Career Advice (2013)
moxie.org
moxie.org
Our lives are filled with exactly the richness we seek. Travel is just a catalyst to get us up off our sofas and make new friends. Having moved many times, I can assure you that one can do that today without moving.
I've met many unemployed travelers who mope inside all day and watch Netflix. I've also met many hard working people who've lived in the same house for twenty years but live rich, incredible lives filled with small adventures.
Love your style and the comprehension ease
Thanks!
They were looking for a simple A -> B -> C while my life has been more A -> G -> B -> -> -> Q...
I haven’t worked for a big company in 35 years, and I can’t imagine they are any more interested in me than I am in them. Even my own companies...by the time they get to a couple of hundred people they are too big for me.
They're just looking for a compelling reasoning behind it. Source: interviewed for FAANG companies with a similar resume
OTOH there seems to be a developmental window for some specific skills, e.g. phoneme acquisition 6-12 months; (human) language acquisition < 7 years.
Now when you are 45 or 50, rather than a crushing feeling of having wasted your life behind a desk you will hopefully feel happy that you spent your good years living life.
Starting from scratch in an entirely new country, with no connections, no professional ability to speak the native language, and rapidly dwindling cash reserves, was one of the scariest and most thrilling things I've ever done in my life. I recommend it to no one, because if you're crazy or motivated enough to actually do it, no man's recommendation for or against it is going to stop you. You will become some kind of minor force of nature for a while and you will look back on that time years later and think "I had no idea I could be that hardcore."
Sadly this is necessarily the opposite of most of Moxie's sentiments. "Throw yourself into the toughest situations you can find" is shared between us, but Moxie recs doing so amidst friends and comrades, while I merely remind you can hurl yourself into the ravine to learn to fly.
To anyone asking if they should do the same, I say: Don't do it.
Because if you have to ask, the answer is no. The ones who succeed don't ask for permission, they ask for tips about how to get it done. The mind is already made up.
Same is true for starting a business. "Should I start a business/move countries/other high variance thing?" --> no. "How do I overcome <obstacle they identified>?" --> advice time!
edit:
For the downvoters -> this was, for me, the best thing I've ever done. But you really do need a lot of internal resolve to make it work. To give you an example of an unexpected difficulty: I used to practice facial expressions in the mirror because Americans had trouble reading my emotes. Like practicing your accent away, but for your face.
Godspeed, and I hope Slovenia continues its upward trajectory as well.
For me, I actually think it was not too hard (I think it greatly depends on where you move, your appetite for challenge and how much traveling you've done before). The process was confusing and long, but nothing a couple of trips to a consulate and a lot of reading couldn't help with.
I was lucky enough to have some friends that live in the country I moved to (albeit quite far away). I felt the hardest part was the first 3 months, it was lonely and some days I was bedridden with homesickness. But then the magic happens. You meet new people, you find your footing, you make lifelong memories.
After that life just feels like normal life but turbo charged by all the new experiences.
The new hard part is deciding if I want to come back or not, I'm having the time of my life out here!
But why not do it _in_ college?
People do it, though. That's why most of the foreign students at any given college beat the pants off of the locals. I speak from experience :D
Perhaps this should be reconsidered in light of remote work? I’m 45 and thinking about moving to another country, mostly for lower cost of living and lower taxes (I’m Swedish). I’m basically a remote freelancer, so the step doesn’t feel huge.
before you move somewhere, make sure you like it there regardless of the cost or quality of life, because if you don't you will end up spending more on things to compensate for what you are missing.
it really depends on what you consider quality of living. to me that includes access to interesting activities, people etc. if i don't get that, i will do something else to compensate. in houston that could mean more travelling. so the money you save on the house you then spend on airplane tickets or on gas for your car.
not everyone is going to be the same. it could be that you absolutely love living in houston, spend all your time hanging out at the space center, or some other local activity that is not expensive and really do save money.
but what i said actually applies more for living in a different country, because i assure you, at a minimum you will miss food from home and spend money on imported food or going to restaurants.
