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Stage 1: Do unpaid work for yourself Stage 2: Use that as leverage to negotiate a position where you get paid to do work for others Stage 3: Save up enough so you can be free to do more, higher-quality unpaid work for yourself <--- I am currently here Stage 4: Weāll see
I have paid every intern thatās ever worked for me (both at ReferralCandy and @jibabom) and I would never do an unpaid internship myself - I personally canāt respect anybody who doesnāt pay their staff, and I canāt work for anybody I donāt respect. That said...
... I have gotten a steady stream of paid job offers ever since I was ~17. This is because employers know what Iāve done + they know what Iām worth. They know that bc of the work Iāve published in the public domain... that nobody paid me to do. (I never did college/Uni btw)
If you want cool and interesting jobs that pay decently, you have to be a cool and interesting person that can demonstrably create value. How fucked up is it that our education systems donāt actually optimise for this - and in fact disincentivize this? The game is rigged.
In April this year, I was bored and decided to organise an event on Facebook inviting people to scream at a public park. It got a bunch of media attention and I got a couple of job offers (events/community/marketing) because of this. Unpaid work! Fun!https://t.co/UsGLzGttPr
I believed this at 17, as a scared and nervous teenager, & I believe it more strongly now as a moderately accomplished adult: if you want to make an interesting living outside of the classic guilds (law, medicine, etc), the most important thing to do is cultivate taste, publicly
There are employers out there who would love to hire (and pay) a driven, motivated kid whoās curious about things, good at figuring things out, and get things done. The problem is that thereās no way to know who these kids are unless they have a trail of output to show for it
Anyway this is just my experience. Your mileage may vary. If you have time to argue about unpaid internships though, you have time to write an interesting essay about something you love, or code up a cute little site, etc, and use THAT to get yourself some paid work.
Definitely do rant about the injustice of unpaid internships in general, but maybe do that after youāre getting paid. Itās not *that* hard to get paid. Itās certainly easier than playing elaborate virtue-signalling games on Twitter. You donāt have to be broke! āš¾
When I was a teenager I thought of it like this: If I make stuff I love, other people who like it will reach out to me, and some of them will offer me jobs. There is surely an older, successful, wealthy Visa out there whoāll appreciate my worth &pay me https://t.co/TgYIsgKzoK
I also did think that if this didnāt work out and there was truly nobody out there who cared, then I might as well kill myself. But the simple fact that art exists in the world convinced me that the odds of this were extremely small - ie success was/is just a matter of persisting
At a meta level I am still playing this game. I would like to be a successful writer by my own constantly-evolving definition of success. Iād to eventually make a living doing this. I am willing to persist at this for 80 more years if I can. And if I fail, at least I tried, man!
(Wanna hear why? Because books are soul food, libraries are magic. Iāve gotten so much value from this global, atemporal parliament of hallucinations, & I desperately want to contribute before I die. If one kid reads a book I wrote & is inspired to do the same, it was worth it)
Thatās actually it. Thatās my whole life. One kid reads something I wrote and decides she wants to write a book too? Iām done, life complete. Itās all victory laps after that. Any job I do to pay the bills is just scaffolding towards that goal.
I suppose then Iād like to travel the world and have coffee with you weird fuckers. Maybe make a couple of humans if my wife is into that. Play in a jazz band. Tell some jokes. Nap in a small boat on a clear lake. Road trip on a motorbike. House parties with more weirdos https://t.co/OOsczh4lyR
Anyway. Weāll see. Donāt forget to like comment and subscribe!!~~ Lmao just live your own best life okay? Okay. Back to writing for me https://t.co/4tuva6Vf3H https://t.co/8JlECZwdVo
Just gonna append some taste-related thoughts: https://t.co/7ccDDgsdeQ
A set of notes about taste https://t.co/UslpRO5EDW
Btw, just to circle back: for a lot of people, Step 1 is āgo to schoolā, and not only is it unpaid, YOU actually pay to do it, and the work that you get out of it often isnāt actually all that useful or interesting š¤ https://t.co/CYLAYOqIfC
Stage 1: Do unpaid work for yourself Stage 2: Use that as leverage to negotiate a position where you get paid to do work for others Stage 3: Save up enough so you can be free to do more, higher-quality unpaid work for yourself <--- I am currently here Stage 4: Weāll see
Steve Jobs on taste: itās about ātrying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then try to bring those things in to what youāre doing.ā https://t.co/Lt0kdBwdqA
When you first donāt have much taste, youāre going to have to depend on the taste of others. Seek out ābest booksā, ābest moviesā, etc. Not all will actually be great. But give them a shot. Pay very careful attention to your feelings. Write them down. Articulate the differences
Do this for 10 years recursively (review old notes for interesting bits) & you will develop a Valuable Perspective as someone who isnāt just swept along the current of everyday life. And a Valuable Persective has $ value, though by then $ will feel trivial https://t.co/mmKXPJGXhB
(IMO $ is a proxy for value, not value itself. Once you develop a personal sense of what is valuable to you, seeking $ starts to feel like seeking a shadow. You do still need $ to eat, but you decouple yourself from $ as a goal. Itās means to better ends, not an end in itself) https://t.co/EGwwE3lfhM
cultivate taste https://t.co/2dx217veZK
Even in think-y land, so much depends on instinct, "taste" for problems/approaches, an aesthetic of ideas. Frank Oppenheimer points out that play is so important because it's one of the only ways adults hone their sense of taste. (from Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens) https://t.co/IQEoSE7E7U
cultivate taste https://t.co/2dx217veZK
Even in think-y land, so much depends on instinct, "taste" for problems/approaches, an aesthetic of ideas. Frank Oppenheimer points out that play is so important because it's one of the only ways adults hone their sense of taste. (from Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens) https://t.co/IQEoSE7E7U
@vinaydebrou š¤šŖš¾ā¤ļø https://t.co/27QAjC2vlD
Sup Visa-28, Visa-31 here with an update Stage 4: use higher-quality unpaid work to build an audience (patreon) + assets you can sell (ebooks) Stage 5: you now make money in your sleep. congratulations!! Stage 6: use the $ from (5) to pay + encourage other people to do (1)
Stage 7: build a global network of friendly ambitious nerds who help each other with their issues, encourage and challenge each other to do great work in whatever domains spark joy for them https://t.co/QCM7vrkuBW
