> Consider the work you do. If you love your job, and particularly if you love that type of work more than anyone else you work with, would you keep doing it for a modest pay cut? Really think about the answer to this question. I’ll wait.
When the writer of a piece tells me what to do like this, my first instinct is actually to close the tab.
Obvious corollary: if you're lucky enough to love doing something useful that most people would hate, you're likely well situated to get paid a lot for doing that thing.
I'd say this is true for a lot of jobs like CEO of a big company, corporate lawyer or even being politician (who would want to go through the grueling campaigning necessary to run for president?). Most people don't want to put in the hard work to of these jobs. Myself included.
I am not saying that this justifies the crazy high pay of CEOs but it's a tough job.
Maybe the best advice this article could have given would be to look for those careers. Taking the job with the most money is reasonable, taking the job job you love most is reasonable, but if we're talking economics then the comparative advantage is in finding the job you like most relative to everyone else.
On which note, I don't think it's an accident that some subdomains of programming have really happy people making good money. Sure, it's work they love, but optimizing compilers or whatever else appeals to few enough people that it's a great fit for anyone who does like it.
In general, in engineering, getting very good at some obscure specialty (which is highly valued and you like well enough) is pretty good advice in general. Of course, pick wrong--or don't be flexible enough--and you're the world's performance expert in some computer architecture that's now obsolete or the Y2K expert in 2001.
Commercially-minded industrialists regularly put artisans, who love their crafts, out of work by driving down costs. Some of the things those who love their work do aren’t meaningful to customers.
More typically they do it by monopolizing distribution, not driving down costs, although craft beer probably will not do well in a protracted recession as consumers tighten their belts.
I disagree. I feel chasing money is a sure fire way to end up miserable. If you don't get there, you were doing something that was making you unhappy for nothing. If you do get their and up rich, you might find the money doesn't really bring you what you were after anyway.
Yeah. The article kind of bothered me by assuming that its reader is trying to maximize profit, rather than maximize happiness with a sustainable income.
I love to code. I code for a living. If UBI was established, I would quit my job and code for free, because being told what to do is inherently frustrating.
tl;dr - any job that has teenagers dreaming of doing it is almost definitely a terrible career choice. You'll be trying to get paid for a job that others want to do for free. Of course, they tell themselves it's only until the get established, but there's always another crop of chumps finishing school.
I say this as the spouse of someone who dreamed of working in museums and is now bitterly disappointed at how museums/heritage/academia treat its people. Sure, they could have known ahead of time, but we all make mistakes.
Funny enough, I have a pretty good gig at a video game company at the moment, but doing very not-video-game specific things. To be honest you can really tell that the people whose skills are focused on Unity and C# are more stressed out than the ones who know Python and AWS and can pretty much walk in to another job.
I assumed he did. AWS is transferable to most fields in tech these days. Unity is niche to video games. C# isn’t used in as many fields as python for sure.
> To be honest you can really tell that the people whose skills are focused on Unity and C# are more stressed out than the ones who know Python and AWS and can pretty much walk in to another job.
Lead Unity/C# developer, can confirm. Ecosystem full of teenagers eager to get into game development doesn't help with the stress either.
The other somewhat related corollary is that a lot of things you find are fun as a hobby may not be so engaging as a full-time job--especially if you're not sufficiently talented/lucky to be able to mostly do the job on your terms.
It's not so much about doing things for money. If you want to pay me for whatever hobbies I would pursue in any case, I'll be happy to tell you where to deposit the checks. Rather, it's that what I want to do even without being paid for it is probably different from what someone will pay me to do.
I like doing photography and used to do it somewhat more seriously (and did make beer money off of it in school which was nice). But I had no illusions that I was likely to become a well-known globe-trotting nature or documentary photographer--or perhaps that I would even enjoy that as a full-time profession.
That's a super important clarification. I'm sure a lot of us loved algorithm optimizations and solving fun problems, but for the majority of us programming devolves down to "Modify a CRUD website template for the next 20-35 years".
I actually agree totally, but perhaps not for your intended reason.
I have a hunch that the clear syntax and relative simplicity of web programming is what drives a certain kind of developer to long for complexity and turn something simple into this:
`user.public? && (current_user.try(:test) ? user.test? : !user.test?)`
Yeah, that's something that a developer learns better as he gains experience, but as a younger dev I know that I craved complexity for complexities sake, and to prove that I COULD work with complexity. I've since grown out of that.
