Is ‘Follow your Passion’ Bad Advice?
Barbara Oakley, author of Pathological Altruism, has a blog post up at Psychology Today entitled “Engineering—The Smart Career Choice for People Who Love Psychology”:
Follow your passion. That’s become the mantra of today’s society. It’s also a potential pitfall.
The issue is that people often have similar underlying passions. This means they flock to the same careers. And this means lots of competition—often for very low level jobs centered on our most elementary passions. ….
So if you’re smart, you love people, and you want to study psychology, do yourself a favor. Avoid well-meaning advice from humanities and social science professors to “follow your passion.” Instead, run the other way and develop new passions.
Oakley suggests that psychology majors think about engineering. It certainly makes sense in today’s job market where degrees like psychology or sociology at the undergraduate level are often worthless.
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Cross-posted at Dr. Helen’s blog.
The question about “following your passion” hopelessly confuses psychology and economics, who said the two have to align at all?
As for the specifics:
You’re likely to make a better living as a cop, teacher, or other civil servant than as an engineer.
And you need a certain amount of innate mechanical/mathematical talent to be an engineer, it ain’t gonna work for about half the male and three-quarters of the female population.
Otherwise why not recommend people become NBA players?
The engineering field is already plagued with a mild oversupply of Americans and a gross oversupply of immigrants brought over to suppress wages under the H-1B and other visa categories. If you *do* happen to have a passion for engineering, and the talent, you will not make any money doing it for a salary, at least not any more than an average middle-class wage. As a technical entrepreneur you may hit the jackpot (but that calls for both some level of technical talent *and* business/entreprenurial talents and training, and a dollup of luck), but for that matter opening a sandwich shop franchise and running it competently, is probably a better risk/return ratio. Who doesn’t love a good sandwich?
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I’ve been an engineer for over 30 years and in that time I’ve always enjoyed a salary that was much better than average. Of course, I was able to combine an innate talent and interest for this sort of work.
I would be hesitant as well to suggest to those personality types who are interested in the humanities and arts to pursue careers in the hard sciences. It just isn’t going to work out for the vast majority.
A close friend, who is an artsy type, just started a food truck business and is doing quite well with it.
Another problem is, this advice is often given to people who have no idea of the alternatives available to them. Sometimes you have to live a little before you really figure out what/who you want to be.
Is following your passion bad advice? Hell no, thats what America is all about. Keep the dream alive. I tell my kids every day to follow their dreams. Yes, you might not be the next nba star but you will be better and tougher person for trying. It takes a lot of guts to follow your passion.
And what if that passion is puppetry arts and would lead to a life of penury?
I don’t know about this advice, either.
I agree with Josh that the LONG TERM prospects for an engineer often aren’t that great, although at my son’s science & engineering college the new grads are being snapped up, especially the CS & petroleum engineers. The fact is, the STEM majors that the conventional wisdom says we need so many of end up working for someone with a business degree, and often are replaced by cheaper, younger talent.
The need for different disciplines changes unpredictably. There are few fields that are insulated from the ups and downs of the economy. If you follow your passion, at least you’ll be happy when you ARE employed!
Maybe pair it with something more practical. If a student loves psychology, instead of engineering, why not economics? The math isn’t any harder and there is heavy overlap with psychology. Or double major- the intersection between two fields is often a niche that leads to unique opportunities. If you follow your passion, that passion may translate into being more proficient or dedicated than the competition.
Some of the IT recruiters (with whom I deal endlessly) are overjoyed these days, there are lots of jobs, “everybody is working”, people get multiple offers, but that’s for journeymen.
Newbies often have big problems getting first jobs. Apparently grads from major schools do well, but second tier and trade schools, rather less so.
Since any old bachelor’s degree won’t even get you an anonymous white-collar job these days, the *relative* attractiveness of tech is up, I guess, in economic terms. In career terms it’s grim, ALL the trends are to outsource the jobs to China, India, wherever, so the ones here are always under pressure. The field has been “commoditized”, average wages for average talents accounts for 99% of it. So for survival, OK, but it comes down to not just not following your passion, but voluntarily stepping into a field carefully structured to be unrewarding both financially and individually.
Hot topic with me, obviously.
Yes- in career terms it is definitely grim. It’s really pretty unbelievable what can be outsourced these days- accounting, law, even some aspects of medicine (my local hospital has its nighttime xray films read in Australia- I think pathology is next). The only areas with a wide moat in that regard are management and personal services. Anything remotely technical is at risk.
