Ask YC: Do what you love and the money will follow?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=449457

by bprater • 17 years ago

21 87 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

In another thread this was brought up and I thought it might be a good thought experiment.

The refrain, "Do what you love and the money will follow," is repeatedly frequently.

Is it truth? Can you think of examples of doing something you'd love but it not provide for your financially? ("I love living in a log cabin in Alaska!")

Can you point to examples in your own life where you did follow this advice -- and it didn't pan out?

And if you share, maybe you can give us hackers an attempt to figure out why it didn't work out -- and how we can improve our own odds as we follow our passion in the future.

rw4• 17 years ago

Did Gandhi get rich? Does it matter?

ksvs• 17 years ago

Effectively. Like all national politicians, he had the same resources at his disposal that a rich person in his country would have. His ascetic life was voluntarily so.

rw4• 17 years ago

Social capital is dependent upon the continuing goodwill of others. That is an important restriction. If Gandhi had dropped his ascetic lifestyle, deciding to obtain a mansion, his social capital would have declined dramatically.

mattmaroon12• 17 years ago

Would you want to trade places with Gandhi? I wouldn't.

oakmac4• 17 years ago

Are you implying that you would not want to achieve the accomplishments of Gandhi in your lifetime if it meant living the lifestyle Gadhi lived?

If that is the case I would strongly suggest you reconsider your priorities.

ntoshev3• 17 years ago

You are missing the point. Ghandi wouldn't trade places with you either.

rms• 17 years ago

I would.

jayair2• 17 years ago

The Gandhi part aside, I agree with your sentiments.

Does money matter?

The response I hear from most people is that, "It will matter when you need to put food on the table". This is undeniable but after we are able to accomplish this task whats next? From that point on money is not and should not be the primary driving force.

I say primary because there are things in life that people enjoy doing that needs some amount of money. So I would say,

a) Find what you love (x) b) If the process of completing x needs money, then seek the money needed for it.

Our ability to do this process well depends on how focused we are. since, it is easy to get distracted in a world filled with things we "want".

rw4• 17 years ago

Or:

step b2) If getting x requires money, work to make it cheaper or free.

mattmaroon12• 17 years ago

Money matters a lot. You can be unhappy with money, but you can't be happy without it.

Society has tricked many into thinking the desire for wealth is base or shallow, just like it has with many natural human urges. It's an idea that's happily perpetuated by those who have it. Just as men have, throughout history, preached monogamy while cheating every chance they got because if every other man is not actively mating and you are, your genes will survive better, the wealthy have perpetuated the idea that wealth is evil to decrease competition. But hey, don't worry, your suffering in this life will be rewarded in the next.

It's easy to see this every time the Pope proclaims that it's easier for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle from his golden castle in his golden city.

Zarathu2• 17 years ago

Logically speaking, sure.

If you do what you're passionate about, you're sure to develop a strong set of skills for that particular subject. A strong set of skills for a subject with a market makes you good competition, at a reasonable price.

As for myself, I remember writing a keylogger in Visual Basic when I was 11 because I wanted to steal my sister's AIM password. I loved everything about software development, and still do. Years later, I'm making 6 figures with Rails.

pietro• 17 years ago

So did you get her password?

Zarathu2• 17 years ago

Yes. It was "paparoach", and I had very elegant conversations with her friends. I'm sure they had no idea it wasn't my sister.

>.>

sam_in_nyc• 17 years ago

I did the exact same thing. Win32 API for the win.

xenophanes• 17 years ago

It's better advice than this:

Do what you hate for money and the love will follow.

andreyf2• 17 years ago

s/what/who

Still bad advice...

snitko• 17 years ago

I think it's not all that clear with the question. How much money? If we're talking about money you get from your regular job and you feel okay about working for someone - then the answer is yes. If you feel you don't like working for someone and will only be happy working on your own stuff - then the answer is "not necessary". From what I've seen and heard, good money is a result of different (for each person) combination of professional skills, business skills, persistence and luck. And you never know if your combinations' going to make you rich.

critke• 17 years ago

It might - if anything it'll help you get through the long hard slog to the pot of gold - if there is one at all.

arockwell• 17 years ago

Its true as long as money != unfathomable riches.

DaniFong• 17 years ago

My mother is an excellent writer and novelist, but the market has completely dried up for that. Nobody really reads any more.

