Ask HN: Does anyone really love their job?
I had someone tell me recently, "do what you are passionate about and you will love your job." As I sat there and reflected... I wasn't sure if I am "that" passionate about anything... Anyone else in this boat with work?
23 comments
I do. As founder of Tech in Asia, I admit I struggled a little initially because I kept thinking about money. But as time passes, I learned that there are things much more important than money. Don't get me wrong, I still think $ is important, I do want to be rich (who doesn't?). But money isn't as important as building a company with great culture, values and mission that is worth pursuing.
Life is too short to chase for money. Enough is good, more is better. Live within your means. I don't crave for a luxurious life. Money is an item to allow us (the company) to keep doing what we love doing. Valuation is a measure of how much the company has grown but I'm not obsessed with it. I rather spend my time being happy. Building a company with good culture, values and worthy mission makes me happy. If you're interested, our culture code can be found here: https://www.techinasia.com/culture/ :)
Life is too short to chase for money. Enough is good, more is better. Live within your means. I don't crave for a luxurious life. Money is an item to allow us (the company) to keep doing what we love doing. Valuation is a measure of how much the company has grown but I'm not obsessed with it. I rather spend my time being happy. Building a company with good culture, values and worthy mission makes me happy. If you're interested, our culture code can be found here: https://www.techinasia.com/culture/ :)
[deleted]
Thanks for starting Tech In Asia. It's been a great source for me to keep track of all the innovation that's going on in the region. I'm very impressed by what's going on there. I was originally born in Malaysia but moved to Canada many years back. However, I've always had a soft spot and its sites like yours that help me stay connected. Thank you!
I would say I love my job. However, I'm not enthusiastic about it. From what I am able to infer, it seems similar to most long term marriages/relationships and the way spouses/partners feel about each other.
Meanwhile, I am passionate about being my best self. I get great satisfaction when I know I've done my best at something. In that regard work, whatever it is, definitely gives me tasks to accomplish, and be my best at. Outside of video games (and maybe religion?), its the only place in life that gives you both a task to do and motivation(money) to actually complete it.
I also know what I hate, I hate doing the same thing over and over. I definitely avoid that. I am very fortunate though. My job doesn't involve a lot of repetitive tasks. I think that would get on my nerves. I don't think I'm psychologically built for that.
Meanwhile, I am passionate about being my best self. I get great satisfaction when I know I've done my best at something. In that regard work, whatever it is, definitely gives me tasks to accomplish, and be my best at. Outside of video games (and maybe religion?), its the only place in life that gives you both a task to do and motivation(money) to actually complete it.
I also know what I hate, I hate doing the same thing over and over. I definitely avoid that. I am very fortunate though. My job doesn't involve a lot of repetitive tasks. I think that would get on my nerves. I don't think I'm psychologically built for that.
Paul Graham writes about this in his excellent book 'Hackers & Painters' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_%26_Painters).
There often is a big difference between doing what you love, and doing what must be done in society, like calculating mortgages for some stupid bank with corporate policies and everyone wearing the same boring blue-ish shirt. I do it to, have an excellent paycheck, which gives me freedom to do things I like in my own time.
Most creative persons need a day job. It is very rare that customers are willing to pay for precisely the thing you like to create. Even Van Gogh goodn't make a living from his paintings...
There often is a big difference between doing what you love, and doing what must be done in society, like calculating mortgages for some stupid bank with corporate policies and everyone wearing the same boring blue-ish shirt. I do it to, have an excellent paycheck, which gives me freedom to do things I like in my own time.
Most creative persons need a day job. It is very rare that customers are willing to pay for precisely the thing you like to create. Even Van Gogh goodn't make a living from his paintings...
(and I don't hate my job btw, there is a lot of technical challenge in what I do. Creating a wel performing system for milions of customers is a big puzzle to be solved.
I just can't stand corporate environment with way to much untalented people in to expensive suits acting being busy and important :)
I just can't stand corporate environment with way to much untalented people in to expensive suits acting being busy and important :)
Oh my goodness, yes definitely... I love my job, love my work, the bosses are fantastic... I am living testimony that it's possible. Don't know how common this is though.
I work crazy long hours because the work is so much fun, and because I care about getting a bunch of things done even when there isn't enough time in the workday.
Yep, call me in love.
I work crazy long hours because the work is so much fun, and because I care about getting a bunch of things done even when there isn't enough time in the workday.
Yep, call me in love.
"the bosses are fantastic"... you guys have openings for a good c# dev? :)
I love programming in general, but I've struggled through my last few jobs. I'm pretty close to hating my current job, despite that fact that I work on a well-known product with millions of users.
The analogy that comes to mind is a pro race car driver who is forced to only drive on an obstacle course, never exceeding 20 mph. The driver has skills that enable him to drive successfully on the obstacle course, but he yearns to do what he loves, opening up on a proper racetrack. In the same way, I have the skills to do tedious debugging of a large, absurdly complex system with tons of technical debt, only making minimal changes to avoid the whole pile of spaghetti collapsing. But I wish every day that I was designing and implementing systems instead, and I'm good at that, too.
