarro world, someone would pay me to sit on my ass and watch weird movies all day, but I would quickly hate it because the other facets of my personality would get ignored. Likewise, if I did my day job for free, I would not get anything done because the pressure would be gone.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:2)
Some people just don't like the idea of work. Or helping other people out. Or getting off their asses at all.
Some people will put up with work and others will relish whatever job you throw at them and take from it what they can.
Ultimately it's about the people, not the jobs.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:2)
The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it and be prepared to live on the streets as they couldn't pay for accommodation, transport or utility services. They would scrounge for food and somehow find ways to clothe themselves and their family for free just in order to pursue what they wanted.
To quote a Savage Garden song: "I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires"
Re:blah blah blah (Score:4, Interesting)
So...accept that there will be meager times financially, and that there are more important things than that. Doing things you hate on other peoples terms just for the money is self-destructive prostitution. Doing things you love on other peoples terms just for the money is just prostitution. I may prostitute myself now. But at least it will allow me not having to work for money anymore in a few years.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
The only important work is well paid work?
I'm sorry, but I know people who do what they love, and work -damn hard- at it.
Having said that, the mistake I made was taking such advice, and not really having something I loved, thinking I was making some sacrifice for nobility and art when I should have just done the "Day Job" thing.
Ok, so I didn't RTFA, but I'm going to give my two cents anyways:
If you l
Re:blah blah blah (Score:3, Funny)
Satellite operator?
Good advice, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I think s/he might have focused more on finding ways to experience wonder from moment-to-moment. This isn't easy when you're slinging hash, or heading toward the 11th straight hour of wrapping up a code project for a manager named Godzilla.
Life really is moment-to-moment, and very, very non-linear. There are ways - without becoming a mindless new age fanatic - to deal with the everyday.
Many years ago I read a book on Aesthetics called "Art in the Everyday"; it had a big impact. (I think it's out of print, and most people would probably find it pedantic).
Wittgenstein had a great way of dealing with this; he said (to paraphrase) "don't wonder about why you are, or what you are, or how you came to be, etc. - simply wonder THAT you are.
Again, this is not about contemplating one's navel, but rather using good, time-worn techniques (meditation, etc.) to get beyond all the stuff that weighs us down, and use that weight as a lever to achieve some internal peace.
It's tough drilling down to the moment in difficult times, but there's peace there, no matter what. I wish we could teach our kids more about how to do that.
Lastly, none of this means quiting the world, and withdrawing. On the contrary, it's about finding ways to pay more attention to the world on a moment-by-moment basis. that's deosn't preclude anyone from being/doing in this world in any number of ways - i.e. agressive entrepreneur, waiter, writer, coder, nanny, stay-at-home-mom, etc.
A lesson that changes your entire life (Score:5, Interesting)
Back then, teachers where not advanced enough with computers to know that the stuff I coded in assembly actually where pretty advanced math. And since I was only 11 years old I had no clue it was advanced, to me it was just pure fun and I could not get enough of it. Too much later in life I discovered the connection between the school math and the computer programming that occupied my childhood.
I think teachers should be more creative in showing kids how they could use the things they learn in real life. Because of these experiences in my childhood - I got very bad math grades and did terribly in school. Later in life - I got a job as a service technican, but still I had many holes and lack of real knowledge on how things worked because of my lack of schooling.
Much later in life I rediscovered math and how fun it could be - because it rewared my personal projects with results that I really needed, that made math a lot of fun. Now I just really wish I knew the connection as a kid, maybe I was not smart enough to see the connection - but its kind of funny that I actually performed very advanced math formulas and calculations in an even more difficult environment
Re:A lesson that changes your entire life (Score:2)
It's not too late. Back in the 8-bit days, computers sucked at math even more than you did. If you think carefully about what you were doing back then, most of your programming time was focused on avoiding math, not doing it.
These days, computers no longer suck at math, and the math geeks are in the process of inheriting the earth... even if they don't know it yet.
