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Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

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Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#71

Post by spadros »

paulpauper wrote: post #13

Funny how people keep saying writing is a terrible career yet so many want to do it. Most careers are not that good, tbh: low pay, bad work conditions, and or lots of hours. Top Substack authors earning salaries comparable to STEM execs, but have a platform (which is also worth a lot), full autonomy, as well as extra income from books and affiliate links etc. Not bad work if you can get it.

The point is it’s incredibly hard to get the the good work. It’s not bad, if you can survive the insane competition. Which most, by definition, cannot.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#72

Post by cmrdporcupine »

akhayam wrote: post #14

Let me provide an adjacent perspective: I started my career as an academic and excellent writing was survival in that jungle. While that's a profession where research and writing can actually "pay your bills" (metaphorically), it resembled Liu Cixin's dark forest: “The (academic) universe is a dark forest. Every civilization (professor / grad student) is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently…

Honestly what you describe is not dissimilar to how some engineers behaved at e.g. Google around projects and perf process. I'm not sure if they learn it in academia, or if the perf process is inspired by academia, or if it's just... human nature ... to create reward systems that amplify credit-stealing and fame seeking.

But it sucks. And there's whole demographics of people who think it's normal.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#73

Post by 1attice »

spadros wrote: post #70
1attice wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever TS Eliot got up to

I disagree with your premise. There’s masterful tech docs and terrible fan fiction. Comparing one to a barn and the other to Van Gogh is meaningless.

I don't have a premise other than, "these things are not alike; this article equivocates on 'writing'."

I make no claim about whether nor not tech docs can be masterful. It's weird of you to go in this direction?

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#74

Post by Falkon1313 »

paulpauper wrote: post #13

Funny how people keep saying writing is a terrible career yet so many want to do it. Most careers are not that good, tbh: low pay, bad work conditions, and or lots of hours. Top Substack authors earning salaries comparable to STEM execs, but have a platform (which is also worth a lot), full autonomy, as well as extra income from books and affiliate links etc. Not bad work if you can get it.

Not many jobs still pay you for the work you did a month, a year, 10 years, or 25 years ago. Not many jobs pay you just to sit at home and make up stories either. Of course many people want a job like that.

But the actual day-to-day doing of it, well, that's quite another thing. And most of us just aren't cut out to be an Agatha Christie, Stephen King, or Isaac Asimov.

You see some of that in music and similar things as well. For every AC/DC or Guns N' Roses, there were a million garage bands who worked hard but were lucky to get a gig at a local dive bar or a family member's wedding. That never stopped people from wanting to do it though.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#75

Post by john-tells-all »

mongol wrote: post #49

For someone that does not have English as a native language. Do you think Chat GPT could act as editor? Basically correcting grammatical mistakes and similar?

I tried to have Copilot extend my technical writing article. It was very fast... at writing very positive-sounding gibberish.

Possibly with a better prompt it would be better.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#76

Post by dragonwriter »

dan-robertson wrote: post #62
mongol wrote: post #49

For someone that does not have English as a native language. Do you think Chat GPT could act as editor? Basically correcting grammatical mistakes and similar?

It’s pretty good at getting the grammar right. My guess is that it would be good at checking yours. The prose it produces isn’t great.

> It’s pretty good at getting the grammar right. My guess is that it would be good at checking yours.

Writing something that fits the pattern of correct English is a very different thing for a tool to do than identifying and explaining what’s wrong with something with errors; ChatGPT by design is focused on the first, not the second.

OTOH, grammar checkers are a thing, and if you have sub-native (or even just not-particularly-formally-polished native) proficiency in a language, they are definitely quite useful (well, at least the better ones for English are), you don’t need AI for this.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#77

Post by j2kun »

Forge36 wrote: post #66
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

How did you self publish?

Kindle Direct Publishing. It used to be called CreateSpace (I was an intern there!) and their process is decent and the printed quality is good!

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#78

Post by j2kun »

coldtea wrote: post #42
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Notice how they're always some FAANG guy in these kinds of discussions saying something like: "so you've earned 50K for a year work on writing that book? dude that's like $x/hour, I earn a $300K wage + 1 million in stocks per year, and they have a private cook and gymnast at the FAANGplex for me and everything".

/shrug I wrote most of the book before I was a FAANG guy.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#79

Post by j2kun »

tayo42 wrote: post #9
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Just a general question, how do you know the topic is even worth writing a book about? Like spending a year working on it then watch the book fail. That would really suck. I guess in general, how do you know you have something interesting and captivating to say. Edit:for the weird auto completes

It's hard for me to pin it down, but after blogging for 10+ years and working on my second book now, I kind of just have a good feeling for what will work. The topic and my approach to it feels true and speaks to my experience.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#80

Post by akhayam »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #72
akhayam wrote: post #14

Let me provide an adjacent perspective: I started my career as an academic and excellent writing was survival in that jungle. While that's a profession where research and writing can actually "pay your bills" (metaphorically), it resembled Liu Cixin's dark forest: “The (academic) universe is a dark forest. Every civilization (professor / grad student) is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently…

Honestly what you describe is not dissimilar to how some engineers behaved at e.g. Google around projects and perf process. I'm not sure if they learn it in academia, or if the perf process is inspired by academia, or if it's just... human nature ... to create reward systems that amplify credit-stealing and fame seeking. But it sucks. And there's whole demographics of people who think it's normal.

I feel it's all rooted in bad leadership. Leaders who don't understand who's actually doing the work hire more folks like them and then there is a chain reaction. Unfortunate, but true, part of most big companies.
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