Ironically, it was early in my career that I had the most autonomy to implement new features and write a lot of code, even if it was on obscure products. In the latter part of my career, I guess my mistake was allowing myself to be lured into working on "famous" things at big companies, even though it amounted to being mostly a maintenance programmer on sprawling, spaghettified legacy software.
I guess that next time, I should be more diligent about trying to find out what the day-to-day work will be like (which I find very hard to get an accurate idea of in the interview process. obviously the interviewer is going to paint a rosy picture), and at this point I would rather work on something totally obscure, if it meant I got to do more design and coding.
The analogy that comes to mind is a pro race car driver who is forced to only drive on an obstacle course, never exceeding 20 mph. The driver has skills that enable him to drive successfully on the obstacle course, but he yearns to do what he loves, opening up on a proper racetrack. In the same way, I have the skills to do tedious debugging of a large, absurdly complex system with tons of technical debt, only making minimal changes to avoid the whole pile of spaghetti collapsing. But I wish every day that I was designing and implementing systems instead, and I'm good at that, too.
Ironically, it was early in my career that I had the most autonomy to implement new features and write a lot of code, even if it was on obscure products. In the latter part of my career, I guess my mistake was allowing myself to be lured into working on "famous" things at big companies, even though it amounted to being mostly a maintenance programmer on sprawling, spaghettified legacy software.
I guess that next time, I should be more diligent about trying to find out what the day-to-day work will be like (which I find very hard to get an accurate idea of in the interview process. obviously the interviewer is going to paint a rosy picture), and at this point I would rather work on something totally obscure, if it meant I got to do more design and coding.
I know for me, there are times and projects where I really do love my job. The other day I got to code in C for the first time in a long time; I mean, it was something that would have been far more efficiently done in a regex against the output of a shell program, but the boss wanted it done using the API, so C it was. and... there's something really satisfying about writing something that works in C. That, and the novelty of writing something in C. Novelty is big for me.
There are other times where, as they say, "that's why they call it work" where I have to visualize that paycheck to get me through the day. Hell, today I had to reboot like ten servers and change bios settings by hand. Oh my god, it's like the attention deficit disorder tests the shrink gives you. "Press Delete or F12 when the screen tells you to press delete or F12, but not before it tells you, or else you have to start over and wait an additional 180 seconds." - and ten is so few that it didn't justify busting out expect and writing a script. (I mean, if I was feeling my oats, that's what I would have done, and it would have been really fun, but I haven't touched expect in years and it would have taken rather longer to come back up to speed than to just do it.)
Now, obviously, if I have too much of the latter, I start thinking about changing things, but I think it's not realistic to think that you'll love your job all the time.
In general, I think how much I enjoy it has as much to do with me and how I think about it as it has to do with the work. - Certainly, I'm not saying it's got nothing to do with the work, the work is part of it; but how you approach that work, how long you've been doing that work, and what your perceived alternatives are all have a big part to play in your level of satisfaction, in my experience.
You can mostly ignore the people who crow too much about "passion" - Most of the time, if the job ad talks more about passion than about qualifications, that actually means they want to pay you intern salary and just don't want to tell you up front. If that's your thing, go for it... but the big corporate jobs that actually let you operate at scale and/or actually pay decently are going to be more concerned with qualifications than with "passion"
I'll show up and do the job. And yes, sometimes I will enjoy it. but I'm not in sales; I don't have to pretend like I'm always happy- and if that's what you want out of your employees? I thank you for letting me know ahead of time so that we don't waste oneanother's time.
There are other times where, as they say, "that's why they call it work" where I have to visualize that paycheck to get me through the day. Hell, today I had to reboot like ten servers and change bios settings by hand. Oh my god, it's like the attention deficit disorder tests the shrink gives you. "Press Delete or F12 when the screen tells you to press delete or F12, but not before it tells you, or else you have to start over and wait an additional 180 seconds." - and ten is so few that it didn't justify busting out expect and writing a script. (I mean, if I was feeling my oats, that's what I would have done, and it would have been really fun, but I haven't touched expect in years and it would have taken rather longer to come back up to speed than to just do it.)
Now, obviously, if I have too much of the latter, I start thinking about changing things, but I think it's not realistic to think that you'll love your job all the time.
In general, I think how much I enjoy it has as much to do with me and how I think about it as it has to do with the work. - Certainly, I'm not saying it's got nothing to do with the work, the work is part of it; but how you approach that work, how long you've been doing that work, and what your perceived alternatives are all have a big part to play in your level of satisfaction, in my experience.