Re:A lesson that changes your entire life (Score:5, Interesting)
I beg to differ with you there. You kind of contradict yourself when you say that I focused on avoiding it rather than doing it because of the
On the contrary, because of its primitive math, lacking multiplication, division and 16 bit size...not to mention the lack of floating point numbers I had to code these functions so they where translated from real-world math to 8 bit 6502 math. But I didnt see it that way at the time - I just wanted to code games and demos. You may not know who I am and it will remain unimportant for this discussion - but me and my neightbours where belived to have started the C64 and Amiga demo-scene culture. I started out as primitive programs we wrote to each other for fun and threw it into each others (real world mailboxes). Now for a kid - that was a lot of fun, but belive it or not - there is a lot of advanced math in making sine scrollers, 3d scrollers etc. with an 1 mhz 8 bit computer
Re:A lesson that changes your entire life (Score:2)
As a kid, it was indoctrinated into me that "pure math" is somehow superior to "applied math", as if abstractions were somehow superior to real life examples. And when it came to showing how math can be applied, it was reduced to the most boring examples imaginable. I can't remember how many times I had to do damn simultaneous equations involving trains or other vehicles, for example.
Gawd.
The only pure math I
Goethe said: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Goethe said: (Score:5, Insightful)
Contentment, being your own attitude, is within your own control.
You won't learn that from advertising!
got it right about work (Score:2, Insightful)
Well that isn't true right now. Labor can be done in one part of the world and instantly realized in another part. I hate to sound marxist, but the internet and the proletariat haven't even started to change the world.
-dave
TFA is obviously BULLSHIT (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:TFA is obviously BULLSHIT (Score:2)
You really want to know? Same reason some animals have dominant males that hoarde sexual access to multiple females while discouraging other males, often through threat of violence. In humans it takes the form of encouraging celibacy/monagamy, while at the same time having sex with as many partners in secret as possible.
In other words, by demonizing sex, you are able to procure reproductive adv
No more garbage collecting. (Score:3, Interesting)
This article is a lot of manure. "Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something." He speaks for himself, obviously, as there are whole legions of people who prefer this over their work.
"So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading books." Is this guy serious? I guess he never ever read a book, or, if he did, he didn't get it.
Why does this get mentioned on Slashdot? Just because the guy is a programmer?
Re:No more garbage collecting. (Score:2)
Yes. In the bell curve of the social economic scale, there are plenty of positions for those who have no interest in a higher education. I on the other hand am not on that end of the scale so I don't do the sanatiation engineer thing. I have other things that keep me busy. (I was one of the few who turned a hobby into a full time job and enjoy every minute of it!) There are lots of other people more suited to the position and do a good job of
Yeah lie to the kids (Score:3, Insightful)
Want geekier: How many coding jobs are pure maintenance and incorporate support? How many engineering jobs do you get where you're able to work on a space probe or an airplane? How many jobs in medicine are research positions, and how many of those are more than just lab work?
Most jobs are tedious. To do something great and interesting and original you have to put in a huge amount of time and effort. You have to be in the right place at the right time and be a better bet for the manager that hires you. Often what suffers is personal/social/family life.
Tell kids the truth. It's all out there for you but you have to do something more than the guy next to you to achieve something spectacular. Do this in a positive way and they may just skip some of the arrogance of being young and thinking the world will change at their whim. Some of them will want it bad enough that they will be great. Others will realise that the life they build around family and "normal" social lives aren't just a waste of life.
This guy would try to tell an 18 year old there's still a Santa.
Some People get to Do What They Love ... (Score:2)
I'm a research student in Number Theory - that's the most fun thing in the goddamned world.
Re:Some People get to Do What They Love ... (Score:2)
He's finally cracked! Somebody take those magazine clippings off the walls of his office.
Paul Graham is such a winner. (Score:4, Funny)
a winner. That's
why all of his
articles look like
this on the screen.
He knows that there
might still be some
poor person trying
to read them on a
40-character
display, and he is
so tremendously
courteous to them.
Re:Paul Graham is such a winner. (Score:3, Informative)
Create Wealth! (Score:5, Interesting)
I get paid rather well, to do work I love, for people I like working with. It wasn't at all easy to get here but I persisted in doing what I love, and what I get passionate about.
And I love it.
Seriously, the only problems with doing what you love is
A) Figuring out how to make doing what you love create wealth desired by somebody else, and
B) Finding that somebody else.
People that are passionate about what they do are more productive than those who dread monday morning. So, it's easy to see why somebody, passionate about their work, following their dreams, can live without the political infrastructure of an existing company.
In short, if you really love what you do, do as Paul suggests and consider a startup! It's risky, and it's hard, HARD work. It requires that you give all you've got and then some, and you're more likely to blow it than not, sometimes in embarrassing ways. If it wasn't hard and risky, everybody else would do it, too!
