Empathize with what? Many people have experience with having free time and thus know what it’s like to do things that they like doing. Replace all of this job-passion with the fantasy of winning enough millions in the lottery to retire and yeah, there you go. People already fantasize about that.

But the above doesn’t involve making a profit for an employer. I don’t know if that was supposed to be part of the empathizing.

I don’t have millions and because of $life, I’m behind where I “should be” with retirement savings. Don’t cry for me, I’m good and catching up.

But the idea of having “passion” for my job - even though I currently work at my favorite job I’ve had in 30 years across 10 jobs - just isn’t me. I would never give up a remote only job because I thought I would be “passionate” about another job and definitely not for less money.

Because of combination of remote work, low fixed expenses and a couple of other hacks, I don’t dread work or even really care about retirement. My wife and I travel frequently now, did the digital nomad thing for a year two years ago and starting next year we plan to spend a few months of the winter internationally and the summer away from home either domestically or internationally.

There was one job that I have had that was meaningful to me. I was an architect for a company that managed sending nurses to the homes and schools of special needs kids. I wrote back end and mobile apps for the nurses and actually had a chance to work with some in the field to understand how the nurses used the devices.

It wasn’t a highly profitable company since most of the revenue came from Medicaid reimbursements. I only left when private equity took the company over and it became a PE rollup play.

>Empathize with what?

Empathize with someone having the same degree of passion towards what they do at work and what they do outside of work.

>Replace all of this job-passion with the fantasy of winning enough millions in the lottery to retire and yeah, there you go. People already fantasize about that.

This is the exact opposite sentiment. People desire endless amount of free time (e.g. retirement) specifically because it lets them spend all of their time pursuing passions that no employer is willing to pay for. Their job is not one of those passions, and it is hard for them to imagine a world in which that could possibly be the case.

While most of my passions would not make for a very lucrative career, one of my passions happens to be solving scientific computing problems I find cool, and I have been very lucky that several employers have been willing to pay good sums of money for me to pursue that passion.

No one is arguing that people don't understand the concept of being excited. But I think a lot of people would be less convinced that it's possible to be passionate about your work.