Does anyone else find things like this from sites like 80000 hours really alienating? Do people really think like this? I don't know anyone who takes their career so seriously.
With that being said, some of the advice (like about not trading time for money) is pretty relevant for upper middle-class tech professionals too
What if you have no community, no chosen family, no friendly acquaintances, and you know that will never change? If your choices are essentially between dedication to work and dying of despair in an empty room, what's wrong with choosing the path that tries to help those who will follow?
> Don’t focus too much on long-term plans.
As someone who has just worked hard on the thing in front of me without long term planning it has paid off pretty well. That along with being pleasant seems to go a long way. I didn't need a list or a philosophy to figure that out I just happened.
12 was where I felt alienated.
> Avoid spending time to earn or save money.
When the author starts talking about their time being so valuable that they throw money at things and don't cook etc. to me they sound like a rich out of touch robot and not a normal relatable person.
This article seems to have a very different focal point. It's not about making your career more fulfilling for you. It's not about how to have a career that fulfills your own desires of pursuing your curiosity or doing the sort of good that you enjoy doing (like being a doctor or teacher). Rather, the article is written as if from the perspective of an outside person viewing this person's career. It's about having a career that will please other people. Crowdsourcing your decisions will make you choose the things that other people find worthwhile. Taking on many projects will help you build a diverse resume to impress other people. The last point even specifically says not to spend too much time looking for a job that you find pleasant because there might be jobs that can "do more good" in the world that aren't pleasant.
The whole emphasis on taking a job that benefits the world without necessarily being pleasant for yourself just seems so robotic to me. At the end of the day, why do you care about being altruistic? Presumably because it's a path towards creating a world where people can enjoy life more. If you accomplish this by living a life that you yourself don't enjoy, it just seems antithetical any motivation for improving the world that I can imagine.
I know people who are spending the better part of their youth working hard to become doctors or something similar. They are working very hard and (like the author) thinking about ways of impressing others in pursuit of getting into med school and getting into competitive specialties or whatever. But there are two differences. (1) They know that this sort of impressing others is something they only need to do at the beginning of their career, and (2) they actually like helping others so they will eventually reach a point where their own pleasure and their altruism is aligned. This article seems to be suggesting that we live a life where these things are not aligned, and make no attempt to align them. I understand that there are jobs that aren't fun, and someone has to do them, but I don't expect ambitious people to work hard to find these jobs.
Personality and job fit are only important as far as they allow you to do the job better.
Garlic and crucifixes don't work on those.