Though I suppose it speaks to my personality type that I didn't find moving country and leaving everything that scary. I was moving to a job, so didn't have the dwindling cash reserves part.
Would be nice if I didn't have to say that; in so many ways the bloom is off the rose of my (admittedly high paying) corporate job. I even recently reunited with some old friends who chose a more independent career path, and was jealous and nostalgic- they're definitely working far closer to their passions with more freedom than I've felt in a decade. But man, what a decade since 2013.
I would be foolish to dismiss that I had stable employment through Covid, and I still have a paycheck through the current economic turmoil. I also have my corporate health insurance, which covers my stupidly expensive regular medication which I had no idea I would need in those nostalgic days when these friends chose their alternative careers (I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2015, now in remission thanks to the meds)
So I agree with the sentiment that it's dangerous (especially to your soul) to just blindly conform and follow the money, but it's not always unjustified. In my case it was at least a little bit justified, since my parents were more or less broke and I didn't have a safety net.
I do wish I had hedged my bets better and been less of a workaholic, of course. Would be nice to be married now.
I hear you and maybe a word of caution - sometimes "I don't have X because I was too busy with Y" is a way to sweep the complexity/ambivalence of X under the rug.
After all, plenty of very busy and hard working people get married, and I doubt that it's very often "I am dying to go meet this woman but I am going to sit in the office instead" type tradeoff that's being made.
which i think can also be interpreted as: if you didn't think about finding a partner, then maybe you weren't ready to get married.
but you are ready now, because now you know why you want a partner, and now you can look for the right kind of person.
So I've always had this conflict with the saying that goes something like "nobody regrets not working more, while in their deathbed".
The thing is... I'm pretty sure lots of people actually do, e.g. if they didn't manage to do well enough to have a comfortable retirement, or leave their children in a good place.
So sure, I'd love to spend my money traveling and enjoying the best years of my life... but I also see my parents struggling to get by with retirement funds that are suboptimal and I fear that I am not doing all I can to avoid the same fate.
Hopefully I'll be able to make sense of this before it's too late.
For example, lots of people work themselves to burnout by not taking all their vacations, returning to work very soon after their child is born out of fear of falling behind, working extra late or weekends from peer pressure from their boss/peers, etc. Most of which won't result in additional pay, promotion, and might not even help advance your career.
There's this other addage I heard that I quite like:
"Work harder on yourself than at your job. Invest in yourself, not in your job."
The idea is, don't spend your energy on your current job stupidly, instead spend that effort trying to find a better job, or learning skills that are more valuable, in keeping yourself relevant, etc.
I feel taken together, it forms the basis of how to balance work/life so that work can build up to a good retirement, allowing you to enjoy life in your later years, but also making time in the present to enjoy life in your current and younger years.
Which I agree with but it's also a reality that you need to think about your future/retirement and it's a hard balance to make, especially if you live in a country with a poor healthcare system and lacking other social nets.
One third of retiring managers die quickly thereafter. The socond third finds a hobby and pursues it with the same ambition until everyone they know got gifted a perfect ship in a bottle and they need a new way to spend their time. One third keeps working.
[Edit] add header
Almost everyone regrets not having achieved more.
For what it's worth, working more would build a habit of doing so. A good work ethic would mean that you need a bit less motivation or discipline to get things done, due to it basically being just something you do.
It doesn't have to be just for some corporation, but also when you're trying to build some personal project, especially the ones that might get a bit bigger (writing your own blog engine or static site generator, maybe even a game engine, or planting crops or building a shed for all I care). Sometimes there won't be many shortcuts to success, but just boring slog of legwork that needs to be done.
In that regard, I definitely regret not working more, because I still need to rely on motivation, which is fleeting, or discipline, which is unpleasant, all just to get through things sometimes, even when I take care of myself in every other way (sleep schedule, nutrition, activities, mental health).
As for the whole retirement aspect, sadly I don't have answers for that, the state of the economy is concerning sometimes.
Depends on the culture. This my be true in the US, but most other cultures aren't as obsessed with achieving.
