Until you've worked at a job where you're genuinely excited to get up every morning and hack, it's very hard to empathize with this sentiment. Doubly so because employers compelling enough to make employees passionate about their jobs often exploit this and have extremely substandard working conditions (exhibit A: academia). Despite that, once you've been genuinely passionate about a job, it's very hard to see the world any other way.
> Doubly so because employers compelling enough to make employees passionate about their jobs often exploit this and have extremely substandard working conditions
Another way to say this is the Law of Supply and Demand. It's no surprise at all that there are a greater number of people interested in a fun job, which reduces the pay offered. Conversely, dirty unpleasant jobs have fewer people interested, so the pay is greater.
> get up every morning and hack, it's very hard to empathize with this sentiment
Even if you have experienced the joy, it might not always be rewarded & the disillusionment burnout is always a risk.
The most bitter folks I've worked with are the ones who started with a lot of passion, but got turned around.
Not to mention that this Passion comes in many flavours.
I would not put a label on my experience, but "autistic joy" is a good comparison to what drives passion in my work - for my partner it comes from the final unveil and other eyes landing on their work.
I only realized this when reading Andre Agassi's book and being stuck in close proximity during the pandemic (and to "bear witness" to provide joy).
Montreal (or any other video game hub) is a great place to start a software business. There are tons of highly qualified, underpaid and overworked software engineers to poach from the video game firms.
Empathize with what? Many people have experience with having free time and thus know what it’s like to do things that they like doing. Replace all of this job-passion with the fantasy of winning enough millions in the lottery to retire and yeah, there you go. People already fantasize about that.
But the above doesn’t involve making a profit for an employer. I don’t know if that was supposed to be part of the empathizing.
No one is arguing that people don't understand the concept of being excited. But I think a lot of people would be less convinced that it's possible to be passionate about your work.
I don’t have millions and because of $life, I’m behind where I “should be” with retirement savings. Don’t cry for me, I’m good and catching up.
But the idea of having “passion” for my job - even though I currently work at my favorite job I’ve had in 30 years across 10 jobs - just isn’t me. I would never give up a remote only job because I thought I would be “passionate” about another job and definitely not for less money.
Because of combination of remote work, low fixed expenses and a couple of other hacks, I don’t dread work or even really care about retirement. My wife and I travel frequently now, did the digital nomad thing for a year two years ago and starting next year we plan to spend a few months of the winter internationally and the summer away from home either domestically or internationally.
There was one job that I have had that was meaningful to me. I was an architect for a company that managed sending nurses to the homes and schools of special needs kids. I wrote back end and mobile apps for the nurses and actually had a chance to work with some in the field to understand how the nurses used the devices.
It wasn’t a highly profitable company since most of the revenue came from Medicaid reimbursements. I only left when private equity took the company over and it became a PE rollup play.
While I understand the sentiment, its often not that black and white.
I was in a similar situation a few years ago, with one company doing something novel and "better for humanity" v/s just another saas that paid more. While I was leaning towards the former, what really bothered me was 1) their equity structure was quite pitiful, lower than industry standard and 2) They weren't flexible with remote work. Now, I completely understand if the base compensation is smaller than usual, if the equity is higher. The way the equity was structured, it just seemed like in the off chance that the company did become very successful, almost all the benefits would accrue to the founder. And if they weren't offering the best comp, benefits in other areas (like remote flexibility) would have really helped even things out.
I am very mindful of who gets the "benefits of my passion". Because this is how a lot of people get free labor from idealistic engineers. So while I would have preferred the work of the former, I ended up going with the latter; and I don't regret it.
I'd take the people over the work anytime, the best places i've ever worked at are the places where the people are great to work with, even the slog/bureaucratic work is still good when you have people that are great at what they do and are fun to be around.
Varies a lot where you are on your career as well, i'd never take a job that pays less or is "startupy" at this point in my life, i'm here to make money now and not dream about some future that will likely not happen (worked at multiple startups that led to nothing).
So i'd recommend people to mostly forget passion and think about what you want in your life and your job. I find passion in all things extremely overrated, what you need is love, steady, consistent and reassuring. And don't forget sentiments don't pay bills, money does.
>I'd take the people over the work anytime, the best places i've ever worked at are the places where the people are great to work with, even the slog/bureaucratic work is still good when you have people that are great at what they do and are fun to be around.
A variant of this that holds true for me is - less corporatized level-based ladder climbing 1:1, more just focus on work.