I've always found "CRUD" work ends up being way more complicated, interesting and challenging than its reputation indicates.
Moreover, when it becomes tedious, it's almost always a result of poor tools, bad decisions or developers doing manually what should have been automated.
I'm also pretty sure if there were no intellectual challenge involved I wouldn't see so many unnormalized databases.
The essence of how much you get compensated is that it relates to supply and demand. The smaller the supply of people with certain skills and the higher the demand, the overall greater compensation.
There are two factors that influence the supply. The article discusses that a job that everybody loves is going to have a higher supply of people seeking that job. But it also matters how many people can actually perform the job. Programming is one of those examples where it takes a certain amount of skill and dedication that some people just don't have.
People in general hate programming. Most IRL friends I have are absolutely terrified of programming and don't dare to even try or found it very tedious, boring, and hard, then very quickly gave up. I have friends who can't program even when they think that's fun and want to learn it. I like it, but the programming like the kind I have to study for to take a tech interview definitely isn't so much fun to me.
If you like programming, you're among the lucky few. If you like the kind of problems on leetcode, you're among luckier few of the lucky few.
Hi make some good points, although he also refers to the profession of teaching as prestigious, which it is not. At least not in the United States, unfortunately.
Perhaps not prestigious, but appreciated ("devoting your life to helping kids... that's wonderful!"), which must be a major factor that keeps people doing it, given the modest remuneration and difficulty/stress of the work (along with nursing and other welfare work).
> Chefs / Pastry Chefs (Delightful): Lots of people love cooking or baking (including me!) and they think that means that it would be a good career. Unfortunately, based on the basic principles of supply and demand, this leads to more people wanting to be chefs than one would see if it didn’t look so fun. Too many cooks spoil the market for restaurant labor.
I am not sure if the author ever talked to a cook or a baker.
You have a point (I'm the author). When I was young I had a few friends who were line cooks at Olive Garden, and they didn't believe they were going to have a great career staying in that kind of work. It was just a job that they were able to get at an entry-level without any training. But I also have multiple friends and family members who went to culinary school in hopes of becoming chefs at their own restaurants. Mostly this has not turned out very well financially for them. For the same amount of work if they had gone to trade school, any of them could have a job that pays well.
First mistake: going to culinary school with the hopes of being a chef at their own restaurant. I'm 3rd+ generation restaurant worker. Watch my mom go bankrupt twice opening her own places. Restaurants are a completely misunderstood industry because too many people forget it's a business first and "cooking with love" second.
Quick story: My best friend in culinary school already had a BA in education when she got into the field. She went the hotel route, got a masters in Hospitality and now manages food/bev at a large Boston hospital. She loves food and cooking, but she also realizes that it's a job first and that she can always do her fun stuff at home.
Working as a cook/chef can be a great career, but most people have no clue what the industry actually looks like when they start to gravitate towards it. I don't think this is unique to that industry, just something most career chefs recognize as part of what keeps the industry full of new bright eyed idiots to burn out after a few months and pay low wages.
Former chef turned tech dork here: Anyone who says "I want to own my own restaurant, it sounds like fun!" will immediately be destroyed. People who don't burn out of the restaurant industry (or get stuck in rehab/o.d.) typically love their craft and work like lunatics. It makes the tech sector work/life balance look like paradise. You stay in the field because you enjoy the lifestyle and get off on the adrenaline rush.
Restaurants don't pay anything because the learning curve is low enough that you can just train line cooks on the job. And chefs tend to just be smart dudes who could deal with lifestyle long enough to get into manager roles. Most normal, sane people don't work as cooks because they wouldn't be willing to put up with the physical/mental stress for so little pay. It's a refuge of maniacs and the desperate.
Rewriting the headline as an exhortation rather than a warning we get:
For money, do what others hate.
But you can do what others love and get compensated if you're better than amateurs (those who labor for love) and in an industry where your customers can discern quality, care about it, and can afford it.
Happiness isn't a fungible commodity. It's not a store of value. No job can offer me happiness, just the possibility of happiness. When I go home, any unrealized happiness from that day is gone. Any unspent money, however, goes into my savings account.
If I work a well-paying tech job, I can save enough money that I don't have to go in to any job. My alternative isn't another job; it's no job at all. Then, if I love software engineering, I can engineer software on my own free of the constraints of the market. That saved money also provides potential happiness, probably in a more reliable way.
> Consider the job that you would do if you could no longer do your current work, or the job that would bring the most delight to your daily life. Does that job pay less? For most people, the answer to that question is also yes.