She's turned to writing scripts though, there seems to be more traction there.

point• 17 years ago

Reading IS dying. Even I, who used to read a hella lot of books are reading a lot less books (but reading a lot more in general), and my attention span is really short now.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

another anecdote: i read handfuls of novels and dozens of short stories a month. a book before sleep helps settle the mind. much nicer than working on the computer until i drop.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

And yet JK Rowling became the richest woman in the UK by writing.

unalone6• 17 years ago

I don't know if nobody reads. Nobody reads modern books, perhaps.

It's tough to say something meaningful in a medium that's existed for centuries. You know? So much has already been done that now the medium is shrinking. The people who do remain are less likely to be as talented, because the really talented people have moved on to other things.

Television, for instance. The last 10 years has seen better TV shows than ever existed in the past. The best-written thing I've come across in the last two years was The Wire. I'd compare the quality of writing in that to anything up-to-and-including Shakespeare. And it did stuff that you couldn't have done in a novel. Or in a movie, for that matter.

Mind you, my all-time-favorite novel was published in 2006. And Mark Z Danielewski is still innovating within the form: his House of Leaves is a classic, and it was written just 8 years ago. But those writers are rarer. There's less to be done within the form of pure prose than there was even 40 years ago.

lliiffee• 17 years ago

my all-time-favorite novel was published in 2006

The Road? (I'm extrapolating from what you say about The Wire.)

andr• 17 years ago

A basic issue with this is that people love doing many different things (and are curious to try new stuff all the time), so there is little time to get particularly good at them. It's hard to make money from things you are not good at.

jaxn3• 17 years ago

If the goal is to get rich, then do what creates value for others. If the goal is to enjoy every day then do what you love. The luckiest among us are able to figure out how to combine the two and create value while doing something they are passionate about.

Rod3• 17 years ago

Quoting Austrian actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000):

"I know why most people never get rich. They put the money ahead of the job. If you just think of the job, the money will automatically follow. This never fails."

So, do what you love. Excel at what you do. One day you might get rich... or NOT. Either way, you will have led a productive and interesting life. Cheers.

jaxn3• 17 years ago

I am glad I didn't take this advice when I was a dishwasher.

Rod3• 17 years ago

To every rule there's an exception ;-)

andreyf2• 17 years ago

Not necessarily true - if you were really passionate about washing dishes, maybe you would have started a dish washing company, organized a dish washing union, or whatever :-P

mseebach• 17 years ago

Excelling in your field gets noticed. It did when I was a d*mn good dishwasher. Had I chosen to, that could easily had been my ticket into a some kind of catering career. I prioritized college, though, so now I'm just a mediocre procrastinator :)

andyking• 17 years ago

What if you're not remotely arsed about getting mega-rich, but just want to get by and earn enough money to survive doing what you love? I'd rather live frugally and work on something fun than be loaded but despising what I spend ten hours a day doing.

oakmac4• 17 years ago

Happiness and money are not correlated.

You are always 100% in control of your emotions: the choice to be happy is up to you regardless of what you're doing or what's happening to you. Money (or value) will come from following fundamental principles of success: diligence, hard work, honesty, etc. You often find the two together, but neither is required for the other.

For more information read Dan Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

zcrar70• 17 years ago

I'm not sure I agree that you're always 100% in control of your emotions. If you think you're in control, they're not really emotions anymore; you've suppressed them, and replaced them with what you wanted to feel, which is fine but isn't really the same thing. I do agree that your general outlook will have great influence on whether you are happy or not though.

Generally speaking, I think you're more likely to be happy if you are honest about your emotions and then follow them in deciding what to do. Then it won't really matter if you make money or not, because you'll be happy to do what you're doing (unless you decide that making money is a goal in and of itself, in which case you'd need to make money in order to feel that you've accomplished what you set out to do).

cellis• 17 years ago

Follow the money, and you'll love what you do.

gcheong• 17 years ago

Some problems I have with this saying:

1.It implies the money part flows effortlessly from the "do what you love" part.

From what I've seen, people do something they love and then try and find a way to make money with it. Sometimes they are successful, and sometimes not, but in any case it involves effort to go from doing what you love to doing what you love for money.

2.It implies people have one passion or one reason to be on this earth. That is crap. You can have several passions or you may have none. I have many interests but I can't say for sure that I have a passion about any one thing - yet I've been able to make money following my interests and make money not following my interests.