You can make beautiful music, and someone else can create a beautiful choreography for it... their achievement will probably increase your joy, not decrease it.
Take Steam for example. After Greenlight was superseded by Direct and you now only need $100 to get on the platform it's practically drowning in games, making for near zero discoverability.
But especially in terms of idk, government jobs or certain positions at a specific company it's usually a fixed number of seats that will be filled from a large pool of people, making it a completely zero sum game. There can only be one president of a country at a time and a fixed number of them during your lifespan. What are you gonna do, make a new country?
If technically you want to be the Prince of a constitutional monarchy, it might work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand)
In all realness it would probably take about 10 minutes before the US navy rolls up like "open the country, stop having it be closed" and declared it theirs. VLS missiles will continue launching until morale improves and all that.
While the idea and ideal are nice, it often does not work out that way in practice. Lots and lots of unhappy marriages and divorces.
You have a lot of control about who you end up with, who you are inside and how you engage with your partner. So the fact that divorce happens "often" or "rarely" doesn't matter to an individual scenario - it's completely within those people's controls to make good or bad decisions.
People have externalities thrown at them (loss, grieve, missed expectations, sickness, depression,…)
Is a bit arrogant to think a person or a couple can navigate all these via their own choices. Reminds me of my hardcore catholic friends who think that divorcing equals to low commitment, willpower or maturity.
Using your example of depression. If you marry someone manic/depressive because you love how crazy and wild she is on her up days, her down days are going to hit you hard when you're living in the same house and sharing kids and responsibilities. So maybe that dynamic has a 50% divorce rate which could have been anticipated way in advance. On the other hand, there's always a chance that someone stable you marry will get into a deep funk years down the line and you won't be able to help her manage through that, but that maybe is a 2% probably. You can't control that 2% but you can manage to not be in the 50% and that's where your focus should be.
but that should not prevent anyone from trying to find a partner. it just means that i would look for a partner who understands this, and is willing to look out for your needs just as much as you look out for theirs.
"Who you marry" is not in your control. People change over the years. Marriage changes your spouse, and yourself. Some people realize what they actually want as they mature.
Most of the smartest, most thoughtful people in the world get divorced. They all thought they had control over marriage.
love alone is not enough, it's actually less important than common goals and a dedication to support each other. if love were a precondition to a happy marriage then arranged marriages (ignoring the downsides) would have had to all fail 100% of the time. when they don't fail it's because these people understand to care for each other and most likely were able to develop love for each other over time.
There's a huge difference between "not at all" or "not fully" in my control. I can't guarantee my outcome, but I have deep influence over my chances.
> They are the future you. Do not think that you will be substantially different. Look carefully at how they spend their time at work and outside of work, because this is also almost certainly how your life will look. It sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how often young people imagine a different projection for themselves.
> Look at the real people, and you’ll see the honest future for yourself.
…
> This is all just to explain why, when people write me for career advice, I’m as likely to respond with something like “if I were you, I’d hitchhike to Alaska this summer instead.”
> My career advice usually falls within the framework of doing the absolute minimum amount of work necessary to prevent starvation, and then doing something that’s not about money, completely outside of supporting structures, and not simply a matter of “consuming experience” with the remaining available time.
Find a job you like that pays decently. Use the money to live a good life. Instead of hitchhiking to Alaska, you can take a plane.
I think Perkins would say in that case that there's a time for everything. At 20-25, it's maybe a good idea to hitchhike to Alaska. At 45, married, with children and a mortgage, it's probably a bad idea.
I feel it's possible to re-discover yourself more than once throughout your life. Right after finishing high school I thought that writing code is the real me. Now more than a decade has passed and I'm trying to find myself again. Our jobs define us, but we're in charge of how far we're willing to take it. There are engineers who are genuinely passionate about writing code and will happily do so outside of working hours, for free, with no intent for recognition or clout. And then there's me and the rest of average Joe's - sure our job has defined us, but it hasn't consumed us. Be careful about your career choices consuming you.
