My career advice is usually:

1. draw a circle around the things you enjoy doing

2. draw a circle around the things that pay well

3. draw a circle around the things you're good at

The intersection is your best career path.

I tried to be a musician. Epic failure. I tried sports. Catastrophic failure. I tried sales. Monumental failure. Persisting in those endeavors as a career is akin to beating my head on a rock.

People are different. Viva la difference.

This is a good starting point. I suspect some of the disagreements in this comment section stem from the difference in mindset between people for whom classwork either directly applies to or closely resembles their intended career path, and others for whom a lot of classwork (like my statistics courses) appear simply as a rigid gate to gaining access to their best career.

Perhaps a solution to the problem is better societal acceptance of trade schools, but at least in my area a university degree is a surer shot. Even if the degree is just a tool to then go do something completely different.

I also reject the idea that everyone has the same ability. They don't. Everyone is different.

I find when doing a collaborative project, partnering with someone just like me won't work. I need to find someone with complementary skills. Someone strong in the areas I'm weak in, and vice versa.

Agree! In fact I quit a previous job because I felt I was part of a clone army. I'm just not convinced that academic performance is as a strong predictor of ability as our reliance on this indicator suggests.

You might add a fourth circle for “what the world needs” (or, a more relaxed standard, “what is not actively harmful/promoting negative sum games”):

https://themindfool.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Ikigai_do...

My thoughts exactly, I was wondering, is this not just ikigai?

I was very confused by the "Vacation" overlap, but it turns out that's a typo and should be "Vocation".

I’d argue that this sort of career choice intersection is actually not helpful for most.

Here’s why. For most people, there are plenty of things in this world that they’ve never tried that they’d enjoy the hell out of — especially if they get past an initial learning curve. There are plenty of things that they’ve never committed to long enough to know they have a serious aptitude for it (for example, it took me 5+ years of learning music to realise I’m a brilliant improviser, just because most early music training doesn’t even touch on it).

In my opinion, if someone isn’t sure what career to choose, the solution actually is: go out and try more stuff. A lot more stuff. Do something long enough that you get past the initial learning curve.

Once you’ve collected enough real world experience and data, then you can make an intersection of “what you’re good at”, “what you enjoy” and “what pays” — but you probably won’t even need to, since this is a trivial exercise compared to actually gaining that data in the first place.

No one has time to try all the things. A broad education - which would give everyone experiences and not just academic theory - would offer that, but we don't give people broad educations.

The only people who can afford to explore and dabble are the very rich. Everyone else is on a treadmill from middle school onwards.

Sounds good in theory. For many, though, there won't be any intersection (which has any representation in job offerings).

Only persistence and perseverance through failures builds the necessary skills and the right attitude for the thing you need to do. "Career" can be a secondary thing.

Hah! When I took the first steps on my career path I wasn’t good at anything, had no idea what I really liked because I hadn’t had the opportunity to try most stuff and the top paying jobs of today didn’t even exist.

I know you are a smart person, but this advice will hold young people back.

Try stuff. Don’t sweat it. You’ll fail and you’ll succeed and you won’t know which is which until years later when you tell a story about your life and force it into a narrative.

Every child knows what things they like and are good at. It might not map exactly to a career path but it's not like career skills live in some sort of magical vacuum that you can never see until you try them.

How many children are aware that they would enjoy actuarial finance? How many are aware that they would be good at arguing patent law?

Do they enjoy math? Are they good at persuading others to side with them in arguments? Those aren’t non-transferable skills.

So if they enjoy math, they are as likely to enjoy actuarial finance as they are to like research into category theory or machine learning? If they are good at persuading others to side with them in arguments, they are as likely to enjoy patent law, criminal law, marketing, or politics?

There are some common skills, but all of these professions are extraordinarily different and require completely different aspects of those skills, and entirely different additional skills.

Liking dinosaurs and Jurassic park is not the same as liking archeology, especially as a job. Most children have no idea what they’d be getting into, and if they like something, it probably has little to nothing to do with the actual work/job/goals.

This is why the 'bring your child to work' days can be so great, they can get a sense of what a real workplace is like, other than some abstract place you go to when you finish education.

The problem starts when things you enjoy/do well don't fall into "pay well"

They don't pay well because everyone else enjoys them too.

Yes, it is hard to have a career eating ice cream.

This is highly dependent on upbringing.

I grew up with extremely religious and controlling parents. I spent most of my childhood believing I’d go to hell if I didn’t dedicate my life to the god the church worshipped.

This had a huge impact on what I believed about myself at that age, and I’m still actively working against the indoctrination in my 30s through therapy.

I still wonder how things might have gone if I pursued some form of research. I have evidence now to believe I might have been good at it, but haven’t convinced myself the cost to pivot makes sense at this stage of my life.

My story is not unique, and church/religion are just one implementation of a form of parenting that works hard against your claim.

I grew up loving engineering-related activities without knowing that "engineering" was a word, or even a profession

That's true - to draw a circle around what you enjoy, what you're good at, and what you get paid for, you have to actually try it for a while first

There are a lot of people who select a major only to discover upon graduation that the pay for it is minimum wage.

Everybody has activities that they enjoy.

That information is a simple Google search away though.

There are also lots of opportunities to pivot besides the default job in your field. Eg, gardening doesn’t sound promising, but call it “landscaping”, run it as a business, and you can earn more than a doctor.

Very often, 1. and 3. overlap well.

