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Happiness and life fulfillment are very much found in the 9-to-5, pay-check-to-pay-check demographic of society.

I wish this were true. The impression I get is more of numb, passive contentment, at least from enough people in this demographic that it is bothersome. They seem to have traded happiness and fulfillment for the image of happiness and fulfillment, and it is difficult to tell the difference until you ask the hard questions that make them feel uncomfortable and defensive. That's why most people don't, and that is why the groups are assume to intersect perfectly.

There are things in life one must attend to that likely force people to get 9-to-5's. You know, like a wife and kids.

How much of this is a must, and how much is a result of choices they made? And how much of this forcing is a result of emotional and social pressure, as a result if imminent, tangible risk? That is, how much is a result of wanting to convince others that one is a responsible parent, as opposed to one actually being irresponsible?

They seem to have traded happiness and fulfillment for the image of happiness and fulfillment, and it is difficult to tell the difference until you ask the hard questions that make them feel uncomfortable and defensive.

Or perhaps a person took such a job because his life goals simply do not relate to work. Being another cog in a cube farm may not be interesting itself, but it can be used as a source of funding for things that genuinely are. A 9-to-5 isn't my weapon of choice here (since some things I find interesting also happen to be readily marketable skills), but it is an effective one.

The satisfaction, or lack of, one gets from a 9-5 or any form of work is related more to the attitude one applies to the work than from the particulars of the work itself. At least that seems to be the conclusion drawn from the research done on "flow" states by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It seems to correlate well with my own experience and seems to be a recurring theme in shows such as Dirty Jobs and Undercover Boss.

I wished I wrote that blog post in just 5 minutes. I actually spent a couple hours on the first draft but was told it wasn't punchy enough. The second draft took almost as much time the first.

The main mistake I made in this post is using the term 9-5 instead of dead end. I didn't mean that you should work 90 hours a week, far from it. As my short bio on my blog says "I'm a passionate father" and I think that moving forward in your career are totally compatible with that.

"Happiness and life fulfillment are very much found in the 9-to-5, pay-check-to-pay-check demographic of society."

I wish this were true because then I would not be trying to get away from a 9-to-5 job which pays very handsomely with no overtime.

The real reason that a 9-to-5 is not fulfilling is because ,as an employee, you are not measured by how much you create. The metrics are a bunch of bogus crap some HR dude listed down before he had to leave to pick up his kids at 5pm. So your forced to do things which are usually unfulfilling and a lot of times inconsequential to the business and your own development.

Add that to dreary meetings, performance reviews which leave you feeling violated and managers who check whether your in on time instead of what you've produced makes for a $hit of a day. Do it 223 times a year and you'll soon realize that 9-to-5 is not about happiness or fulfillment.

There are places like Google where this may not be true but this is par for the course for every job I've worked at.

Name names? There are an awful lot of prospective entrepreneurs on this site who are just looking for a bunch of big, dumb, complacent tech companies to uproot.

In light of the recent article about life at BCG [1], I don't think you should have a hard time identifying big, dumb, complacent tech (ok, maybe not strictly tech) companies that happen to pay their staff well. But I don't see them being taken down by startups anytime soon, considering the sort of need they are serving (however irrational it may be).

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1257644