These first two are basically three different questions. If I could no longer do my current job, I'd hunt for similar jobs that pay more. If I could no longer do this type of work, it wouldn't be a good thing, and I'd try to find another high-paying career I'd be decent at. The job that would bring the most delight to my daily life isn't a job at all, and it's very weird to weave in the capitalistic assumption that life is determined by a job without also accepting the truth that in a capitalist society, money is actually the best way to bring yourself delight.
There's advice that I think served me well at a point where I was at least mulling trying to make a probably not very well paying/not very stable job out of my hobby. Namely that, if you have the skills and background to get a well-paying day job that gives you a lot of latitude to pursue hobbies on your own terms that's a pretty good option. Which is pretty much what I've done.
Stop paying me tomorrow? Good luck with that even if I didn't need the paycheck. But I enjoy it well enough and have plenty of time for other activities. Would I prefer even more time? Yes. But the status quo is a reasonable one for me.
Right. I'm speaking somewhat from experience: the last two times I switched jobs, I took about six months off between them and lived off savings, enjoying the process of just having the full day to do whatever I wanted (sometimes writing code, sometimes just reading or playing video games or whatever). No job can offer that, and I can do this a lot more easily than I can negotiate even a part-time tech job. I am also as happy with my day job as with any other day job I can imagine, and I've sought out high-paying day jobs on purpose.
I've never felt that I was in a great situation to do that between jobs and I've never felt strongly enough about it to take leave. I have run into a few people who were able to negotiate an atypical amount of annual leave. One of them was a lawyer who basically worked about half the year and traveled most of the rest of the time. But that's very unusual and presumably isn't all that stable over the course of a career.
I take issue with "The reason for both of these is because delightfulness is part of what you are being paid."
Unless you would do your current job even you weren't paid at all, then that is not really true. What we do, is negotiate the balance between discomfort and money. It might be a good deal for you personally, but you are still giving up some satisfaction.
My rule of thumb is any job that has any "star" the general public knows and cheer for, don't bet your life's happiness on it. The more glamorous you see the star, the worse off the average person is/the more improbable an average person can make it. For example, rock star, movie star, star chef, star youtuber, star blogger, star athlete, star politician, star Hacker news story, star redditor, star 4chan memer, etc.
I haven't heard of a star lawyer, or star doctor, or star programmer that the general public knows.
> I haven't heard of a star lawyer, or star doctor, or star programmer that the general public know.
Ehh, I'm not sure I would agree with that. Sure, for the most part the really successful ones pivot to become something else (typically to become politicians, media personalities, and/or CEOs), but their original profession remains a core part of their identity.
Off the top of my head, most people (older than 25, say) know who Johnnie Cochran was. Ben Carson was pretty famous even before he entered politics.
And despite whatever he is now, Zuckerberg is still pretty much the poster boy for programmer-turned-CEO. Heh, there's an entire movie about what a star programmer he was.
There is nothing super contradictory about Zuck that way... Zuckerberg isn't rich and famous because he is good at programming. He is because he created a successful social network called Facebook. He doesn't make money because he programs now. He is rich because he is good at being a CEO of Facebook, and neither the CEO job nor a successful social network is easy to get.
I don't think Zuck would list his job as being a programmer. He lists his job as being a CEO. Same as Taylor Swift lists her job as being a singer/songwriter. When someone dreams to create a successful social network and become a CEO like Zuck, it's just as delusional as writing a hit song and becoming a music star like Swift.
> Zuckerberg isn't rich and famous because he is good at programming
I doubt we'll agree on this, so I'll agree to disagree and just leave it at this:
I think he is. He was instrumental in programming the early and core product of Facebook. Facebook wouldn't have become the monolith it is today without his ability to program the very early versions.
Being a star programmer doesn't necessarily mean tackling self-driving vehicles or the linux kernel, and it can very much blend into what looks like traditional business decisions: Deciding what to build, what to allow/disallow, etc.
Pop music is actually pretty similar in this regard: It's not well-known as a technically difficult or especially avant-garde form of music, and being a pop star is often not about the music as much as it is about everything else surrounding the music (branding, marketing, etc.).
Still, we consider pop stars to be star musicians. Even when they don't write their own music!
The conflation of job types in this piece undercuts its thesis, which I think it pretty good advice.
Seeking out a career in a kitchen, the entertainment business or any other "tournament profession" is high-risk and likely to leave you with few skills the market will reward.