On the top of my head, the only thing for where there is almost no overlap for me is playing piano.

unfortunately for me that's an empty set

Problem is these circles are dynamic and often unknown.

What you’re good at depends on how much you know, practice, and inherent talent. First two changes over time, third one is an unknown variable. You also don’t know when you should give up. Should Einstein have given up science after he couldn’t get a faculty job and had to work in the patent office?

Things that pay well depends on economic situations that can change dramatically. See the cryptocurrency world.

Things you enjoy doing also change. Many stories here show that making a career doing things you enjoy can suck the enjoyment out of it.

I don’t really enjoy coding, software engineering, or the bullshit work dynamics around it.

But they keep paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars (sometimes more) every year - so I do it anyway.

But doctor, I'm not good at anything!

same - also good to keep in mind that you don't have much control over category 2, but you can make decisions that'll improve your options on both both 1 and 3.

> That doesn't mean there is no room for "average" researchers.

The "average" researchers are doing disservice themselves, the people funding their research, and actually good researchers.

They are doing disservice themselves, because they would have most likely enjoyed much higher success at some other career or lifestyle. An "average" researcher at age 35 is rather poor, his or her life is rather unstable and precarious, family goals are likely unmet, their scientific output is too mediocre to be a source of pride, and generally they are not very happy. Talk to them and you'll find out.

They are failing the funders, who hoped for quality output, but got worthless crap. Finally, they are failing quality researchers, who more and more eschew academia, and instead enter industry, where they can make >3x times as much money putting less effort into something that's typivally less socially valuable than high quality research.

> This is a binary mindset that ignores the value of the discipline and seems like gatekeeping with no apparent benefit.

The benefit is not wasting lives on worthless activities, and getting more useful research output. I do agree, though, that this is not "apparent", and is often hard to see even in hindsight. If you follow science news, however, you will find many people wondering why science productivity has fallen so much in last 50 years, despite funding being greatly increased in absolute terms. One of the reasons here is that we have many more people doing science that simply shouldn't be involved in it.

> And struggling relative to your peers can happen for many reasons unrelated to core intelligence.

Sure, but so what? If you cannot keep up with your peers during graduate studies, why should anyone expect you to keep up when you're actually expected to produce valuable research? Some people might not be able to keep up, because e.g. they spend half of their time caring for their disabled child. This is not their fault, but for the institutions and (usually) taxpayers who pay them, why should they care? Why wouldn't they prefer to instead employ someone who'll be able to spend more of their energy on research, and produce more valuable output?

Yeah, it means that some people through their bad luck will be denied their dream career, but, again, my point is that life isn't fair, and the research careers are not prizes to be handed out to people who deserve them in some moral sense: they are public service.

Not wasting lives on worthless activities? Is a bench player in the nba or someone who bounces between minor and major leagues wasting their life because they’re not Lebron James? Or are they getting paid to do something that they’re pretty good at but certainly not great at? Sorry you can’t score 30 points a night, maybe just go find fulfillment with your family…

Man, this mindset really seems like a recipe for a miserable life.

We are not machines whose output must be optimized over anything else, for the joy of our investor overlords.

Do what you enjoy doing, and if you don’t happen to be the best out of 7 billion people then congrats, you’re statistically normal.

Amen.

You're right about mediocre researchers and their career satisfaction, and you're right to say that there's too many people pursuing research careers who shouldn't, but on the one hand you 're saying that some people are talented and special and on the other hand you're saying that the people who do well in life are those whose circumstances other than their talent (e.g. caring for a disabled child) enable them to make a valuable contribution to science.

So, someone who is talented and special, can nevertheless fail to make a valuable contribution because of their other circumstances. That's not life being unfair in handing out talent to everyone, that's the organisation of society being dysfunctional. Who knows what groundbreaking discoveries we are missing because the next Einstein or the next Darwin is a single mother of two living on benefits, in some inner city ghetto? If talent is not cultivated, it never yields fruit.

There's unfairness, and then there's the incompetence and pretentiousness of people who hold the keys to the treasury. I think the concern is mainly with the incompetence, and when people complain about unfairness, often it's the incompetence that really bothers them. After all, you can't do anything about unfairness, we really can't all be Albert fucking Einstein. But we should really be able to do a lot more about the incompetence that keeps most people from reaching their true potential.

Btw, I so disagree with you about what school results tell you about kids' talents, but that's another discussion I guess.

I feel Arguing on the basis of the scenario provided is participation in a rigged fight.

Intelligence isn’t Unimodal, the smartest people aren’t necessarily the most productive, persistence is its own quality, and in a small percent of scenarios - insight would be the opposite of current practice.

Sometimes this advice is spot on. Depends on how competitive the field is.

Medicine? Plenty of average doctors.

Jazz musician? Everyone who does it for a living ranges from amazing to genius and being just very good gets you nowhere professionally.

> Jazz musician? Everyone who does it for a living ranges from amazing to genius and being just very good gets you nowhere professionally.

Band leaders and/or singers can be, and quite commonly are, very average, and get regular work. They can be pretty bad and work a lot if they're also very good at marketing themselves. (source: am a jazz musician)

Genuine question: What in your opinion are the differences between a great and an average band leader? I've been making music as hobby for most of my life, and band leading is a topic I think about a lot - but it seems for many musicians I meet is not even on the radar.

Hi. Good question! That could take a book to answer. I meant to just refer to their level of purely musical skill though, thanks for the chance to clarify.