Hacker News Reader

I'd go one step further and say that it's likely many of them are working on something they're passionate about:

Their families.

I would up-vote this one thousand times over if I could.

Blazing ignorance of the most basic verisimilitudes of the human condition is one of the more annoying characteristics of hacker culture.

I wouldn't characterize 'hacker culture' like that. Vocal minority is the blight of all groups / cultures.

So you cannot be passionate about software and at the same time be passionate about your family? That doesn't sound right at all.

I did not say that at all. I challenged the idea that a person who is not passionate about their job is not working on something they are passionate about, by pointing out that you can have a job that you're not passionate about but still be passionate about working on your family—on raising your children well, on having a happy life with your spouse, on maintaining a strong relationship with your parents and siblings and nephews and nieces, etc. There are always some things we have to do in life that we're not necessarily passionate about.

You just crashed my lexical parser :-) Jk...

However, apologies I can see that I misread you. Sorry about that.

Maybe they're an orphan. Maybe they don't have a significant other. Maybe they don't care about anything in life other than the success of their project.

Maybe the non-501 developers are genuinely self-sacrificing, in every sense of that word, while the 501s live off their labors. For the 501 is very happy to use Google to search for his Disneyland trip, to use his iPhone to find driving directions, to use Facebook to post the photos.

Say what you will, those companies were not built by 501 engineers, though 501s might well be going there now that the pioneers have built multibillion dollar companies.

There are 501 people and non-501 people in every profession.

The issue is something like this. One workaholic nerd works his life out to achieve something very extraordinary. Then he become famous and rich. And then people begin to dissect his life. During the process people figure out, that we worked crazy hours to achieve what he achieved.

When a theory is made out of this process your logical inference is working very hard is a prerequisite for success.

You start with this assumption then you automatically start classifying 501 workers as somebody who can't do anything big in life. Go a step further, people start classifying 501 people as lazy or inefficient.

Things get bad when you start comparing.

Not only that - but this notion that "you should only work on what you're passionate about" can kill projects when versatility is required. 'I'm not really passionate about doing database interoperability stuff in Java - I took this job because I wanted to write Python.' Well. A job is a job, no matter what your passion is - and someone who will patiently and carefully slog through for 40 hours a week regardless of their passions is worth more to my team than somebody who'll give 80 hours a week to their one passion and zero hours to anything different.

I've never refused to work on stuff I don't like I just charge more for it, usually a percentage.

A multi-million dollar project that can be killed because someone doesn't want to write java interop code is something I want to support, most people mistake me for a programmer, I'm a business guy who knows how to code, what the bossman has in this situation is a win-win situation, his programmer gets to keep writing python, I get to write java interop code for a percentage of the project, and he gets a project finished.

A job is a job, no matter what your passion is - and someone who will patiently and carefully slog through for 40 hours a week regardless of their passions is worth more to my team than somebody who'll give 80 hours a week to their one passion and zero hours to anything different.

That's awfully defeatist.

Why does it matter to someone who is passionate that you don't value him on your team? The end state is simple: he will not be on your team and it will not matter what you think. So what's the value of having (and writing about) this blanket opinion?

Having an opinion isn't worth anything unless it corresponds with the truth. Maybe this does correspond with the truth (i.e. grandparent wants to work with team players rather than people who only do what's fun). Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Value of writing about it? Very few of the comments on HN are valuable. People write for their own pleasure primarily, and if communication occurs that's icing on the cake. What's the "value" of you writing your rebuttal questioning the gp post's value?

TL;DR: don't really understand your question.

And it's worth adding: a pretty large proportion of these people who don't work jobs they love are still pretty happy. They have families and hobbies and lives that are full of more than their work.

> It's a silly American notion that every job can be (or worse, has to be) the worker's "passion" --and only few get to have the privilege of that notion, and then again only after they have a lot of lucky breaks.

I agree with this, but I don't think we should take the opposite for granted either-- personally I dream of a world where no human being has to scrape shit off the sidewalk to survive.

Perfect post. The dreams of the fortunate ride on the backs of the unfortunate. It's good to remember this on those days when you're not enjoying your work.

Indeed they do, it's much better to be fortunate.

But why are those jobs necessarily "shit jobs"? Isn't that an even more condescending attitude?

The jobs you mentioned (mines, truck driving, fast food, janitorial) involve moving things around in the physical world. When the work is done, it's clearly and perceptibly done. In certain key ways this is less mentally stressful than information work. And nowadays even a janitor can afford an apartment, computer, smartphone, and internet connection.

For those positions you mention that pay less (janitorial, fast food), the demands and training requirements are less. For those that pay more (mines, power plants), the risks are higher but the training requirements are also less.

And in each of these areas, you do have some fraction of people who are ambitious, who care about the technologies involved, and who get promoted. It's not like software engineering is the only interesting thing out there.

There is a difference between a job and a career. Taking a job you don't like to make ends meet while you try to find work doing something you're passionate about is one thing. Having a career doing something you're not passionate about is entirely different.

There's also a difference between passion and enjoyment. I can understand your work being enjoyable but not your passion. During one trip to LA I got a burger at In-N-Out. The high school aged people working there were clearly enjoying what they were doing, they made it fun while providing fast, kick ass customer service. I know developers who enjoy what they do but their real passion is something entirely different.

To me making a career out of something you don't enjoy or aren't passionate about is crazy.

You don't wanna know what happens to the In-N-Out employees if they ever stop smiling though.

Animal-style is people?

Sure, I enjoyed working as a clerk at a grocery store. It was fun. If it paid as well as programming, I'd probably be content to still be working at a grocery store, and doing programming for fun in the evenings, as the grocery work comes with built-in physical exercise...

I had the same reaction to that comment. If anything, I have more respect for people who do jobs I'd find soul crushing.

I think the concept of a 'shit job' basically is embedded in our human culture.

Work was synonymous with slavery even until recently. People who build beautiful things like Taj Mahal, Pyramids etc were all slaves who worked at the commands of kings. And most of them did it because they had no other option or nothing else to do.

A few who realized what they are worth and escaped that became philosophers and scholars.

Getting the point? 501 vs non-501, Its almost like slaves Vs philosophers.

Organized 9-5 labor is always going to be inglorious even if you are the best algorithmist in the whole world, because deep down inside it has a strong taste of slavery to it. They are parallels to the slaves who build the Colosseum of Rome. Even if you were the slave who could build 10 walls in a day you are still 'A nobody'. No one will even remember you.

And individual contributors working on their own crazy hours are always going to be glorious people, because deep down inside they are parallels to Socrates and Plato.

I think the concept of a 'shit job' basically is embedded in our human culture.

No, no, and no. It is embedded in recent cultures of vast inequality, slaves fed on dreams of glory. Egalitarian cultures don't have very much concept of "shit jobs", not the way we do.

My thoughts exactly. The external world does not work based on someone's passion. Whatever we do is the result of the sum of all the things in our life and not just our work life.

If you found your passion and it also pays your bills, great. Congrats. This is not true for most people.