| HN Mirror

I think career ambition is somewhat mundane, and within the parameters that a given person can control, runs its useful course with limited categorically different positive lifestyle impact. Limited in the sense that often times you end up just working on different products, or moving into a higher level decision making role, or making more money to do more programming or sales or whatever. The parameters that one can control being the stuff outside of getting extremely lucky while more or less doing the stuff you'd be doing anyway. For example, I could set my sights very high and end up at Google working on whatever. I'll make more money, but it'll go right into my bank account or on some fancy product. It's certainly more glamorous I guess, maybe the code is trickier to write, or the outcome more interesting, and that's all great and something that might be worthwhile to shoot for, but it's not really that interesting or that unimaginable or that risky, except to one's personal life balance. I just have to work on particular skills and devote a certain amount of time, and then maybe I get it, or I don't. Same reason people working at Apple's new campus on whatever product probably don't think too much of it, they're just doing work day to day. It's compelling and it's ambitious if you're not already there, and interesting, but it doesn't cross my mind when thinking of the most ambitious people.

The most ambition I see, represents seeking a categorically unlikelihood, usually one that is rewarding in a wildly extreme or different way (which could be career oriented for sure), that is potentially life threatening or otherwise actually risky, in a categorically different discipline or environment, and repeatedly.

Admittedly many of the examples I can think of come out with with the possibility of professional notoriety, but it's not a fundamental component. A popular example would be Alex Honnold, but he'd still be missing horizontal leaps, which may still come. Someone else set their sights on becoming the best BMX rider, then bike company founder, and then quit to become a custom furniture designer; the first being extremely costly and risky in a number of ways, with rewards being ambiguous at best and with no linear trajectory, the second being more obvious but requiring different skills that you'd need to build from scratch, and the third being a fundamentally different thing that's rather unlikely for someone to become successful in starting from zero.

The most ambitious I know though have no clear career at all, and do that sort of stuff even though there's no obvious notoriety, tangible monetary reward, or glamour to be had. That, or the extreme unlikelihood in successfully getting out of extreme poverty with no connections or skills, and then trying to do it again with something unrelated.

I.E become extremely good at skateboarding -> then a pilot -> then a mountaineer, and all the while you're just doing some arbitrary thing for money.