On the other hand, getting a Ph.D. in life sciences seems like a pretty fool-proof path to the upper-middle class. Sure, you may not be a Nobel Prize winner, but I'd imagine in the worst case, you'd be pretty employable by pharma companies.
The other examples are a bit weirder. The people who love to fly recreationally typically aren't the ones manning the red-eye, or ferrying air freight from Shenzen. In most cases, they're "Post-economic" if they can afford to learn.
Likewise, I'm not sure anyone goes into the forest service for money.
Anyway, the author makes a good point, but muddles it with poor examples.
An example I was waiting for him to list was graphic designer/artist. It's a sort of meme to be asked to do things "for exposure". The reason that is a thing is because many people are willing to design for free because many, many people love being artistic.
>people are willing to design for free because many, many people love being artistic.
That's part of it. But a lot of people (on both sides) are also just naive about the value of said exposure. When I was a consultant I was asked for freebies all the time. Sometimes speaking at a conference was legitimate for the "portfolio" but it was mostly just asking me to work for free.
I think if I were writing this piece from whole cloth, I would use different examples. It was mostly a response to the reddit post so I was hoping to resolve confusion for my friends who had read that.
There is a lot more that could be said on this topic, particularly markets with winner-take-most dynamics or positional elements, markets that are outside equilibrium, and markets with rent-seeking behaviors.
"On the other hand, getting a Ph.D. in life sciences seems like a pretty fool-proof path to the upper-middle class. Sure, you may not be a Nobel Prize winner, but I'd imagine in the worst case, you'd be pretty employable by pharma companies." I don't think that's true anymore.
I just want to segway a little bit here, but when I though about doing a Phd I not for once thought I want to stay in academia. I think it's silly the fact that people associate phds with a career in academia, I always thought of it like a means to become a deep expert in a certain field of study and the opportunity to do innovative work in it, mostly by transitioning to private industry. The way the Phd=career in academia became entrenched beats me honestly.
If it's true that non monetary compensation replaces monetary compensation for these type of jobs then it's only good advice to not do them if that non monetary compensation is worth less to you than the average person doing those jobs. If that's all that was going on this advice wouldn't make sense unless you were motivated by money over prestige and job satisfaction to an atypical degree.
What's going on with these type of jobs is actually mostly just simple supply and demand. Supply of labor at a given price is increased by the perceived desirability of the work but that ignores both the demand side and the qualifications / requirements on the job. These help explain the examples that don't fit the overly simplified story in the article. Brad Pitt or Gordon Ramsay for example do quite well for monetary compensation in fields listed here because they are not easily substitutable. Doctors are still quite well paid despite the prestige and "helping people" job satisfaction because supply is restricted by licensing requirements.
I was surprised that the article didn't cover counter examples: Jobs with high pay to make up for their low delightfulness, low(ish) education level, and low prestige.
1. Mining engineer or technician in a remote region like Northern Canada.
2. Electrician, plumber, or other skilled trade for the oil industry.
3. Real estate agent in a reasonably well off area. Some may argue that this isn't low prestige, but I'd counter that jobs where men have to get hair plugs to stay competitive as they age isn't high prestige even if the work itself is genteel.
4. Taking clothes off for money (stripping, porn, prostitution, etc).
The second anything becomes a job, it loses some of what makes it enjoyable. When you "have" to go do something, even though you're not in the mood/sick/whatever it's not fun anymore. The advantage people with hobbies have, is that then can pause their hobby at any time and come back to it when they feel like it. If it's your job, you've got to be there doing it. Everyone loves sex, but most people don't want to be in porn.
The job that I want has nothing to do with what I'm doing at the job. It's a collection of things that make my lifestyle of choice possible, and job requirements that allow me to feel comfortable that I'm performing well and not likely to get fired. At the same time, I understand there's going to be plenty of times where I'm competing with some Ash Ketchum type (to be, the very best, like no one ever was) who REALLY cares about the job on a different level. That's fine. If they want the eager guy, they'll take him. If they think my skills work better, they'll pick me. Get a marketable set of skills, truly understand what they are, and then you'll be fine with jobs.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadWhen the writer of a piece tells me what to do like this, my first instinct is actually to close the tab.
I am not saying that this justifies the crazy high pay of CEOs but it's a tough job.
http://time.com/money/4790237/ceo-pay-salary-compensation-in...
> American CEOs got an 8.5-percent raise last year, taking in a median of $11.5 million in salary, stock, and other compensation.
