41–50 of 56 posts
Credit for this piece of wisdom goes to a very smart kid who I knew when he was wee tall - delivered as part of his HS Valedictorian address.
A violinist I know once gave me the following advice: "If you love music, find yourself a job which doesn't involve playing music. If you become a professional musician, you'll find that you have to take every gig which comes along, just to make ends meet; you'll find yourself saying 'dear god, not Beethoven's fifth symphony AGAIN'; and ultimately you'll end up not loving music any more." I figure that doing a startu…
In my experience, this is just as true of programming.
A violinist I know once gave me the following advice: "If you love music, find yourself a job which doesn't involve playing music. If you become a professional musician, you'll find that you have to take every gig which comes along, just to make ends meet; you'll find yourself saying 'dear god, not Beethoven's fifth symphony AGAIN'; and ultimately you'll end up not loving music any more." I figure that doing a startu…
> "If you love music, find yourself a job which doesn't involve playing music." In my experience, this is just as true of programming.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What i mean is to get back on the stage and pursue acting, or start painting seriously and try and get my work in a gallery. In the end, I enjoy entertaining people and creating things (which is why I got into programming in the first place). My main concern is my loss creativity over the past couple of years due to my career path - and somehow i'm looking for a way to regain that and make it my primary passion in li…
> make it my primary passion in life In my experience, if you already had a primary passion you wouldn't care if it offered a "career path". At a minimum you'd be trying to reconcile it with a "real job" and would eventually stumble onto a crossroads. If you're just unhappy tro to desocialize. Change your environment, your media and your perspective. At an extreme you could move to another country and try learning th…
Have you done this?
I'm seriously considering this in the near term/mid term
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> make it my primary passion in life In my experience, if you already had a primary passion you wouldn't care if it offered a "career path". At a minimum you'd be trying to reconcile it with a "real job" and would eventually stumble onto a crossroads. If you're just unhappy tro to desocialize. Change your environment, your media and your perspective. At an extreme you could move to another country and try learning th…
>At an extreme you could move to another country and try learning the language while getting by. Have you done this? I'm seriously considering this in the near term/mid term
Moving abroad is great. The problem is that unless you really work at becoming fluent in the local language your career options are limited. For most people travelling helps them realize what they want without providing much help getting there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>At an extreme you could move to another country and try learning the language while getting by. Have you done this? I'm seriously considering this in the near term/mid term
Spent several years in Beijing. Now I'm working in Shanghai with a foreign start-up and 我的中文也厉害得不得了！ Moving abroad is great. The problem is that unless you really work at becoming fluent in the local language your career options are limited. For most people travelling helps them realize what they want without providing much help getting there.
I think I'll start with Spanish. I'm thinking of 3 months of immersion language training in a Latin American country.
"... i'm a self-taught programmer. I've taken a job as a developer for a start-up in Waltham after college ... but i don't think i'm going to be happy in the long run ... Then it occurred to me that since i've been going to business school and programming, i've practically lost all touch with my artistic side (I used to paint, draw, act, etc..) and that I really regret it ..." make things that artists like :) The tri…
make things that artists like :) For what it's worth, I think this is what PG tried to do... Viaweb started out as a service to allow art galleries to get on the web: http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
For what it's worth, I think this is what PG tried to do... Viaweb started out as a service to allow art galleries to get on the web ..."
I think your on the right trail. But pg didn't target artists as much as 'gallery owners'. [0] For good reason he took the (right) choice, of money or starving artists. But it didn't work. What I'm getting at is targeting "creatives" [1] instead of salespeople. Is this the reason why Artix couldn't "make what art salespeople wanted"? I didn't really have an example in mind until I read this morning on Fuzzwich. [2] Powerful products can created by Startups that straddle 2 logs at a time. In this case an understanding of technology and animation.
[0] The "Artix Phase" is a favourite of mine ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
It reads a lot like Cpt. Kirk in Star Trek:
SPOCK: Captain. There is a high probability
this encounter going to be similiar
in nature to the 'Artix Phase'.
KIRK: I was thinking the same thing.
Hmm, the "Artix Phase". I haven't
heard that since "Starfleet Academy".
Never got off the ground to crash & burn!
[2] "Fuzzwich (YC summer 07) launches a new look and previews Animator" ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=130008
He's also very sensitive to the larger market - he knows that people don't like to have stark pictures of despair in their living room. It's not his favorite picture to take, but that's his brand. This enables him to work maybe ten days out of the year. He lives in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Pacific. He's a darn good photographer, but there are many as good who never hit it big. The reason people hit it big in the arts (just like anything) is marketing and developing a well-crafted brand over time. He went for where the big money was - the galleries who deal with very upscale clients - and he never deviated from that brand. Being in tech means that you can save up enough to make the transition right and jump in at a higher market. Take the time to evaluate several different markets before you decide - figure out your best approach and then don't be stingy funding it. You can be very successful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't mind living over seas, you can have a pretty high standard of living for much less. Based on my off the cuff calculations, I think a person with a decent programming job could save enough in 5 or so years (with frugal living) that they could live overseas off the interest. If true, this is much more guaranteed path to financial freedom than a startup. Just an option to consider. This is what I've found s…
I like having a job, though, cuz then I don't feel guilty about not spending all my time saving the world. I'd love to, but I have work to do!