The problem with passion jobs is that you may get a dose of disillusionment. I worked for 2 years at a startup which had an interesting product and great people. Busted my ass for below market pay but when the company got sold, the deal was structured in a way that rank and file employees got nothing while the founders and top managers walked with multi-millions. Since then I am very cynical about "passion". It often seems to be a tool for exploiting gullible people. Same in a lot of non-profits.
Low rank work for little money while the top guys make good money and fly around the world to meet in luxury hotels.
This is a assumption I have about most folks who are engaged enough to be on hackernews (I guess US based). With the possible exception of those folks who live in HCOL areas - most software engineers I know have a comfortable enough salary to remove obstacles to happiness. Many do choose to prioritize money over other factors - but I often see it used for more hedonistic/luxury purposes - which IMO isn't really conducive to long-term happiness.
Time is our most valuable resource - 40 hours a week is often more time than people spend with their families and friends during the week, so making sure that that time isn't just a means to an end is something I've tried to prioritize in my life
one thing that stands out to me is "Senior engineer" vs "Staff engineer" position. I was in the same boat 2 years ago and had to decide between a startup who hired me as "Senior" with a lower salary with the promise of exiting big where I loved the job and there were many smart people around me, but then I got an offer from a big tech as "Staff" level with almost double the offer and benefits. I had a really hard time to decide, but ended up going with the latter even though the startup job was my passion. However, to my surprise the big tech position helped me to grow in ways that I could not even imagine.
Because it was a higher level position I had to deal with larger scope problems, I started learning about strategic thinking and dealing with large number of teams and learned to lead and be a thought leader. The people are also smart and turned out to be super nice and helpful and used every opportunity to help me grow. Now when I look back, I don't think I would be happier in the position where I thought it matched my passion, as the other unlocked a new point of view and a different perspective and opportunities. So aside from the money and benefits, make sure you are choosing the one that benefits you the most from different angles, passion and salary is just one angle.
I understand your decision and if I were at a different point in my life (I am 51, grown kids, low fixed expenses), I would have made the same decision. But I’m at a point in life that I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever work at BigTech (again) even for twice the money.
I was Senior before interviews, I was mainly targeting Staff level when I was interviewing.
No convincing needed, I had enough experience to get to Staff level. With Startup I asked them for level up but they said they had limited number of positions and all they can do is Senior at a higher end of it, and can't do Staff.
I worked at the startup for a few months before the other offer was finalized. So I have a chance to get to know what it feels to work at the startup as well.
"Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else." (Joseph Campbell)
I think this is a pretty well-reasoned piece, personally. The clearest thinking often happens when we are confronted with two already pretty solid options and asked to choose between them.
With only the information I have in front of me, I would have chosen Offer 2. More money is awesome in a very straightforward way. Staff is more fun than Senior. But mostly I think my view simply is that boring, steady businesses which can afford to pay top dollar for top talent tend to be really good places to drive capitalism forward at compared to relative moonshots like fusion tech. It seems like a much more straightforwardly good value proposition to (letting my brain fill in a random high impact detail here) bust my ass to shave a basis point off of everyone's Vanguard management costs than to work on something like fusion, where I imagine plenty of very motivated people are already exploring this from a lot of different directions.
For me, listing the pros and cons of each company does not lead to the decision I make.
In the end, the choice is the gut feeling, usually catalyzed by just one point, for which passion and attractive working environment are great candidates.
insert guy pointing at his head implying “smart thinking” meme
Or in my case, you realize 20 years later that if you had chased profits and done some ETF investing the next 20 years could have been all passion, potentially without needing to make money for my family.
"If you have a passion for making profit you will never have to choose between the two."
That's why I often envy finance people, business people or people whose only interested in a company is to move up. Their passion aligns with profit. I personally care mostly about technology and not at all about business. So to also benefit from my work I also have to think about business which I don't enjoy.
> Making more money allows you to donate more to organizations that hire full time staff to achieve your broader goals for the world.
> More money means more options, more wiggle room.
Generally while having less time for yourself and suffering more.
That's brilliant. I'll take a dozen.
> Also, to me personally, the choice between hybrid and full remote isn’t even a choice.
Exactly. Being able (have) to commute to a campus which has a forest inside and ample place to walk with fresh air beats having to stay in a flat 9 hours 5 days a week by a mile.
>Generally while having less time for yourself and suffering more.
The article is talking about a fusion startup that pays less vs a "normal sort of business" that pays more. I would expect the startup to require more work.
And other example is videogame development. Videogame developers get paid less and have to work more compared to other software developers.
> Generally while having less time for yourself and suffering more.
