Comment by creepydata | Hacker News Reader

Comment by creepydata | Hacker News Reader

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I'm absolutely dumbfounded this is some sort of revelation to the author. It must be a new thing? Perhaps a product of the "self esteem/entitled generation?" Whenever I hear people (including job ads) talk about "passion" at work I have to roll my eyes. I never though of work as a means to some sort of personal fulfillment, it's a job, it's purpose is to provide you money. That is it! If you get personal satisfaction out of your work that's a nice bonus. Those "passion" people are going to become very dissatisfied with work and life - there's very, very few jobs that have the ability to provide that. We should probably be looking at things in a more practical manner to avoid this.

I always thought jobs advertising that they are looking for someone with "passion" as a ploy to trick the bright eyed and naïve young into overworking before they become disillusioned.

I've actually enjoyed most of the "menial" jobs I've worked. The only unenjoyable job I worked was only unenjoyable due to piss poor management. Now I enjoy working as a software engineer, I like what I do, but it's still just a job, just a way to earn a living.

I'm reminded of Office Space on career advice: "[The question from a guidance counselor of what you would do if you had a million dollars] is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her there would be no janitors because because nobody would clean up shit if they had a million dollars."

The most fun job I ever had was at a shitty nightclub over summers in-between uni.

The pay was crap, and hours were 9pm to 5am, but I loved the people I worked with, and the physical/manual labour was more satisfying than cranking out some requirements for an app noone cares about.

Back in my single days, I actually applied to do some warehouse work outside of my 9-5 programming day job 'cos I found it so boring and unsatisfying. (Turns out you're not allowed to work so many hours for health and safety reasons)

I don't mind coding for a living - it's easy: I sit at a desk and browse the internet for most part, but it's hardly the peak of job satisfaction. I think if I was mad rich, I wouldn't mind doing something poorly paid but outdoorsy and invigorating.

> I sit at a desk and browse the internet for most part, but it's hardly the peak of job satisfaction.

Oh, good. I thought I was alone. Or undervalued.

Aside from mad rich, how about basic income? Everyone has some employer in their past they loved but having to borrow money from dad to fix my car was so not cool. If I could feed my family and provide medical coverage using a basic income maybe I'd go back to "cool employer" lifestyle.

My kids are moving out "soon" and I won't need the expensive house in the best school district anymore, I wonder how many people would downgrade life a bit with a basic income. I won't need the best school district for 4, I'll just need somewhere safe for 2, probably much cheaper.

I get it that a BI means poor people get to eat, and thats very nice, but it also means something to me too, which would probably be a purely fun job.

...or the open source projects developers might suddenly have time to support

I've found that a job that isn't too stressful and is working with cool people is the best. Social interaction is important (at least to me) and it seems to affect how much I lime a job a lot

Depends on the person.

I left one job last year and started a new one and find that I'm not stressed enough, perhaps. I could spend a full day doing nothing but screwing around on the internet and no one would notice.

If I did a graph of the number of posts I've made on HN per day since switching jobs the trend would be quite noticeable.

But that's all the difference it takes. Awesome management makes shitty jobs awesome, and shitty management turns awesome jobs to shit. I experienced it both ways.

Corollary: managing people is a shitty job where you are on your own. You have to be really awesome to not screw it up.

>> Those "passion" people are going to become very dissatisfied with work and life - there's very, very few jobs that have the ability to provide that.

Maybe that's a good thing. If there's enough of them the entire concept will have to be reexamined (UBI for example or digital nomads, etc.). I think a lot more people are just starting to realise that owning a house and a car and having a few kids and a couple of ex-wives and a mountain of 'stuff' isn't necessary.

There are lots of jobs that will provide fulfilment. Most of them, of course, won't pay anywhere as near as well as your average office work - they pay enough though for someone who doesn't want the things I mentioned above.

Edit: Claiming having lots of money and 'stuff' isn't important apparently gets you lots of down votes now...strange.

>Maybe that's a good thing. If there's enough of them the entire concept will have to be reexamined (UBI for example or digitals nomads, etc.)

Finding "passion" in your job is an entirely new concept. We've been around quite some time and, for 99.9% of that time and for 99.9% of the people, a job is a job. Nothing more than a means to an end. I don't see how UBI follows from people realizing what we've known for millennia.

I disagree. There are a lot more meaningless jobs these days that are totally unfulfilling. I've done manual labour and as hard on the body as it was it was more fulfilling than coding another photo/social app, even though I was certainly not passionate about the manual labour. Doing the coding job felt more akin to picking things off a conveyer belt in a factory for 8 hours. It did nothing for the body or the mind. I think there are more and more of those kinds of BS jobs now than there were in the past than provide little to no stimulation.

I would argue that this isn't a new concept, we just lost a lot of those jobs in the industrial revolution. If it feels like a new concept it's because we're only just now starting to drop a lot of the toxic habits introduced by it.

I could easily see a tradesman before being "passionate" about his work, though they probably wouldn't have used that language.

That's fair. I didn't mean to imply that no one took passion in their work prior to e.g. 1995, only that it wasn't a driving force. We didn't tell our children (or ourselves) to only pursue those careers for which we felt "passionate". First and foremost you had to feed yourself and your family. That was the goal.

Another differentiating factor now may be education and age at which someone starts a family. In my parents generation you finished your education at 16 or 18. I don't know the numbers but I believe it was a minority that continued after that. You also got married and started a family (and bought a house) by your mid-20's. So feeding your family becomes an important driver. Now that these things are pushed back many years people have more freedom to take the time to choose (much easier to feed only yourself with a little 'side project') and without the driver of providing for a family (and your employment necessary to their survival) it's more necessary to look for work that is fulfilling in other ways (i.e. you are passionate about it).

>Now that these things are pushed back many years people have more freedom to take the time to choose

If you consider six figure debt at 22 freedom :)

You're right though of course; there are a lot of variables and societal changes that have led to where we are now.

Agreed. I would highly recommend the book Disrupted which is partially about this attitude. It seems to be prevalent in the modern tech industry and the younger generation working within it.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a read.

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