Pursuing Career: Which One’s More Important, Passion or A Big Salary?

Yogyakarta, June 17th 2021━Career Development Center (CDC) of FISIPOL UGM held a webinar entitled as ‘Pursuing Career: Passion vs Money’ on Thursday (17/6). The speaker of this event was Stephanie W., the Co-Founder and Program Director of Vooya. The event was held on Zoom and lasted from 01.00 p.m. to 02.00 p.m. and was moderated by Fira from CDC.

We are always faced with the choice of a large salary or prioritizing passion when choosing a job. The reason is, it’s not uncommon for us to find professions that match our passion but don’t make much money, and vice versa. When we prioritize passion, emotionally we will be more enthusiastic to work and be involved in all tasks at work. However, materially we will be short of money to meet the needs of life because the salary is not too big. Meanwhile, if we pursue a profession that makes a lot of money but does not match our passion, materially we will live well and have good career prospects. However, emotionally we are not enthusiastic about work and always feel unhappy at work.

Responding to this, Stephanie believes that we can choose and achieve both, namely passion and money. However, keep in mind that it is unrealistic to make a lot of money without experience or skills in the field. We also need time to develop these skills. In addition, it will also be difficult to earn a lot of money by working in the field according to your passion without a plan and not considering what the society needs.

“Actually we don’t have to choose (between money and passion), we can get both, but don’t think everything is instant, it’s not realistic either, because in some fields of work it requires experiences and skills, without enough of those, maybe people will not give such a reward,” Stephanie said.

Furthermore, Stephanie explained that the dream job includes passion, profit, power, and purpose in it. With passion we will be motivated to do activities at work and with power we will apply and use our abilities and expertise. So with all of that, we will get profit in the form of rewards from the work that will later have a positive impact or change (purpose).

“We have to be passionate about having dreams. Not just salary, just liking, just having an impact. For example, if we want to have a positive impact but have a miserable life, how can we be enthusiastic about helping people around us? For example, we want to have a positive impact but we don’t like doing social activities, so automatically we will be less enthusiastic too. This is very important to start finding out and exploring our passion so that the profit and impact will be even greater,” Stephanie said.