- If you don't come from money, and your personality desires security and safety, don't do risky stuff like wasting your 20's hitchhiking and being a ski bum. You should get skills and a career. I came from lower-middle class and have always had the nagging fear of being destitute. I am so much happier that I worked hard in my 20s (80 hours a week hard) so my 30s and 40s were more comfortable.
- Your habits chart your trajectory. If you start working out 3x a week, you will continue doing this and be physically fit. If you drink alcohol 3x a week, you will continue to do this and become wrinkled and grumpy. If you get fired from a job 3x a year, you will continue to have this happen, no matter what your excuse is about why it isn't your fault you got fired. Try and work on good habits.
- You are the company you keep. Cut out negative people who always are complaining and blaming others. Focus on wholesome, happy, well-rounded, good people who have goals that align with yours.
- Your best advocate is yourself. How often do you go out of your way to advocate for other individuals? Don't be surprised when no one is putting in the extra effort to help you. Don't be a victim - your future is in your hands - don't blame others or society for your own failings.
- Family, friends, health, purpose are all that truly matter.
- No matter what your predicament is, someone has it worse, and someone has it better. You can always be valuable to society. Don't let your disabilities and frailties stop you from finding a purpose and way to benefit society.
What about working out 3x a week and drinking alcohol 3x a week? Potentially that could be a sweet spot for sociability and activity. Compared to doing neither 3x a week, what do you think would be better?
Both drinking and exercise mean different things to different people. Running a 10k 3x a week with a glass of wine after would be fine. Blacking out 3x a week off cheap vodka while riding the stationary bike would be a different story.
now obviously the relation has moved beyond that, we're very happy hanging out sober, and generally spend the vast majority of our time together sober, but getting intoxicated with someone is actually a good bonding mechanism.
The SPE is really a study in toxic workplaces and abusive relationships.
I really wish people would stop quoting the SPE without researching what actually happened and why (and the fact that it was tainted due to Zimbardo's direct involvement and direction in order to get the results he wanted).
Don't worry: You are NOT your job, and your job isn't going to change you forever. This is just a scare piece.
The only thing you should keep in mind is: If it FEELS wrong to you, go with your gut, because sticking around will be traumatic.
> These new criticisms include the biased and incomplete collection of data, the extent to which the SPE drew on a prison experiment devised and conducted by students in one of Zimbardo's classes 3 months earlier, the fact that the guards received precise instructions regarding the treatment of the prisoners, the fact that the guards were not told they were subjects, and the fact that participants were almost never completely immersed by the situation. [0]
> Zimbardo and his assistants ordered the guards to become cruel, and, moreover, that guards and prisoners alike knew what Zimbardo was trying to prove and were eager to help. [1]
> In other words, the sadism of the guards and the submissiveness of the prisoners in the experiment didn’t reveal the hidden darkness of the human soul, so much as the willingness of college students to please a professor. [1]
[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31380664/ [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/beware-the-epiphany-industrial-c...
Jobs definitely can and do change people though. For a while I worked for a financial company (and I had previously worked in videogames) and I definitely became a different person there, one whom I didn't like. I ended up leaving because I could see myself changing over time and it made me uncomfortable when looking at the "lifers" in the company and understanding that was my future.
But it is healthy to keep this perspective (Tyler durdens assertion) and always try to grow in some way that isn't involved with money
You’re a complex and constantly evolving human. Your job is a part of you, like it’s your family, friends, education, hobbies, media you consume, ideas, secrets…
So, you’re not your job but your job is a big part of you.
Even without the experiment, it seems odd to me that behaviors and culture you engage with for generally half of your waking hours for several decades has nothing to do with your identity. This posts reads a bit like a Joshua Fluke reaction video.
it could be, but assuming that in general implies that your behavior is genetic and there is nothing you can do to change it. which i do not believe to be true. your behavior is formed by your environment, and you can change how you behave.
They are clearly very different at 18 years old freshman vs 23 graduate, and most would say it is because of their university experience.