On which note, I don't think it's an accident that some subdomains of programming have really happy people making good money. Sure, it's work they love, but optimizing compilers or whatever else appeals to few enough people that it's a great fit for anyone who does like it.
More typically they do it by monopolizing distribution, not driving down costs, although craft beer probably will not do well in a protracted recession as consumers tighten their belts.
It seems a dangerous gamble.
I love to code. I code for a living. If UBI was established, I would quit my job and code for free, because being told what to do is inherently frustrating.
tl;dr - any job that has teenagers dreaming of doing it is almost definitely a terrible career choice. You'll be trying to get paid for a job that others want to do for free. Of course, they tell themselves it's only until the get established, but there's always another crop of chumps finishing school.
I say this as the spouse of someone who dreamed of working in museums and is now bitterly disappointed at how museums/heritage/academia treat its people. Sure, they could have known ahead of time, but we all make mistakes.
Funny enough, I have a pretty good gig at a video game company at the moment, but doing very not-video-game specific things. To be honest you can really tell that the people whose skills are focused on Unity and C# are more stressed out than the ones who know Python and AWS and can pretty much walk in to another job.
Lead Unity/C# developer, can confirm. Ecosystem full of teenagers eager to get into game development doesn't help with the stress either.
I like doing photography and used to do it somewhat more seriously (and did make beer money off of it in school which was nice). But I had no illusions that I was likely to become a well-known globe-trotting nature or documentary photographer--or perhaps that I would even enjoy that as a full-time profession.
Sadly, the latter is the most prevalent.
I have a hunch that the clear syntax and relative simplicity of web programming is what drives a certain kind of developer to long for complexity and turn something simple into this: `user.public? && (current_user.try(:test) ? user.test? : !user.test?)`
Moreover, when it becomes tedious, it's almost always a result of poor tools, bad decisions or developers doing manually what should have been automated.
I'm also pretty sure if there were no intellectual challenge involved I wouldn't see so many unnormalized databases.
There are two factors that influence the supply. The article discusses that a job that everybody loves is going to have a higher supply of people seeking that job. But it also matters how many people can actually perform the job. Programming is one of those examples where it takes a certain amount of skill and dedication that some people just don't have.
If you like programming, you're among the lucky few. If you like the kind of problems on leetcode, you're among luckier few of the lucky few.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8aqs7q/whats_a_j...
EDIT: I'm an idiot. The author mentions this fact. I should really read the full article.
I am not sure if the author ever talked to a cook or a baker.
Note this does not mean they'd be happier.
Quick story: My best friend in culinary school already had a BA in education when she got into the field. She went the hotel route, got a masters in Hospitality and now manages food/bev at a large Boston hospital. She loves food and cooking, but she also realizes that it's a job first and that she can always do her fun stuff at home.
Working as a cook/chef can be a great career, but most people have no clue what the industry actually looks like when they start to gravitate towards it. I don't think this is unique to that industry, just something most career chefs recognize as part of what keeps the industry full of new bright eyed idiots to burn out after a few months and pay low wages.
Restaurants don't pay anything because the learning curve is low enough that you can just train line cooks on the job. And chefs tend to just be smart dudes who could deal with lifestyle long enough to get into manager roles. Most normal, sane people don't work as cooks because they wouldn't be willing to put up with the physical/mental stress for so little pay. It's a refuge of maniacs and the desperate.
For money, do what others hate.
But you can do what others love and get compensated if you're better than amateurs (those who labor for love) and in an industry where your customers can discern quality, care about it, and can afford it.
If I work a well-paying tech job, I can save enough money that I don't have to go in to any job. My alternative isn't another job; it's no job at all. Then, if I love software engineering, I can engineer software on my own free of the constraints of the market. That saved money also provides potential happiness, probably in a more reliable way.
> Consider the job that you would do if you could no longer do your current work, or the job that would bring the most delight to your daily life. Does that job pay less? For most people, the answer to that question is also yes.
These first two are basically three different questions. If I could no longer do my current job, I'd hunt for similar jobs that pay more. If I could no longer do this type of work, it wouldn't be a good thing, and I'd try to find another high-paying career I'd be decent at. The job that would bring the most delight to my daily life isn't a job at all, and it's very weird to weave in the capitalistic assumption that life is determined by a job without also accepting the truth that in a capitalist society, money is actually the best way to bring yourself delight.
