
It's A Dirty Job, And I Love It - IsaacSchlueter
http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/09/mike-rowe-jobs-lead-careers-employment08-cx_mr_1209rowe.html?feed=rss_news
======
swombat
Why not follow both your passions AND the opportunities around you? Why does
it have to be an either/or thing?

If you're passionate about something, chances are you'll spot opportunities to
do it. "Follow your opportunities" is good advice, but this article fails to
realise that some (most?) of us won't feel that we've fulfilled our purpose in
life (irrespective of religious considerations - I'm talking about that sense
of self-fulfillment you get when you're doing something you think is
worthwhile) if we spend it castrating lamb with our teeth.

So follow your passion AND your opportunities. Don't settle for only one.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
There's nothing wrong with your advice. The problem is that too many people
think they must find their passion in their work and that's a tall order to
fill. Far easier to work to pay the bills and indulge your passions after
that's done.

~~~
swombat
I disagree with that. I enjoy what I'm doing, I'm passionate about it, and
having done it the other way as well, I wouldn't change back. It's great to
wake up in the morning and think "Yes! I'm going to spend all day working!"
without a trace of sarcasm.

Some people may be able to do a job that they hate, but it saps my soul.

~~~
dbooher
I'm glad you enjoy your job. I share your sentiments as well, but I think what
the parent was talking about, is that some kids are thrown "Follow your
dreams" so much that they are paralyzed by it. You and I are lucky to have
found our passion now, but what were you doing before you found your passion?
Some kids don't know their passion yet, and hence can't stand to work any job;
doing anything, even sticking with a "random" faculty seems betrayal to their
true calling. I've seen so many people who just wont do anything with their
lives while they're just "waiting" for that feeling to kick in. They go to a
job and come home navel gazing, thinking "is this it? is this it?" and when no
magical sparks happen in the first week, they decide this isn't for them and
is beneath them, and quit or just don't show up. Same thing in relationships:
we're fed 'if you find the right person it'll be perfect bliss' so often that
we're not willing to just do the dirty work, and find happiness in it. In
short, we are a generation that doesn't know how to "settle". "Settling" and
"Contentment" are shameful words in our society.

~~~
swombat
I see what you're saying, and I agree. That's why I say you should follow both
passions and opportunities. Certainly if all the good opportunities aren't
stuff that you're that passionate about, you should follow the opportunities -
while looking out for more appropriate opportunities.

I did, however, get the impression, from the article, that it implied you
should forget about passion and just do what everyone else doesn't want to do.
That to me is just as stupid as what you're describing (following passions
only).

~~~
dbooher
yeah, totally. While it's nice to hear someone sing a different tune for once,
i also got the impression that somehow "passion == wrong". really, we should
be giving kids a flowchart --> passionate about something? (yes) go for it
(no) be willing to do anything opportunity turns up, and keep your ears open
for when passion calls. Loop every so often until you end up with a "yes".

It was by total fluke that I got into programming at all, but if I had been a
"dream waiter" bum who did nothing all my life, I wouldn't have had the
resources or maturity to follow that dream when it did turn up.

------
jimbokun
"I've been thinking about the first time I castrated a lamb with my teeth."

Suddenly, my job satisfaction sitting here programming just went up a notch.

~~~
mynameishere
I refuse to believe that there isn't a tool better at that job than human
teeth.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Sharp, strong, impossible to lose, and they leave your hands free to hold down
a distressed lamb.

Teeth do have some advantages here. Forget high-tech and low-tech, this is no-
tech.

~~~
electromagnetic
The other thing was that these lambs were prepubescent, quite literally you
have to fish the balls out. I saw the episode and it took one person to hold
the lamb, one to hold its legs apart and one person using both hands to get
the balls out of the body so it would be highly inefficient to add yet another
person to this process to clamp and pull them off.

There are other ways to do this, just none of them do it fast enough. One
method is to put a big elastic band around the scrotum and wait two weeks for
them to drop off, the problem with this is that some of those lambs become
mature in that time and then you get multiple Rams that end up trying to kill
each other, one of which is likely an ideal breeder you need alive. This
method supposedly only takes 2 people to do, however it takes 2 weeks to
complete, where as biting takes 3 people and 2 minutes to complete so you've
got the entire herd done before you've fully castrated your first lamb using
the technological method.

------
Tichy
Hm, the scary thing is, I think if my true passion was picking up road kill, I
would probably never find out. It would never have occured to me to try that
profession. So I am doomed :-(

~~~
mlLK
I picked up roadkill for two summers in a row while working for the DPW, but
we never called it roadkill, we denoted the dearly departed as 'buddies'. It
was sorta funny since you may wonder, "Where do all them buddies go after you
get done pickin em all up?" They all went in this 12ft hole known as the buddy
pit.

~~~
dbooher
"buddy pit", haha, Glorious =)

i'll take spontaneous ironic humour like that over the artificial corporate
"team building/inspirational" talk any day of the (work)week.

------
wallflower
Hmmm. Some of the jobs are extreme examples but a smart kid I knew since he
was a toddler - when he graduated from high school in his valedictory address
said, "Work doesn't necessarily make you happy. but it may give you to means
to do the stuff that makes you happy."

There is a point that some of the most profitable jobs are those that people
don't like to do and/or niches.

------
ercowo
a common thread seems to be working outside and/or working with animals. I'm
convinced that there are qualities to these jobs that resonate more with our
innate (evolved) abilities than a desk / programming job. I'm thinking of
taking 3-4 months off to volunteer in a national park (or something like that)
between my current job and my next

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
There is something to that. I live on a farm and while I bitch about going
outside in subzero temperatures to care for the animals, there is a
satisfaction in doing the basic, hard physical work that I don't get from
sitting at a desk programming.

We are definitely hardwired to be outside and it's sad that we spend so much
of our time indoors. Surrounded by the white silence of snow, admiring the
beauty of sundogs on a -10F morning is an amazing way to begin a workday.

And starting out your day sliding around in mud & chickenshit certainly gives
you perspective when listening to some drone in a meeting :-)

------
peregrine
Mike Rowe is a great guy, and this was a great article. This is why I come to
hacker news.

~~~
swilliams
"What does surprise me is the fact that everybody I've met on this gig--with
the possible exception of the lamb--seems to be having a ball."

I love Mike Rowe's sense of humor. Even if I did scream in revulsion when I
read the first paragraph.

~~~
tallanvor
Seeing him actually do it was even worse than reading about it!

~~~
rationalbeaver
When I read that bit, all I could think was "Man, there has got to be a better
way to do that".

Perhaps I'll be inventing a lamb castrator device this weekend...

~~~
kragen
I hear there's this material called "flint" that works well for that kind of
thing; if you hit it at the right angle with a rock, it forms a sharp edge,
very similar to your teeth, and you can use the edge to cut all sorts of
things.

~~~
donw
"Emo Technology"?

~~~
kragen
Do rocks make you sad? Or is it the conchoidal fractures?