I've been involved with 5 startups, 1 was barely break-even (actually, net loss unless my time was free) and 1 was profitable. The one that's profitable is the one I'm still with, that I love doing.
So ask yourself: how much do you value your own happiness and satisfaction? Be honest. If you don't much care about "putting in the time", then get up tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM, spend 20 minutes on the freeway, and make sure you get to your job 10 minutes early, so that the boss notices and gives you that $1.00/hr raise you're hoping for at the annual employee review next summer!
But, if you value your satisfaction, sense of accomplishment, and love of life, consider what you really like to do, what would bring satisfaction day in and day out, and what legacy you want to leave behind you. Decide who you want to be, and be that person.
And go for it!
My story? Well, I've always been at least peripherally involved with IT. I knew all about the 386DX vs the 386SX vs the 486DLC back in the day. I've nearly always had a computer of some type, and took some programming classes in college - but never found my passion.
In 1996 I started a computer store, with $2,000 and some card tables set up in a shop downtown. In a short while, working, hustling and selling, I had a decent business going. But it sucked. Windows driver conflicts were such a pain, customers returned computers when they visited porn sites and got a virus, you name it. I got sick of "wipe and reload". I hated it.
But I was making pretty good money! Not like, wealthy or anything, but considerably better than most jobs. During this time, I met a gentlemen who mentioned Linux for the first time. I did some searching. I bought "Red Hat Linux for Dummies" complete with a copy of Red Hat 5.1. I experimented with it, and discovered that I LIKED it. It blew me away when I hacked together a relational database with BASH! (simple/stupid, but it worked)
Very quickly, I wanted to do Linux and databases full time, and after alot of discussion, I got my wife to agree.
In the spring of 2000, I gave the shop to my manager for just $10,000. (basically, the money that I owed) I pursued a contract that would give some immediate money, and worked HARD on honing my skills. I read books, websites, etc. every chance I got. Work got hard to find, and things got very tight for a while. (You may recall a certain recession going on about 2002/03) I almost lost my house. Repeatedly. I worked long, 14-hour days, coaxing whatever money I could out of the meager contracts I managed to close.
Bills weren't getting paid, kids needed new clothes and shoes, and I was stressed to the max. I started having trouble with high blood sugars, and terrible insomnia - often several days without sleep.
But the turnaround was so sudden, it was very difficult to adjust to. In a single month, my income quintupled! And, not
LIES! (Score:3, Insightful)
Forking lies.
In primary school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in high school.
In high school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in uni.
In uni they told me I was doing dull stuff in first year so I could do fun stuff in second year.
I started work and they told me that I had to start at the bottom with the dull stuff and then I could work my way up to the fun stuff.
I'm starting to think it's all just a big lie to keep the masses working hard to achieve something that will never come.
- Jessta
The downside of doing the work you love (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal story is one of jumping around in school from area to area trying to find what i liked the most. Going through highschool, i've tryed (the optional classes on) electronics, chemistry and biology. I went to the University and started on physics. A year later i moved to and eventualy got a degree in electronics engineering.
All the while, ever since i got my first computer (a ZX Spectrum 128A) i was doing programing for the fun.
Eventually when i got out of University i started work as a
I spent the next couple of years marveling at how people were paying me to do something i would do for free
Now, if i was still 25 the story would end here - unfortunatly things change
The problem is, after some years working 8 h/day on something you love, it starts loosing it's appeal. To me it was a mix of:
- It started loosing it's challenge. No challenge, no fun.
- By making my work out of my hobby i've placed myself in the situation of constantly having to do it, even if i don't feel like it. Thus for me software development morphed from fun to obligation.
- In the quest for keeping my work challenging i've been moving upscale - from developer to designer to technical architect/analyst. This means that:
* It's harder to find a position at the level that i enjoy the most.
* I have to do side tasks such as "career management" in order to position myself to land a job doing what i enjoy the most. By "career management" read "doing boring stuff for CV improvement purposes".
* Higher level positions require me to develop skills other than the ones needed for software design and development - a slow process.
- There are few big (challenging) projects and many small (stupendously simple) projects/tasks. Thus when i started there were a lot of projects that i found fun, now there are few.