You can mostly ignore the people who crow too much about "passion" - Most of the time, if the job ad talks more about passion than about qualifications, that actually means they want to pay you intern salary and just don't want to tell you up front. If that's your thing, go for it... but the big corporate jobs that actually let you operate at scale and/or actually pay decently are going to be more concerned with qualifications than with "passion"
I'll show up and do the job. And yes, sometimes I will enjoy it. but I'm not in sales; I don't have to pretend like I'm always happy- and if that's what you want out of your employees? I thank you for letting me know ahead of time so that we don't waste oneanother's time.
The trick is not doing what you love (working on something you are passionate about) but loving what you do (being passionate about whatever you have to do). This idea is discussed in the following books
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion
I've been developing software for 25 years. There are often projects that drag, and slogs through tedious parts to implement and difficult parts to debug, but for the most part I do love my work. Making stuff work is a joy to me. Solving tricky engineering problems and fixing bugs is fun. Writing code for a product that actually ships and which people enjoy using, that is a great feeling. The meetings and HR and spreadsheets and reviews and office politics, not so much, but I've been fortunate to work for a number of startups and startup-like groups where that kind of stuff can usually be minimized.
I've been working on my business for 5 years part-time (on the side while holding down a full-time job) and full-time for the past half year. My first full-time employee started working with me on-site at my client this week after two months of study (at my expense) - I'm training him almost from scratch as a sysadmin. (He's had one year of QA experience with exposure to bash/perl scripting.) It's very gratifying to watch my creation (my company) come into existence, and I love training and mentoring, so yeah, I love my job.
It's not roses and rainbows every day but I'm moving in the right direction, I feel, and I'm happy about that. Makes it easier to bear the drudgy aspects of the job. =)
Good luck!
EDIT: While I was working full-time at my regular job, having a side project kept me inspired and energized.
It's not roses and rainbows every day but I'm moving in the right direction, I feel, and I'm happy about that. Makes it easier to bear the drudgy aspects of the job. =)
Good luck!
EDIT: While I was working full-time at my regular job, having a side project kept me inspired and energized.
I tend to be more enthusiastic about my job when I leave something for tomorrow. Like a "To be continued" episode that gets you hooked, if I leave at the end of the day with something to finish the next morning, I look forward to it much more than if I push through and get it done before leaving.
I also find I'm more interested in my job when I take a little time each day (15-30 minutes) to read a programming book about a technology I'm working on. Learning is something that I value highly and it makes me more interested in the work when I learn something new that I can apply or know that I'm getting a little bit better.
I also find I'm more interested in my job when I take a little time each day (15-30 minutes) to read a programming book about a technology I'm working on. Learning is something that I value highly and it makes me more interested in the work when I learn something new that I can apply or know that I'm getting a little bit better.
I think it's sufficient to love doing a good job, i.e., to take pride in your work. I doubt my dentist's staff is passionate about removing tartar from teeth, but I would guess they enjoy doing the work correctly.
And even if you're doing what you love, you won't necessarily love every moment. Nothing has the potential to rob something of its enjoyability quite like a bad boss or soulless company.
Further, "passion" isn't really applicable to wide swaths of jobs. And many people's passions have no chance to be profitable.
I think more practical advice is to do work that makes you happy.
And even if you're doing what you love, you won't necessarily love every moment. Nothing has the potential to rob something of its enjoyability quite like a bad boss or soulless company.
Further, "passion" isn't really applicable to wide swaths of jobs. And many people's passions have no chance to be profitable.
I think more practical advice is to do work that makes you happy.
I love developing software. I even do it for recreation. If I could choose, I would want to work on stuff that is good for everyone. At the moment I'm working on something "neutral to good" so it's okay I guess.
I'm working remote so besides meetings there isn't much difference between coding for fun and coding for work. So it's easy money. I wouldn't say I love the specific job I'm doing right now (I just like it), but I love being a developer :)
I'm working remote so besides meetings there isn't much difference between coding for fun and coding for work. So it's easy money. I wouldn't say I love the specific job I'm doing right now (I just like it), but I love being a developer :)
At some point I really loved my job because it allowed me to spend lots of time doing what I really love (outside of main job). Without being restrictive in any way.
There have been some experiments where researchers paid people to do something they loved. Once the person was paid, their reward response to that activity diminished. In some cases, it disappeared entirely, and that once-enjoyable activity became only "work".
I think that you can be passionate about what you DO without loving your job. I've had jobs I hate, but I've never stopped loving building things.
As an aside, I do love my current job. When you can get both hang on to it!
As an aside, I do love my current job. When you can get both hang on to it!
You may find some answers in pg's essay How To Do What You Love http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
I love doing a good job. Sometimes nobody tells me whether I am or not.
I do.
I recently made a switch from a non-technical role to a technical role and couldn't be happier. I keep waiting for someone to come over and tell me to knock it off and come do some actual work.
I recently made a switch from a non-technical role to a technical role and couldn't be happier. I keep waiting for someone to come over and tell me to knock it off and come do some actual work.
things can get boring or drag on depending on the project. I have a side project outside of work that keeps me going.