3.It's often taken as meaning that making money doing something other than when you are doing what you love is somehow a lesser choice. Maybe so, maybe not. Should I fault the programmer whose real passion is ski-boarding because they'd rather make more money or make money doing something they know they can make money at and then use it to enjoy their passion in their spare time rather than making less money as a ski-bum or taking a risk in what may be a dead end venture? I don't think I can.

4.It implies people can't or shouldn't love the pursuit of money. This might be true insofar as money itself is just a store of value or a means to an end. The problem I have is that anyone with a desire for just starting businesses regardless of the product seems to be included, which I think is a wrong categorization. Businesses create wealth, money is just the representation of the wealth created by business. I see nothing wrong with pursuing business for business sake because to be successful in business, for most people, means you are creating value.

So my conclusion is that this saying is more useful for selling books than as real advice.

mattmaroon12• 17 years ago

I played poker for a living for over 5 years. I never really cared for it, but it paid very well, and so I told myself that if I just did it for a short while, I'd have enough money saved up that I could do whatever I wanted for the next 100.

While that is a solid theory, what happened was that I grew to hate it so much that I never spent enough hours to save up retirement-type amounts of money. I also became largely desensitized to money (when you can win or lose $10k in a day with ease, it's not too hard to convince yourself to buy a $500 camera) and spent way too much.

Eventually I realized that for those reasons, I was never going to get there, no matter how good I had gotten or how profitable the game was, so I left to do a startup. The pay is pretty low now, but I'm happier, because I enjoy the process rather than the results, and there is some realistic chance of a windfall at the end.

I think the optimal strategy is to pick something you enjoy but that can pay the bills. Most people could probably enjoy multiple professions. Choose the one you would enjoy that pays the best.

azanar3• 17 years ago

>I think the optimal strategy is to pick something you enjoy but that can pay the bills. Most people could probably enjoy multiple professions. Choose the one you would enjoy that pays the best.

I think this is pretty good advice, but with a caveat. Enjoyment is not just a boolean function, but varies from unbelievably painful to completely enjoyable. I think is more of a two-dimensional optimization problem than a simple matter of picking the maximal paying element from the column named 'fun and interesting'. Doing java development at a large company and doing python development at a small company would both rank 'fun and interesting' relative to the rest of the total set of available professions, but I would still seriously consider the python position, even though the java position is bound to pay a lot better on average. But maybe you meant that, and I am just misreading.

Allocator2008• 17 years ago

If doing what you love has a market, yes, the money will follow. If doing what you love does not have a market, it doesn't matter how much you love it. For example, there is a market for hybrid cars. There is not a market for flying cars, even though the relevant technology - fold-up wings and so on - is available. So if you love making hybrids, great, the money will indeed follow. If you love making flying cars, sorry, no market there. So the trick I guess is to find something you love, that also has a market. Not the easiest thing in the world to figure out.

zitterbewegung• 17 years ago

I rather do something I love and not get any money at all than doing something I hate for all of the money in the world.

tom_rath• 17 years ago

If what you love is building finance-directed B2B desktop apps then, yeah, you're golden.

I think the key is directing your passion in a broad enough way that you can satisfy an unaddressed market demand. If you love building challenging software, there are many ways you can pragmatically apply that passion if you cast your net wide enough.

On the other hand, if you love building socially directed news-ranking sites with clickable arrows, your options will be somewhat limited.

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

Best piece of advice I every received from a poster: http://despair.com/potential.html

So, I've really hated my day job for years (ER nurse). It just paid too darn well. And, I've tried a whole bunch of things as possibilities to change careers: theology, philosophy, world religions, painting, sculpting, computer graphics, animation, furniture design, interior architecture, visual effects, video editing... And by trying, I mean, researching the hell out of it, taking formal training or actively studying on my own for more than a year.

Why did I do these things? Because I believed the "Do what you love, and money will follow" mantra. Problem: I wasn't making money doing what I loved, and therefore I had to keep doing what I hated for money, which was being a nurse. I was not willing to do the starving artist/philosopher thing for too long.

Solution: I found something that I like reasonably well, allows me to be creative and think widely and that has a potential to make a decent amount of cash, with potentially a huge financial upside: programming and starting my own business.

The chief problem with the "Do what you love and the money will follow" mantra, is that it essentially paints the career problem and money problem as a binary issue. Either do what you love, or do what you hate. There are many choices in between those things that have varying degrees of financial outcomes.