I still have moments of pure enjoyment from my work, but it went from 90% fun, 10% obligation to 10% fun, 90% obligation.
the long road (Score:2, Insightful)
I went through a lot of depression because of it- losing sight of the end and getting lost from time to time.
Now 18 months after leaving IT I am starting to make a profit.
It has been quite difficult- but by focussing on what is necessary I've been able to do it and do it alone.
If I hadn't thought big and been pigheadeda bout it then I wo
Doing what you love. (Score:2)
The other fact to consider is that currently (though I imagine automation, computers, and nanotech WILL change this eventually) there are some very marketable skills that I can't imagine ANYBODY loves. Garbage collection and waste recycling just two that come to mind, but I could name a
If not at work, at least in your spare time (Score:2)
That's right I post on
Wouldn't it be a lot easier... (Score:4, Insightful)
One observation (Score:3, Insightful)
In a market economy, the only real measure of success is wealth.
Shame that we live in a market economy.
Maybe I'm Just Lucky... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I've been doing what I love for years, and getting paid pretty decently to do it.
I graduated with a degree in English (go ahead and laugh, I use it every day to distinguish myself as the programmer who can write and speak articulately), and kind of floundered for a while not knowing what to do. I got a job as a glorified secretary at a small company, and wound up being the Computer Guy because I was the only one who knew anything about Linux when the previous Computer Guy (his name was actually Guy) quit. Of course this was in addition to my old job.
The job got worse and worse, more and more overtime, etc., but I stuck with it because my wife was in grad school and we needed the money. But one day I realized it was going to ruin my life and decided to make a change. I found a job at a place that shared my values (a university). It was less money, and still glorified secretarial work.
But, at least in my case, it mattered that I was articulate and had ideas to contribute about policy decisions. When there were gaps when people left, I was allowed to take on new responsibilities -- and get training and support to help me along the way. I got noticed by the head of the web development group when I volunteered to write a simple Perl CGI to replace the university's crummy static campus map website.
And it's been a pretty easy road since there. I've gotten to work on a lot of interesting projects. They let me switch to telecommuting full-time when I moved to England for a couple of years (the wife had a post-doc), and then to Florida (tenure-track!).
The lesson I've taken from all of this is: don't just slave away thinking your sacrifice will pay for your family. A crappy work situation can make your life miserable, even if you've got the house, the cars, the 2.5 kids, etc. paid for. Find a place to work that values you, and it'll all work out. Maybe not as well as it did in my case, but better than just sucking it up and staying on the treadmill.
And if you wanted to plan ahead, it could be even easier. You could figure out what the lucrative positions were ahead of time and get the education and contacts to get those jobs in the first place.
-Esme
Doing what you love is a gift, (Score:3, Insightful)
I do what I love. (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody assumed that I would be one too--take over the practice when he retired.
Dad always told me "Do whatever you want to do in life. But do it well. Son, I don't care if you're a ditch-digger. But if you choose that path, you better be the best damned ditch-digger around." Dad also taught me that if you're working hard, you're doing good. Worst thing you can say about a someone is "That boy don't like to work."
Wound up being an engineer. Turns out, I'd always been an engineer; just didn't know it.
Folks tell me I'm pretty good at it, too.
So, as I sit here waiting for something to break (should't be long...)..
Re:In such an educational system (Score:3, Interesting)
There even is a more radical aproach called 'eigenwijs' which literelly means something like stubborn, but in this case means self-thought. In this system children get to decide what they want to do.
I personally don't think that this is the way education sho
Re:In such an educational system (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that's going to work SO well once they grow up. Seriously, children don't know what skills they're going to need to function in a modern society, nor do they understand how things are often related to one another. How many fields of endeavor depend upon solid math skills? How many times will a child change his or her mind regarding what they want to do later in life?
Teach them English so they can communicate. Teach them math so they're p
Re:In the university.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Science vs art in Graham (Score:3, Interesting)
You shouldn't find it odd - you should find it more convincing, being that he's someone saying "subject A is harder than subject B" when he has experience in both.
Graham's point seems to be that in the hard sciences t
Re:Good article, but Graham is biased (Score:3, Interesting)
The discussion point I was addressing was Graham's contention that the humanities are easier than the hard sciences, which was written in a different article entirely.
And while people most certainly love literature and many will write artistic criticism without being paid to do so (just look at how many offer unsolicited movie reviews on myspace), nobody would write papers on gender bias in postmodern literature unless they were eyeing the carrot of tenur