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The fashion for passion

economist.com

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Re: The fashion for passion

#3

Post by user_named »

... And then you get laid off. Happened to my gf, took it very hard. She's now going through the disillusionment phase, starting to understand that getting an MBA and being a special talent and loving your job is all a lie.

Re: The fashion for passion

#7

Post by nine_k »

thread_id wrote: post #5

Mike Row has been touting this philosphy for quite some time now: Don't Pursue Your Passion. Chase Opportunity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KF0AN4H3U8

Doing only things that you otherwise despise but which advance you somehow is also a way to a major depression, or some other mental injury.

OTOH diving head-first into your passion and ignoring everything else, including such things as the need to earn a subsistence, is also a recipe for disaster in all but very few exceptional cases.

I'd say there is a middle way, of doing something of what the opportunity pushes at you, but selecting from it the bits that have a glint of what you enjoy doing. Sometimes you get better opportunities, sometimes worse, but you move in the general direction of your, well, "passion".

Being good at making enough money and/or freeing enough time by doing something which typically is not 100% your passion, you eventually obtain resources to indulge in your passion directly in your free time.

Re: The fashion for passion

#9

Post by noduerme »

This is probably an outcropping of the trend in '90s prep schools to force students to have pitch-perfect side projects for their college applications. That shit never sat right with me. Here are a few side projects I've found employers don't really want to hear about, but find hard to say no to:

"I run a bitcoin casino"

"I build genetic algorithms to hack the stock market so I can make fuck-you money and quit this job"

"I distill my own whisky but I still go to the bar every night and get into passionate political conversations"

"Waste a lot of time on HN"

Re: The fashion for passion

#10

Post by a1371 »

I feel the topic of having a passion is becoming a contentious issue. When that investor letter to Google ceo came out, I unfortunately suggested that maybe for a company like Google, too high salaries would bring people in who "work for money and not passion".

I never even dreamed of seeing so many people taking issue with what I said. Many were saying that it's just a job and people should not be passionate about Google for working.

I understand that perspective. It sounds dystopian to have every employee be a character right out of The Office, protagonizing a corporation that's out there to just make money. A corporation that won't second-guess firing them because someone said things might get rough later.

Still, trends like Quiet Quiting seem like the worst response. Going emo and glorifying people who stay detached from their job doesn't seem to solve anything.

If passionate people are being let go too easily, it's a sign of poor employee representation in the leadership. But approaching that subject we enter yet another ick territory that's... unions.

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