Don’t confuse ‘doing a thing because I like it’ with ‘doing a thing because I want to be seen as the sort of person who does such things’ - 100 tips for a better life
To refute this point, I think it’s totally reasonable to start something good with not so good motives. I started programming cause I wanted to be seen as smart and technical. I started reading because I wanted to be seen as an intellectual. But gradually at some point I stopped caring about being seen as smart intellectual (maybe because I realized I’ll always be dumb, cause knowledge is not intelligence) and started really caring about peeling the abstraction layers of computers. I do still virtue signal though, and I cringe at that, but I don’t know how to stop it.
There are some virtues worth signalling cause they lead you down interesting paths, and then I think most people naturally drop the signalling part and keep on indulging in those virtues. I don’t think Steve Jobs started out by envisioning to be the whisperer of personal computer revolution and creating delightful products. I think at the time he just wanted to make some quick money off of his brilliant friend’s creation and get laid (Idk, this maybe factually incorrect, but that’s what I assumed when I read his biography).
What’s more important I think is the selection of virtues you want to signal. Choosing to signal “Look how rich I am” would probably lead you down a debt-laden life.