I appreciate that you're exhorting people to take some initiative to find alternatives to misery. Your contribution is a positive one. So I support that, good job. I apologize in advance for the lack of positivity in the rest of my reply.
But, for me at least, the problem is that the evidence seems to indicate that, in my life at least, you're super wrong. Sure, okay, I'm of above-average intelligence, and able to efficiently reason about complex systems to some degree. It turns out that, although necessary for a great many jobs, they do not alone qualify me for those jobs. I think I'm willing to learn, but sometimes it seems that I'm not particularly able. I did software for most of a decade, including getting a visa to work in Silicon Valley, and it beat me up pretty bad. I like teaching, by which I mean one-on-one conversations or giving lectures, so I have mostly been pursuing that as a career for most of a decade. And it turns out that the job of teaching involves a lot of things other than the act of teaching, and those other things are way worse than software ever was. So now I'm just as miserable, for half as much money. Though at least I DO get to spend about 6 hours of paid time a week doing teaching-the-act, and that's nice. And because I'm so hilariously poorly-paid, I have job security, because every time they look for new hires, almost everyone who applies is obviously incapable, because you have to be a fool to take this job, so that's nice too.
I do think it's worth it for people who feel miserable to try to figure out how to be not-miserable. But as a related comment says, I enjoy food and shelter. At this point I'm torn between the known misery-and-low-pay-but-job-security of teaching, vs throwing myself back into the meat grinder of software development, knowing I'll make twice the money for less hours worked, but probably I'll get abused and fired again.
But, for me at least, the problem is that the evidence seems to indicate that, in my life at least, you're super wrong. Sure, okay, I'm of above-average intelligence, and able to efficiently reason about complex systems to some degree. It turns out that, although necessary for a great many jobs, they do not alone qualify me for those jobs. I think I'm willing to learn, but sometimes it seems that I'm not particularly able. I did software for most of a decade, including getting a visa to work in Silicon Valley, and it beat me up pretty bad. I like teaching, by which I mean one-on-one conversations or giving lectures, so I have mostly been pursuing that as a career for most of a decade. And it turns out that the job of teaching involves a lot of things other than the act of teaching, and those other things are way worse than software ever was. So now I'm just as miserable, for half as much money. Though at least I DO get to spend about 6 hours of paid time a week doing teaching-the-act, and that's nice. And because I'm so hilariously poorly-paid, I have job security, because every time they look for new hires, almost everyone who applies is obviously incapable, because you have to be a fool to take this job, so that's nice too.
I do think it's worth it for people who feel miserable to try to figure out how to be not-miserable. But as a related comment says, I enjoy food and shelter. At this point I'm torn between the known misery-and-low-pay-but-job-security of teaching, vs throwing myself back into the meat grinder of software development, knowing I'll make twice the money for less hours worked, but probably I'll get abused and fired again.
Is that a superficial argument?