Stop paying me tomorrow? Good luck with that even if I didn't need the paycheck. But I enjoy it well enough and have plenty of time for other activities. Would I prefer even more time? Yes. But the status quo is a reasonable one for me.
Unless you would do your current job even you weren't paid at all, then that is not really true. What we do, is negotiate the balance between discomfort and money. It might be a good deal for you personally, but you are still giving up some satisfaction.
I haven't heard of a star lawyer, or star doctor, or star programmer that the general public knows.
Ehh, I'm not sure I would agree with that. Sure, for the most part the really successful ones pivot to become something else (typically to become politicians, media personalities, and/or CEOs), but their original profession remains a core part of their identity.
Off the top of my head, most people (older than 25, say) know who Johnnie Cochran was. Ben Carson was pretty famous even before he entered politics.
And despite whatever he is now, Zuckerberg is still pretty much the poster boy for programmer-turned-CEO. Heh, there's an entire movie about what a star programmer he was.
I don't think Zuck would list his job as being a programmer. He lists his job as being a CEO. Same as Taylor Swift lists her job as being a singer/songwriter. When someone dreams to create a successful social network and become a CEO like Zuck, it's just as delusional as writing a hit song and becoming a music star like Swift.
I doubt we'll agree on this, so I'll agree to disagree and just leave it at this:
I think he is. He was instrumental in programming the early and core product of Facebook. Facebook wouldn't have become the monolith it is today without his ability to program the very early versions.
Being a star programmer doesn't necessarily mean tackling self-driving vehicles or the linux kernel, and it can very much blend into what looks like traditional business decisions: Deciding what to build, what to allow/disallow, etc.
Pop music is actually pretty similar in this regard: It's not well-known as a technically difficult or especially avant-garde form of music, and being a pop star is often not about the music as much as it is about everything else surrounding the music (branding, marketing, etc.).
Still, we consider pop stars to be star musicians. Even when they don't write their own music!
Seeking out a career in a kitchen, the entertainment business or any other "tournament profession" is high-risk and likely to leave you with few skills the market will reward.
On the other hand, getting a Ph.D. in life sciences seems like a pretty fool-proof path to the upper-middle class. Sure, you may not be a Nobel Prize winner, but I'd imagine in the worst case, you'd be pretty employable by pharma companies.
The other examples are a bit weirder. The people who love to fly recreationally typically aren't the ones manning the red-eye, or ferrying air freight from Shenzen. In most cases, they're "Post-economic" if they can afford to learn.
Likewise, I'm not sure anyone goes into the forest service for money.
Anyway, the author makes a good point, but muddles it with poor examples.
That's part of it. But a lot of people (on both sides) are also just naive about the value of said exposure. When I was a consultant I was asked for freebies all the time. Sometimes speaking at a conference was legitimate for the "portfolio" but it was mostly just asking me to work for free.
There is a lot more that could be said on this topic, particularly markets with winner-take-most dynamics or positional elements, markets that are outside equilibrium, and markets with rent-seeking behaviors.
What's going on with these type of jobs is actually mostly just simple supply and demand. Supply of labor at a given price is increased by the perceived desirability of the work but that ignores both the demand side and the qualifications / requirements on the job. These help explain the examples that don't fit the overly simplified story in the article. Brad Pitt or Gordon Ramsay for example do quite well for monetary compensation in fields listed here because they are not easily substitutable. Doctors are still quite well paid despite the prestige and "helping people" job satisfaction because supply is restricted by licensing requirements.
1. Mining engineer or technician in a remote region like Northern Canada.
2. Electrician, plumber, or other skilled trade for the oil industry.
3. Real estate agent in a reasonably well off area. Some may argue that this isn't low prestige, but I'd counter that jobs where men have to get hair plugs to stay competitive as they age isn't high prestige even if the work itself is genteel.
4. Taking clothes off for money (stripping, porn, prostitution, etc).
Hence it appears to be a matter of quality and demand somewhat negating the premise of the article.
The job that I want has nothing to do with what I'm doing at the job. It's a collection of things that make my lifestyle of choice possible, and job requirements that allow me to feel comfortable that I'm performing well and not likely to get fired. At the same time, I understand there's going to be plenty of times where I'm competing with some Ash Ketchum type (to be, the very best, like no one ever was) who REALLY cares about the job on a different level. That's fine. If they want the eager guy, they'll take him. If they think my skills work better, they'll pick me. Get a marketable set of skills, truly understand what they are, and then you'll be fine with jobs.
Its not important, but I happen to agree with most of it.. :)