Profitable hobbies - you probably have too many of them | Hacker News Reader

Profitable hobbies - you probably have too many of them

blog.profitawareness.com

33 pointsStronico10 comments

This post strikes me as advocating for doing business for the sake of getting money - not actually changing something for the better in this world - or at least solving a problem for some people. Instead, it's talking about how you should be making money, etc. - not doing what you love. Even reveling in how someone was able to tune out their love of what they did for the sake of "building a nest egg".

No one can argue that business is often the appropriate vehicle to bring an idea to the masses, but this emphasis on money seems to be what's currently driving startups to the lower common denominator. It's those who want more than money that truly affect progress for the better.

If you're just doing it for the money, stop reading HN and go into finance. If you're quantitatively inclined, hedge funds, if not then i-banking and PE.

Seriously, if all you care about is money, go where the money is. It's certainly not in writing blogs and posting on HN.

My bet is people here do what they do for reasons other than money. It just so happens that HN-type talent is in high demand so one can usually earn some good money.

> if all you care about is money, go where the money is. ... go into finance

I've not seen clear evidence that "finance" is an especially reliable way for a reasonably smart person to make a lot of money. Mostly what I see is anecdote, which I consider worthless because NYC people and especially NYC finance people are full of shit about how much they make. It's the culture. Furthermore, to the extent that finance is well compensated it's hazard pay. Lots of burnout and layoffs. Also, unreasonable hours.

I personally know an engineer in suburban philadelphia who works for a firm that does elevator retrofit consulting for older buildings. He's worth tens of millions. I have met a very rich guy who built up two plants that produce pasta. I indirectly know a very wealthy guy who flies around the world consulting on expanding sewage treatment plant capacity. I also had a wealthy old guy neighbor who just ran four car washes very well for many years.

I have yet to personally meet a very wealthy person who made the money in "finance". I also don't live in NYC, so take my estimations with a grain of salt.

The evidence that I can personally trust indicates to me the low risk, high probability way to get a lot of money is with niche industry expertise and risked capital. I also think there's a "where there's muck there's brass" thing going on where real physical businesses like climbing in elevator shafts, sewage plant pools, and grain towers are under-competed. Everyone wants a finance desk job.

Most entrepreneurs I deal with sincerely enjoy what they do, and probably do far too much personally than they should, because they like doing it. Far too many of them treat their companies like profitable hobbies. Granted, that is part of the fun, and a huge part of why people start their own businesses – but everyone should be able to see the cost of what their pleasure.

I'm not really sure what this means, surely if they are enjoying doing something that is making your business better then that is a good thing right?

How can you be doing too much , and what is the cost of pleasure if you are enjoying it?

It's probably difficult for a reluctant software to compete with people who live and breath the stuff.

Pherhaps it's more to the point that if you treat your work too much like a hobby you will spend too much time focusing on the stuff that you enjoy (redeveloping your whole system is haskell for example) and not enough time focusing on the boring/unpleasent stuff that needs to be done (managing your budget and organising your sales team).

If you don't love what you do, there are these things called jobs that basically just pay you to put in a days work and then go home. Starting a business is way too much trouble if you're just trying to get paid.

> Starting a business is way too much trouble if you're just trying to get paid.

Does that still hold true if you could pull in $5,000/25,000/50,000 per month from running a business you don't love? I'd love to run a business I'm not particularly passionate about if it made me an extra $5,000/month.

HN's obsession/groupthink about "profit is pointless/evil unless you're changing the world and love your job" is scary.

After reading these comments I think I might have understated my original point - to wit, it's easy to overdo the fun parts, and you need to measure what you are spending on the fun parts, because the true cost might be that of future fun parts down the road (more time to work on cool new technology a year from now) or a lot of money.

If you're just doing it for the money then you're probably wasting your life. To exist is good, but most people want to do more than that. IMHO the most mediocre software engineers who are most likely to produce undocumented spaghetti code are the ones who are just doing it for the money.

Site seems to be down. Can someone paste content if they have it?

It's cached here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:y7SdL11...

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