Another thought: If you do what you love, and feel continually pressured for cash, there is a lot of pressure to compromise yourself and your loves for money. Some handle that better than others. For example, there are a lot of people who start out wanting to be musicians, painters, artists or writers who try to do it for money. The problem comes when the rent is continuously due, and you're broke. You're then stuck with being a writer/painter/musician and needing to make cash. Do you write/paint/compose for purely commercial projects (like an ad agency), or do you only write/paint/compose what you love?

Finally: Speaking from experience, spend some time in LA, and you'll come to the conclusion that there are more people who are trying to chase their dreams and be actors/directors/filmmakers than the market will bear. This leads to a huge culture of abusing the people trying to get their break in those industries. After years of work and studing 3D modeling, animation and image compositing, I finally got offered an entry level job at Sony Pictures Imageworks (Big film VFX house in LA). Salary: $20 an hour, minimum of 60 hours per week if not 80 to 100, and you get laid off after the current movie finishes production in 4 months. You're then unemployed until the next round of FX films start post-production. Why did workers tolerate this? Because there were many more people vying for those jobs than there were positions available.

voidpointer• 17 years ago

Yet another version: Do what you love and happiness will follow. How about that?

abstractbill• 17 years ago

Do what you love and figure out how to make money follow.

bayareaguy• 17 years ago

If you only focus on doing what you love then there's no guarantee money will follow. However if you are able to connect with others who appreciate what you love to do enough to sponsor your doing it, then there will be the potential for money to follow. It is also necessary to balance time between attending to the things that can generate this potential and the things necessary to make that distibution channel sufficiently efficient. Ignoring your channel just means your potential for money goes to waste or ends up making someone else wealthy instead of you.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

Or if what you love isn't very lucrative, make lots of money by whatever means necessary (within reason) to allow you to do what you love later.

The problem with that is if you take a long time to make enough money to do that, you've just wasted all that time doing something you don't love.

Rabidmonkey1• 17 years ago

I like Mike Rowe's advice on working: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Maybe it works if you learn to love making money.

brianm• 17 years ago

Has worked for me, so far, but I love hacking...

mhartl• 17 years ago

You need three things: skill, love, and market.

  skill + love - market = hobby
  skill - love + market = job
  skill + love + market = career

(The other combinations are less interesting and are left as an exercise to the reader.)

CyberED• 17 years ago

When you do what you really love, you don't count the money. Your pay-off is from the sense of accomplishment. Doing something for love and wishing that the money follows really depends on who else gains value from what you do. E.g. living in a log cabin in Alaska - minimal payback. Creating, building and selling iPods - huge payback. The difference being not many people are chuffed at you living in a log cabin. Lot of people are very chuffed at having the music they love when they want it and having a cool gadget to play it on.

tallanvor• 17 years ago

You don't have to love your job in order to be happy. If it provides you with the money you need and still leaves you time to do the things you love, is it horrible not to love it?

And what if loving your job results in you neglecting other important parts of your life?

crpatino• 17 years ago

This is of course oversimplified. The argument seems to me like: 1) If you love what you do, you will care. You will go the extra mile to do it right. 2) After a couple of years of doing what you love, and caring, and improving every day, you will be very good at what you do. You will be able to beat most competitors (who don't really care and are in for a quick buck anyway). 3) Assuming your clients can tell the difference, you will never lack work. 4) Assuming your market is big enough to support you and your more important competitors, you will be able to pick clients, and rise your fees, and have lots of work anyway. 5) Then money follows the good work.

Now, there are 2 big assumptions here. One is that the world will be able to figure out how great you are and how lame are most of the others. If they cannot, or doesn't care, you are in a lemon market. The scam artists grow rich and the good practicioners get exploited. Not a nice place to be, unless what you love is take advantage of other people.

The other big assumption is that there is enough demand for what you love to do. By example, if you love classic music and want to be a piano concertist, good luck with that. There is not enough demand for that skill to support but a handfull of performers. Unless your talent is that of a genius or have all the right connections, you will not survive long enough to actually learn to play well. Again, not a nice place to be.

What you want to do if not to do what you like the most. You want to ask yourself what are those things that you like. Get a list of a dozen items. Cut half of those that seem like lemon markets, the cut again by half those whose market is to small.

You will end up with a couple of solid options of what you can realistically pursue.

Ask YC: Do what you love and the money will follow?

Related Stories