I don’t find that to be the case at all, though I own and operate my own company and haven’t done W2 work for decades. You’re probably right when it comes to standard employment.
Depends on what you want to do. For example if you are a really good ai engineer and want to influence ai safety for example getting a lead role at a bug company will probably get you more influence than donating.
Personal profit maximization only works to a point - for example, if you get too old, sick or the system rejects you early and curtails or limits your ability to make money.
I don't disagree that money gives you options, but, far too many people wait until they have enough money to give back.
If you give back while you are working (e.g. balancing working for profit vs working for nonprofit, altruistic reasons, etc.) - that's awesome. The challenge there is maximizing the good you can do if you're giving too much time and energy to your profit maximization.
At some point, someone has do physically do the needed good work.
For myself, the calculus has shifted. I personally decided I cannot wait until I have enough money, or I am maximizing my profit, to go out and help people.
I also cannot wait until I am physically or mentally unable to help beyond financial contributions. Also, I cannot afford to work in the current system that drains everything from you and leaves you no energy or time left, only money (if that).
Regarding the inherent maximum scaling limits of one person- I would challenge your thinking.
Power laws of networks may demonstrate that helping a small number of the right people might be enough to unleash the butterfly effect or play into ongoing changes.
Also, the physical limits of humanity on one person apply to a billionaire as much as a person with little money. I'm not saying a billionaire, millionaire, or person with significant finances isn't more mobile/capable, but it's not a given.
I am for reasonable profit and balance. There is nothing inherently wrong with maximizing profit if someone chooses.
But if we all spend our time on maximizing profit, there still, for the time being and probably well into the future, still needs to be boots on the ground doing work that is not for profit.
Until you've worked at a job where you're genuinely excited to get up every morning and hack, it's very hard to empathize with this sentiment. Doubly so because employers compelling enough to make employees passionate about their jobs often exploit this and have extremely substandard working conditions (exhibit A: academia). Despite that, once you've been genuinely passionate about a job, it's very hard to see the world any other way.
> Doubly so because employers compelling enough to make employees passionate about their jobs often exploit this and have extremely substandard working conditions
Another way to say this is the Law of Supply and Demand. It's no surprise at all that there are a greater number of people interested in a fun job, which reduces the pay offered. Conversely, dirty unpleasant jobs have fewer people interested, so the pay is greater.
It's hard to see here who is exploiting who.
> get up every morning and hack, it's very hard to empathize with this sentiment
Even if you have experienced the joy, it might not always be rewarded & the disillusionment burnout is always a risk.
The most bitter folks I've worked with are the ones who started with a lot of passion, but got turned around.
Not to mention that this Passion comes in many flavours.
I would not put a label on my experience, but "autistic joy" is a good comparison to what drives passion in my work - for my partner it comes from the final unveil and other eyes landing on their work.
I only realized this when reading Andre Agassi's book and being stuck in close proximity during the pandemic (and to "bear witness" to provide joy).
Exhibit B: video games.
Montreal (or any other video game hub) is a great place to start a software business. There are tons of highly qualified, underpaid and overworked software engineers to poach from the video game firms.
Exhibit C: Zoo employees
Empathize with what? Many people have experience with having free time and thus know what it’s like to do things that they like doing. Replace all of this job-passion with the fantasy of winning enough millions in the lottery to retire and yeah, there you go. People already fantasize about that.
But the above doesn’t involve making a profit for an employer. I don’t know if that was supposed to be part of the empathizing.
No one is arguing that people don't understand the concept of being excited. But I think a lot of people would be less convinced that it's possible to be passionate about your work.
I don’t have millions and because of $life, I’m behind where I “should be” with retirement savings. Don’t cry for me, I’m good and catching up.
But the idea of having “passion” for my job - even though I currently work at my favorite job I’ve had in 30 years across 10 jobs - just isn’t me. I would never give up a remote only job because I thought I would be “passionate” about another job and definitely not for less money.
Because of combination of remote work, low fixed expenses and a couple of other hacks, I don’t dread work or even really care about retirement. My wife and I travel frequently now, did the digital nomad thing for a year two years ago and starting next year we plan to spend a few months of the winter internationally and the summer away from home either domestically or internationally.
There was one job that I have had that was meaningful to me. I was an architect for a company that managed sending nurses to the homes and schools of special needs kids. I wrote back end and mobile apps for the nurses and actually had a chance to work with some in the field to understand how the nurses used the devices.
It wasn’t a highly profitable company since most of the revenue came from Medicaid reimbursements. I only left when private equity took the company over and it became a PE rollup play.
