I think it is really one of those compromise things. There are things I love doing but realistically the money I would make doing them would be crappy.
So, I chose a job that I like (not love) where I make enough money to lead the existence I want.
However, the idea of doing something I didn’t like at all everyday is terrifying.
I don’t think what you do for work is the issue. With some obvious exceptions, it’s how your approach your work, whatever the work is, that really matters.
I’d say this is a very well-thought-out post. I know some climbers who were climbing gym junkies when they’ weren’t outside, and said that working at their favorite climbing gym actually really sucked. For one, they actually had to work which meant they were at the gym all the time but couldn’t climb. Secondly, they planned the climbing routes and set them up on the walls, so there wasn’t the challenge of working through the problems as a climber looking at the completed route fresh for the first time. And thirdly, the backroom politics bugged them, so once they quit, they never went back to their previously favorite place. 
I would assume there can be a happy medium. Like if you love climbing, run a shop that sells climbing and mountaineering equipment, or if you love cycling run a bike repair shop.
QFT. When you do what you love, the work day is about 3 hours long. When you are doing what you hate, it is 12 hours long. I’ve done both. You also come home in a much better mood when you enjoy yourself at work.
For me, doing what I love for very little money was called grad school. Now I get to do what I love for a lot of money. I enjoy it so much, I plan to keep on programming for fun when I retire, along with a lot of other hobbies.
I wanted to vote for both “Sound advice for most people” and “That doesn’t work most of the time”. I.e., if you can find a job doing what you love, that’s great, but many people can’t find a job doing what they love.
I think there’s a difference between defining “what you love” as your hobbies vs. what you can reasonably do for 8+ hrs a day for 50 weeks a year and still enjoy it.
For example, I love homebrewing and cooking, but I know that I’d hate being a professional brewer because it would quit being about experimenting and bashing together neat equipment, and about production schedules, p&l, etc…
Same thing about cooking- once it went from making something that my wife/family/friends can enjoy, to having to consistently and constantly make things that some jerk out in the dining room will enjoy and pay for, it would lose most of its luster.
I think I could really get into being a college professor though.
There are ways to interpret the statement “Do what you love”:
From the standpoint of a specific hobby vs. work - I tend to agree with the other posters who have stated that they don’t want to give up the magic of their interests by putting them through a must-get-paid grind.
However, I think “managing your career path so you are able to feel passionately committed to your work” is a hard, but realistic and worthy goal to pursue. My job wouldn’t have a counterpart that is a “hobby” per se, but I have worked hard to get myself into a position that I truly love, and am deeply appreciative that I ended up here…
Well, one can certainly earn a decent living working a job aligned to their abilities and general interests. But it’s difficult to compete with someone who is so passionate about their job that it is ingrained into every waking moment.
The flip side of that is that I see a lot of companies that try to seek out or impart that same level of passion on their workforce. Sorry, but for most people it is “just a job”.
Look, if everyone got to do what they loved, no one would clean up shit for a living.
When I was young I wanted to be an actor and an artist. It is certainly possible I could have followed either or both of these paths and eventually reached a level of financial comfort.
However, I also wanted to be able to pay rent and eat while getting going. For me the trend line for return on time invested did not work out. I have friends who kept at it and are now in middle age without a dime to their names. The stress of living saps any joy they get out of their chosen fields.
I feel that the “do what you love and the money will follow” crowd must have some financial resources in place that I did not have.
This.
I am an editor. I always wanted to be an editor because I love to read and I love the language. I rarely read for pleasure anymore and when I do, I find it irritating because I catch typos and errors all the time. I cannot turn “off” my eagle eye.
Next time you see me in a bar, ask me if I want to read the novel you’re working on. Fastest way to get me chased as far away from you as I can get.
I would temper that advice with, “At least try not to hate what you spend a third of your life doing.” Love is a bit strong. I like my job. But it has ruined me for reading.
I think there’s an unspoken caveat to that statement, and that’s “… as long as it’s not art, acting or music.” or maybe “… as long as it’s something you have more than a 1:1,000,000 chance of turning into a successful career.”
Those three (art, music and acting) seem to have an extraordinarily low percentage of really successful practitioners relative to a lot of other things. How many “actors” are there in Hollywood and New York who are in truth, waiters or some other low paying job? How many artists actually live on their art earnings? How many professional musicians who actually live off their earnings are there?
I mean, those strike me as just as far-fetched as making a lifelong career as a professional athlete.
I suspect that the smart ones who love those things find careers around those things, not necessarily IN those things- art critic, concert promoter, etc…
I think a lot of people start out pretty passionate, then get that passion beat out of them over time. Some combination of oblivious supervisors with unrealistic expectations, psychotically driven co-workers, bad working conditions, etc… make people highly de-motivated, even when at one point, they may have loved what they do.
I can’t count the IT people I know who love the technical part, or the problem solving part, but the other aspects of their job crush any enjoyment they might have, due to ridiculous paperwork or bureaucracy, unrealistic business expectations and timelines, and the fact that no matter how well they do or how fast they do it, some jerk always wants more and faster.
Hm. I checked the “works for some” option.
I love teaching. Despite the issues at my school, both with students and co-workers, I love this job.
The pay, however, sucks… which makes the job more stressful. I made more as a cable guy than I do doing this. I have more vacation time now, but my time spent working is far, far longer. I mean, I never had to fix someone’s cable once my shift ended before. Now I have to stay up lesson planning and grading for a big portion of my weeknights or do so on my weekends. 60-70 hour workweeks are normal; I also teach summer school, which takes my summer break down to three weeks.