I will admit that I steered my son away from a top-notch tech school that was located in a hotbed of IT, toward one that’s more into materials & natural resources. I didn’t want him to be a disposable employee in ten years, as he’s mathematically gifted but not management material.
Better advise would be “follow your aptitude”. If you want to be successful then you need to know what your talents are and then be willing to work to develop the skills necessary to utilize them. Trying to succeed in an area where you have no natural talent is a recipe for failure. You’ll struggle to develop the necessary skills and you’ll struggle in the workplace simply because you’re emphasizing your weaknesses. It doesn’t matter how much you want to be the next “American Idol” if you can’t sing.
There are dreams, fantasies and delusions. It’s important to know the difference.
Dreams can come true if you have the ability and are willing to put in the work. I dreamed of becoming a private pilot and made it happen.
Fantasies aren’t mathematically impossible but are big longshots. Winning the lottery is a fantasy.
Delusions aren’t going to happen, period. There’s no way I’m going to win the 100 meter dash (or any other event) in the 2012 Olympics no matter how hard I train. It just isn’t going to happen. I’d have better odds on winning the PowerBall (195 million to 1).
Banging the wives of violently jealous men may be passionate; it’s also wrong and suicidally stupid.
Speaking – writing as someone who didn’t find her dream job until 40, and whose kids are those unfortunate Millennials coming of age into the worst job market in my lifetime, I’ve given my daughter permission to study at an acting conservatory on the assumption that there are really no “safe” career paths these days. Given that one rolls the dice no matter what one’s ambitions are, might as well roll them on what she loves for a first try. There are a few possible Plans B if she doesn’t get lucky.
For most of history, the vast majority of people worked at whatever job was available. Jobs put food on the table and a roof over the family’s head. I think we’re back to that time. My son is about to graduate with a double major, psychology and economics (dean’s list). But he’s going to get his CDL from the military since he drives for his unit. We hope that will make him employable.
I’s all about the logic of comparative advantage.
If you have a passion that few other people have, then go for it!
… as long as there is enough money in it for you, of course.
Also, assuming that you have the necessary talent for the job.
In general, you have to aim at a career where demand outstrips supply, and that happens only if most people lack the needed talent and/or the passion.
If both your talents and passions are pretty average, then you have either to develop special talents or to sacrifice your passions.
I am also reminded of Hume’s maxim:
Reason is, and ought to be, the servant of the passions.
Though that is not directly applicable here.
Oh, the “P-word” again. It’s terribly overused these days. Overrated, too. Be a viable organism first. Feed yourself and put a roof over your own head. Remember that work is the price you pay for being alive. If you don’t have a handle on the basics of life, then you’ve got no business following anything other than your next meal. If you think you won’t be truly fulfilled unless your book gets published or your painting gets shown or your movie gets filmed, your priorities are seriously out of whack. You’re not here to be fulfilled. You’re here to survive until sexual maturity, reproduce, then die. Everything else – including following your passion – is extra.
Oh, please, no.
We already have enough idiots in the engineering world.
Some people simply don’t have the logical minds and mathematical orientation for engineering or other technical work. I feel bad for people like this, because they are unlikely to ever have a really high paying job. But there is something worse than graduating with a 4.0 GPA in psychology and then getting a master’s or PhD, where at least you stand a chance of getting an okay paying job. Something worse is flunking out of civil engineering or computer science, or barely graduating in those fields, and being in the bottom 1/4 of those looking for jobs.
Fine, follow your passion as a hobby. In the meantime consider trade school. Way less debt hanging over your head. You learn skills that people are going to be willing to pay money to hire you to practice. Not very likely to get outsourced to Sanjay in Bombay or Mina in Luzon. Nothing against Sanjay or Mina, thought they were nice folk and did a bangup job remote-fixing my pc. But where are they when the freeze cracks my toilet drain at 3am?
As a functioning member of society, job one should be to support one’s self and one’s family should there be such in the mix. The foundational tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy are not optional while you cast about searching for psychic fulfillment.
Many of the folk revered in history for following their passion had either a patron willing to bankroll them, or a day job. Learn a day job, the rest is gravy.
Einstein was a patent clerk, take the hint.
“#6. “Follow Your Heart”
“If there’s one thing that Hollywood loves doing, it’s trying to convince us that it’s wise to ignore our responsibilities in favor of a reward that has virtually no chance of happening.”
“A Better Alternative: Your heart gets a vote, but your brain gets veto power.”
From “The 6 Most Quoted Pieces of Advice (That Are Usually Wrong)”
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-quoted-pieces-advice-that-are-usually-wrong/