But who is anyone, anyway? How do you know? Is the old advice is profound or meaningless:
Temet NosceIf there were no weapons manufacturers or intelligence agencies you would still have wars.
Humanity always finds a way to resolve disputes through violence and aggression.
There would be far less of them.
>Humanity always finds a way to resolve disputes through violence and aggression.
This has been the case for a long time, doesn't mean it will persist forever. For example, slavery is mostly illegal and stamped out (except in Libya, one of the victims of US "intelligence" complex's forever war) compared to less than two centuries ago, which is a blink of an eye for human history.
[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/beware-the-epiphany-industrial-c...
I don't remember exactly if it was this post or a similar advice somewhere else but this advice made me leave my job at BigTech back in 2015
In hindsight I lost a lot of money because of that :') because the company's stock 10x'd at it's peak.
Overall, I still think it's a reasonable advice. The behaviours in these companies are largely driven by incentives and for most people this results in a replicable behaviour (almost like a dog being given treats)
Though there will always be outliers.
But another thing that struck me as I was reading this was how, based on your state of mind at that point, a simple blog post can make you take significant life decisions.
As far as I can tell this experiment was largely debunked, or at best widely questioned and not reproducible.
It’s one of those stories that lives on because it’s simultaneously so implausible yet seems to say something believable about human nature.
But I suspect it was between 90 and 100% b.s.
But FWIW, I found the rest of the article pretty good.
It's definitely diminished by it's non qualified citation of Zimbardo, but there's some insight there regardless.
Ultimately the point Moxie is making is served by the stanford prison drama play just as well as if it had been an actual experiment.
But even more so, when you take a bunch of people and _tell them to play these roles_, why are surprised when they _play the stereotype of those roles?_
Adventure I had never dreamed possible, and adventure lifetime is an understatement.
When I got back I got the first Software Engineering job I applied for, basically at the same level I was before (junior/mid). It was easy to explain the "gap" on my resume as working on myself, learning self-reliance, people skills, Spanish, etc. You just have to accept you won't climb the ladder as fast as people that stayed, but also you'll have two years of massive adventure instead of sitting at a desk every day.
Reach out if I can help in any way.
'follow your dream' is too risky for most of us and might be misleading for most young people in my opinion.
make a living first, and never forget your dream in the process
You like fine dining and look forward to a new restaurant every week? That's the equivalent of a dream to some people.
I think you're right in the sense that this U.S. notion of "exceptionalism" is also expected of individuals on both a professional and personal level, and "never forget your dreams" can really be reduced to "work to live, not live to work".
Well, then my "dream" is to play MtG and lay in bed reading random stuff on the Internet. Seems like too broad of a definition :)
it is the parents and societies job to develop your ambitions. if you don't have any then that's not your failure, but ours.
I personally hate when quality is a nice to have rather than a first class citizen because it results in so much more misery, stress, burnout, micromanagement that is 100% avoidable. By working someplace that (dys)functions that way, I feel like I’m enabling and contributing to ruining everyone else’s lives… and that makes me feel worthless, I can’t do it.
I see the rationale reason for doing it the way you do it, but I don’t seem able to do it myself.
I agree 100%, best advice there is.
After a couple of years working as a Software Engineer, I sold all my stuff and drove my little Jeep up to Alaska to a whole summer of camping, hiking and exploring. I hiked into the Magic Bus (of Into the Wild Fame), paddled with icebergs, and saw more bears, moose, bald eagles, salmon and mountains than I can count.
It changed my life, and I'm extremely, extremely happy I walked away from the golden handcuffs and go away from that desk. Getting perspective and learning how I wanted to spend my life BEFORE I got saddled with a car loan or mortgage was paramount.
(2) Think. Continually try to understand what is going on that has any real chance of affecting you.
(3) Get an education, at least a good education at the college level. As silly as this sounds, such an education does provide some discipline in thinking that can be a big advantage. Might apply the advantage just some one afternoon and get big results.
(4) For first earnings, will about have to be an employee. So, do that. Live cheaply; save a lot of your money.