Now, that three weeks is great. So are the two weeks at Christmas, the week in October, and the week in March. I have seven weeks off during the year, which is more than most people can say. I even get paid during that time, since our salary is just paid out over 24 pay periods.
I teach an extra class for three of our four blocks, so that ups my pay a bit during those blocks. But even with that, at 60 hours a week, I make $16.67/hour.
$16.67/hour isn’t terrible, I know. I knew when I became a teacher that I’d make about this much money. What I didn’t know is how I’d feel once I had a family.
I went to school for this in my early 20’s. I got this job at 25, when my wife and I were engaged and childless. I didn’t have the foresight to think about whether or not my career would be able to support a family in the suburbs on one income. While many people could do so, we made some bad financial decisions, and we can’t. Our house is underwater (no big deal right now, but it is annoying). We’ll eventually need a bigger one, but it’s fine for now.
Both of our cars are underwater, though, and that is a big deal. We don’t need our second car anymore since my wife now teaches at the same school, but we owe almost $5,000 more than it’s worth. We’re selling my motorcycle, if we can find a buyer. We cancelled Dish (who cares?) and gym memberships (again, no big deal). I still contribute to my 401(k), but that’s my only retirement plan for now.
I want my wife to be able to be a SAHM. She wants to do so, too; we see the negative effects of kids not getting enough attention and guidance from their parents daily at our school. My daughter is the most important thing in the world to me, and I don’t know if this job will let me provide for her future the way I’d like to.
So, I might move into something I don’t love but which pays more. I’ve looked into sales and I’ve looked into going to law school. I minored in Political Science and enjoyed all of the undergrad-level law classes I took for that more than almost any other classes, but the only lawyer I know hates her job. Plus, every lawyer here on the SDMB advises against law school and that whole career path. Even if I go down that path, I’d have to sell my soul to the corporate devil to make the kind of money I’d like to make… I’m just not sure how I feel about that.
Wow. This post got rambly. Sorry this took so long; I’ve been thinking about a lot of this stuff on my own, anyways!
Every lawyer I’ve ever met both A) hates their job and B) discourages anyone who will listen from attending law school.
I’m not sure if this is because lawyers are shocked to discover that lawyering isn’t just playing golf and drinking beer all day, occasionally shouting “Objection!” at some other lawyer. It’s really hard work, with horribly long hours. So maybe some lawyers go into it thinking it’s just going to be easy money, hand over fist, or if they think they can change/save the world, or what. Or maybe they had no idea there would be so much reading and writing involved.
But I think they all discourage people from going to law school because they are intimidated and afraid of the competition. The fewer people who become lawyers, the more cash to grab for those who already are.
I think it is more that being a lawyer is being in “Professional Services” - like being a Management Consulting. If you like the industry and topics you are involved in, the first few years, although intense are fascinating - like Post-Grad, applied training or a residency. But after that, you are basically in Sales - keeping the case pipeline full. And you know what? Sales is not fun the majority of the time. Also, you are not where the buck stops - Lawyers and Management Consultants are paid to offer opinions and/or argue cases on behalf of the real Decision Makers. That can get old - you want to sit at the Grown-Up Table.
The lawyer I know who loves his job is the Managing Partner at his firm, so he is more enjoying his CEO role than his lawyering role…
Perhaps the caveat can be expressed as not trying to follow a career that hates you. Actors get plentiful feedback from unbiased evaluators. If you refuse to listen to it, then your advice is good. But it doesn’t cost all that much to see if you can get signed by an agent. I know quite a few success stories personally.
Same goes for writing. If no one wants to publish your stuff, you are either a genius far beyond the understanding of the sell out industry, or you can’t write. And the odds of the latter being the case are a million to one.
It seriously depends on the person. For sure though, I would not recommend that anyone do something they DISlike, just because it pays well…that is really toxic to the soul.
I really enjoy electronics design and have made a career of it. I have worked a number of places, and the management style was far more important to my happiness than the projects I worked on. Take an interesting project, then cut three months out of the schedule, then have a meeting EVERY FREAKING DAY to figure out how we are going to meet the new schedule.
Anyone who is thinking of law school should read the “scam blogs” like http://jdscam.blogspot.com/ first. Even if you work hard in law school, you might not end up making enough money to pay off the student loan debt from law school. The legal job market is pretty saturated at this point.
If you’re already in financial trouble, the LAST thing you need is to wind up with tens of thousands of student loan debt that you can’t even discharge in bankruptcy.
I’m seeing a pattern here which I’ve seen before when this question comes up.
Some people are conflating “do what you love” with “turn your hobbies into your job”, but I don’t interpret it that way. Like Balthisar, my current career isn’t something that could ever be a hobby, yet it is a job I generally* love. I mean, who the heck has “figuring out how people do their job, figuring out how best to adapt a preexisting computer program so its usage accurately reflects what people are doing while saving them steps, writing manuals and courses, teaching people how to do their job using the program” as a hobby? Not only would I have to be nutin’ fucks to have that as a hobby, there isn’t even anywhere you can do that for kicks!
I do know several lawyers who like their jobs, but all of them have at least one lawyer in their family’s previous two generations: they picked law knowing what it was about. Different job market from y’all too, these are all in Spain (I simply don’t happen to know many lawyers in Parts Abroad).
As someone who’s had both scenarios when it comes to employment, I’ll take “happy with my job with shit pay” over “paid well but the job is boring” any day.