While I understand the sentiment, its often not that black and white.
I was in a similar situation a few years ago, with one company doing something novel and "better for humanity" v/s just another saas that paid more. While I was leaning towards the former, what really bothered me was 1) their equity structure was quite pitiful, lower than industry standard and 2) They weren't flexible with remote work. Now, I completely understand if the base compensation is smaller than usual, if the equity is higher. The way the equity was structured, it just seemed like in the off chance that the company did become very successful, almost all the benefits would accrue to the founder. And if they weren't offering the best comp, benefits in other areas (like remote flexibility) would have really helped even things out.
I am very mindful of who gets the "benefits of my passion". Because this is how a lot of people get free labor from idealistic engineers. So while I would have preferred the work of the former, I ended up going with the latter; and I don't regret it.
"I am very mindful of who gets the "benefits of my passion"
That's a very important consideration.
I'd take the people over the work anytime, the best places i've ever worked at are the places where the people are great to work with, even the slog/bureaucratic work is still good when you have people that are great at what they do and are fun to be around.
Varies a lot where you are on your career as well, i'd never take a job that pays less or is "startupy" at this point in my life, i'm here to make money now and not dream about some future that will likely not happen (worked at multiple startups that led to nothing).
So i'd recommend people to mostly forget passion and think about what you want in your life and your job. I find passion in all things extremely overrated, what you need is love, steady, consistent and reassuring. And don't forget sentiments don't pay bills, money does.
>I'd take the people over the work anytime, the best places i've ever worked at are the places where the people are great to work with, even the slog/bureaucratic work is still good when you have people that are great at what they do and are fun to be around.
A variant of this that holds true for me is - less corporatized level-based ladder climbing 1:1, more just focus on work.
The problem with passion jobs is that you may get a dose of disillusionment. I worked for 2 years at a startup which had an interesting product and great people. Busted my ass for below market pay but when the company got sold, the deal was structured in a way that rank and file employees got nothing while the founders and top managers walked with multi-millions. Since then I am very cynical about "passion". It often seems to be a tool for exploiting gullible people. Same in a lot of non-profits.
Low rank work for little money while the top guys make good money and fly around the world to meet in luxury hotels.
Only if you are at a comfortable salary already, which for this field is normal I guess?
This is a assumption I have about most folks who are engaged enough to be on hackernews (I guess US based). With the possible exception of those folks who live in HCOL areas - most software engineers I know have a comfortable enough salary to remove obstacles to happiness. Many do choose to prioritize money over other factors - but I often see it used for more hedonistic/luxury purposes - which IMO isn't really conducive to long-term happiness.
Time is our most valuable resource - 40 hours a week is often more time than people spend with their families and friends during the week, so making sure that that time isn't just a means to an end is something I've tried to prioritize in my life
one thing that stands out to me is "Senior engineer" vs "Staff engineer" position. I was in the same boat 2 years ago and had to decide between a startup who hired me as "Senior" with a lower salary with the promise of exiting big where I loved the job and there were many smart people around me, but then I got an offer from a big tech as "Staff" level with almost double the offer and benefits. I had a really hard time to decide, but ended up going with the latter even though the startup job was my passion. However, to my surprise the big tech position helped me to grow in ways that I could not even imagine.
Because it was a higher level position I had to deal with larger scope problems, I started learning about strategic thinking and dealing with large number of teams and learned to lead and be a thought leader. The people are also smart and turned out to be super nice and helpful and used every opportunity to help me grow. Now when I look back, I don't think I would be happier in the position where I thought it matched my passion, as the other unlocked a new point of view and a different perspective and opportunities. So aside from the money and benefits, make sure you are choosing the one that benefits you the most from different angles, passion and salary is just one angle.
I understand your decision and if I were at a different point in my life (I am 51, grown kids, low fixed expenses), I would have made the same decision. But I’m at a point in life that I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever work at BigTech (again) even for twice the money.
> but then I got an offer from a big tech as "Staff" level with almost double
I've always heard the opposite ( staff at startup = senior at big tech )
how did you convince them to interview for staff ? were you staff before startup ?
or were you upleveled to staff after the interview process.
I was Senior before interviews, I was mainly targeting Staff level when I was interviewing. No convincing needed, I had enough experience to get to Staff level. With Startup I asked them for level up but they said they had limited number of positions and all they can do is Senior at a higher end of it, and can't do Staff.
I worked at the startup for a few months before the other offer was finalized. So I have a chance to get to know what it feels to work at the startup as well.
"Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else." (Joseph Campbell)
People > Work > Pay
I think this is a pretty well-reasoned piece, personally. The clearest thinking often happens when we are confronted with two already pretty solid options and asked to choose between them.
With only the information I have in front of me, I would have chosen Offer 2. More money is awesome in a very straightforward way. Staff is more fun than Senior. But mostly I think my view simply is that boring, steady businesses which can afford to pay top dollar for top talent tend to be really good places to drive capitalism forward at compared to relative moonshots like fusion tech. It seems like a much more straightforwardly good value proposition to (letting my brain fill in a random high impact detail here) bust my ass to shave a basis point off of everyone's Vanguard management costs than to work on something like fusion, where I imagine plenty of very motivated people are already exploring this from a lot of different directions.
For me, listing the pros and cons of each company does not lead to the decision I make.
In the end, the choice is the gut feeling, usually catalyzed by just one point, for which passion and attractive working environment are great candidates.
Passion vs profit is not a dichotomy. If you have a passion for making profit you will never have to choose between the two.
insert guy pointing at his head implying “smart thinking” meme
Or in my case, you realize 20 years later that if you had chased profits and done some ETF investing the next 20 years could have been all passion, potentially without needing to make money for my family.
Lots of different angles to choose from.
"If you have a passion for making profit you will never have to choose between the two."
That's why I often envy finance people, business people or people whose only interested in a company is to move up. Their passion aligns with profit. I personally care mostly about technology and not at all about business. So to also benefit from my work I also have to think about business which I don't enjoy.
You should consider the compiler business. Little money, much joy!
Making more money allows you to donate more to organizations that hire full time staff to achieve your broader goals for the world.
Trying to do that with your own work has inherent maximum scaling limits. Earning money that you can then donate to those causes does not.
More money means more options, more wiggle room.
Also, to me personally, the choice between hybrid and full remote isn’t even a choice.
> Making more money allows you to donate more to organizations that hire full time staff to achieve your broader goals for the world.
> More money means more options, more wiggle room.
Generally while having less time for yourself and suffering more.
That's brilliant. I'll take a dozen.
> Also, to me personally, the choice between hybrid and full remote isn’t even a choice.
Exactly. Being able (have) to commute to a campus which has a forest inside and ample place to walk with fresh air beats having to stay in a flat 9 hours 5 days a week by a mile.
>Generally while having less time for yourself and suffering more.
The article is talking about a fusion startup that pays less vs a "normal sort of business" that pays more. I would expect the startup to require more work.
And other example is videogame development. Videogame developers get paid less and have to work more compared to other software developers.
If you're able to work from home, why not live inside a forest with fresh air and walking space?
I don't live alone?
> Generally while having less time for yourself and suffering more.
I don’t find that to be the case at all, though I own and operate my own company and haven’t done W2 work for decades. You’re probably right when it comes to standard employment.
"the choice between hybrid and full remote isn’t even a choice"
especially if you do not wanna move to a different city bc of personal reasons.
Depends on what you want to do. For example if you are a really good ai engineer and want to influence ai safety for example getting a lead role at a bug company will probably get you more influence than donating.
I haven't yet found a way to hire someone find work interesting on my behalf.
I'm not sure I totally agree.
Personal profit maximization only works to a point - for example, if you get too old, sick or the system rejects you early and curtails or limits your ability to make money.
I don't disagree that money gives you options, but, far too many people wait until they have enough money to give back.
If you give back while you are working (e.g. balancing working for profit vs working for nonprofit, altruistic reasons, etc.) - that's awesome. The challenge there is maximizing the good you can do if you're giving too much time and energy to your profit maximization.
At some point, someone has do physically do the needed good work.
For myself, the calculus has shifted. I personally decided I cannot wait until I have enough money, or I am maximizing my profit, to go out and help people.
I also cannot wait until I am physically or mentally unable to help beyond financial contributions. Also, I cannot afford to work in the current system that drains everything from you and leaves you no energy or time left, only money (if that).
Regarding the inherent maximum scaling limits of one person- I would challenge your thinking.
Power laws of networks may demonstrate that helping a small number of the right people might be enough to unleash the butterfly effect or play into ongoing changes.
Also, the physical limits of humanity on one person apply to a billionaire as much as a person with little money. I'm not saying a billionaire, millionaire, or person with significant finances isn't more mobile/capable, but it's not a given.
I am for reasonable profit and balance. There is nothing inherently wrong with maximizing profit if someone chooses.
But if we all spend our time on maximizing profit, there still, for the time being and probably well into the future, still needs to be boots on the ground doing work that is not for profit.