As an employee, might find that if do some work that is especially good, nearly everyone else in the company will try to get you fired. Some business school courses call this goal subordination.
(5) Own something that has a good chance of becoming valuable. One general approach -- real estate. Another approach, a small business that might grow. E.g., at one time could start a simple Web site for romantic matchmaking, as a sole, solo entrepreneur, grow the number of users, and sell out to a large company for $500 million.
For owning a business, do start with a collection of the business basics: Maybe (a) Please the customer. (b) Have a barrier to entry, e.g., geographical. (c) Have something new, e.g., technology. (d) Study what successful entrepreneurs have done, not necessarily building Google or Amazon but, maybe, having 10 of the best BBQ restaurants in town.
> They are the future you. Do not think that you will be substantially different. Look carefully at how they spend their time at work and outside of work, because this is also almost certainly how your life will look. It sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how often young people imagine a different projection for themselves.
> Look at the real people, and you’ll see the honest future for yourself.
Maybe I'm the outlier, but this is 100% not true for me. My title, Product Manager, didn't exist 30 years ago. I was a developer 20 years ago, and 10 years before that I was managing and supporting a network of 200 Mac Pluses and the like. I've done other things besides, and at no point did the older people where I worked look the way I did years later.
I do focus a significant amount of energy on keeping up with the development of technology, and that has changed so much that I couldn't help but be different.
But I think that applies to everyone working in technology. The developers I work with now are using TypeScript and we organize using Notion. Ten years ago it was PHP and Jira. Ten years before that it was Java and Office docs. Who knows what it will be in ten years, but almost certainly none of those. Two week sprints have been a thing for fifteen years, so maybe that will still be true, but I doubt it.
Plan for change. It's coming for all of us.
I recognize this is a matter of perspective, because to me the examples you mention are fundamentally not very different.
A middle manager working in a programming language might be a way to put it that sounds the same as the old job. Which exact programming language, etc. can be seen as details, depending on the context. When seen through this lens the perspective of seeing the old worker still applies I believe.
On the surface, they’re “Agile(tm)” because they have sprints and retros. But at the level above middle managers, it’s all huge word documents, Gantt charts, formal sign offs, and then later the blame game when it invariably fails to meet both deadline and requirements.
I was too young to work in the 00s, but that was a miserable job. I had colleagues who had been there for decades and others that started as apprentices there and retired in the couple of years I was there… that’s all they’ve ever known and worked at this one place only. It totally blew my mind.
Read this book first though: "Into the Wild", a 1996 non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer.
I am reminded of the Hebrew Lech lecha, which occupies a certain amount of commentary space and has some alignments.
There is something to be said for being normie. But also it should be a choice, and moxie points out that it... often isn't, really.
The spe, btw, I think has gotten much more popularly discredited since 2013.
Mentioning people's skin color unnecessarily should also be "treyf", I think
First, it supposes that the you of now, inexperienced as you are, can properly evaluate not only what is going on in these older coworkers lives, but that you will also properly appreciate how your own tastes will change between now and then.
Secondly, you are looking at pure survivorship bias. You aren't going to see the folks that did a 5 year turn doing development and then found some other direction to take their career in. If you are a new hire and look at the 50 year old dev on the team and assume your career might go the same you are taking a very narrow vision of the future.
> Be careful not to discover a career before you’ve discovered yourself.
Words to live by.
> There is a tremendous amount of support for these decisions, and very little support for making any deviating choices.
Those choices are further defined, shaped, and limited by experiences.
Companies, organizations, groups and people further refine a personality.
Our choices are arrayed by self, formed by both experience and circumstance and then refined by contact with others.
We become our work because our personality led us to that original choice. Life then shaped that choice. And, finally, coworkers refine us.
We’re molded by this process, fitting ourselves into the form with extreme prejudice.
One of the traps I think this falls into is "I can either work on my career or be adventurous". I consider myself a "work to live" kind of person but still fall into this trap myself.
I believe you can do both, it just takes a lot of effort, planning, and patience (more than a lot of people are willing to put in) to make it work.
Ok hang on but there aren't any old people at my software company that's 4 years old. The author didn't seem to address this possibility, despite the fact that they were writing about careers in software.
But I feel like he's putting unnecessary pressure by treating first full-time job as "forever". Quitting is a thing...
"The context of one’s life defines not just what but how one thinks, and a job tends to dominate the context of one’s life — particularly when that job is considered to be part of a career. Your job will change you."
Absolute and complete pseudoscientific bullshit. Everything in life changes you. Every. Thing. Your job, the old man that works at the fruit stand around the corner from your flat, the air you breathe. No one thing in your life is going to determine who you are, because your rational, conscious, decision-making brain is what chooses your path in life. Not some amorphous organization or position that supposedly has control over your cognitive pathways. You change you.
Go ahead and chase a career. Will your life be any better or worse than if you didn't? There is absolutely no way to know that in advance.
You know how you discover yourself? By living your life. By self-reflection, by seeking knowledge, and also by flipping a coin and walking wherever the coin leads.
"Learn three chords, start a band, and go on tour. Ride a bicycle as far as you can. Go WWOOFing or start a community garden in your neighborhood. Put together a traveling puppet show. Build a drone to engage the emerging drones controlled by domestic police. Do whatever — but make it uncomfortable (like leaving prison!) and make it count."
Or don't. It doesn't matter. You are going to become who you are going to be, no matter what you do or don't do. You don't have to be uncomfortable. Nothing you do has to "count". It can, if you want. But you don't need to live some noble life. Your life doesn't have to have meaning. You don't have to seek new experiences and become some dynamic, interesting renaissance man. It's your life.
Here's my career advice:
If you want a career, keep in mind that a career is basically a marathon, whereupon the end goal of the race is to have a high position, good pay, the respect and reference of your peers, interesting work, personal fulfillment, and a fat retirement account. If that's what you want, then most of your actions should be centered around becoming likeable, knowledgeable, useful, and constantly preparing for the next step on the path. If you do it really well, you can climb very fast, but that might work against you. If you do it poorly, you can end up not very far, without much money, or references, or prospects, when you need them the most. Careers are largely a political consideration.
That said, even with this weird political focus around work, you can still have a personal life that revolves around whatever you want outside of work. You also have a very wide latitude of what kind of work you do, where you do it, who you do it for, what its results are, how long and how hard you do it, etc. There is a very, very wide spectrum of both career, and life, and you don't have to fit into anyone's mold. You can even give birth to your own career niche.
The point of this comment, just like the point of Moxie's post, is to tell you that you have options. You can expand your horizons and do all kinds of things that you aren't aware of yet. But also know that, no matter where you go or what you do, you are still just who you are. Life doesn't get better or worse based on what you do. It's your state of mind that makes life worth living. You are not your job. You are yourself.
To sum it up: work is a long endless grind that will alienate you, therefore therefore left-libertarian flavoured YOLO.
Without downplaying the existing structures of social oppression, you may be lucky to live in a country and a time where you have rights.
In that case, you need to decide for yourself what you want in life (economically).
You need to decide how much money you want, how many hours a week you want to work, how many sabbatical to take and when to retire (these choices can always be made within what the economic environment allows).
You can refuse to think about these questions, this how you’ll get trapped working for someone else’s dream.
So cringe.
Okay. The reason I find that heading painful to read is it seems to miss the entire point of the quote. The line is said in the context of a world where everyone already is defining themselves by their jobs, possessions, etc. it’s not descriptive, it’s prescriptive. So it can’t really even be wrong.
My memory of the book is it’s fairly philosophical, getting at modernity and the human condition. It’s quite traditionally masculine and violent and I get that that turns a lot of people off. Love it or hate it, quotes of it probably don’t belong in a LinkedIn-style “here’s some advice kids” article.
Moreover, it’s just too easy — low hanging fruit, e.g.
Tyler Durden said “once you you lose everything you’re free to do anything” but that’s not right because many activities are expensive and you’ll need money.
Yuck.