>I just can help but feel sometimes that it's irresponsible to dump the "you can be/do anything!" sentiment on our youth when the reality is nowhere near that for most of them.
This is my take as well. If prompted for advice, I tell people to find satisfation outside of work. Work is a rigged game. It simply will not make you happy outside of some truly edge cases and those cases are often temporary until things change. "New boss took away the pinball table. I miss the noisy environment and need it to work!" "New boss won't take away the pinball table! Its too noisy for me to work!"
Its also concerning to make career choices at age 18-22 that will last a lifetime. Young me loved working in tech. Current me could leave it at anytime and kinda wants to. Unfortunately, our employment system isn't set for a mid-life career change, unless you want to take on serious risk and start at the bottom of yet another career mountain to climb, which you may bore of just as fast, if not faster.
My personal wish is to migrate society to accept a very young retirement age. Maybe as early as 50. With automation going where it is, I think this is probably inevitable and am happy to think my kids won't be grueling through work until 65-70 like my parents generation did.
Early retirement is very hard for most people and borderline impossible for many, but social acceptance is not part of the problem. Money is the problem. If you want to take the money from society, then you have social acceptance issues. Society is generally fine with early retirement, as long as you don't plan on depending on the government.
This is my take as well. If prompted for advice, I tell people to find satisfation outside of work. Work is a rigged game. It simply will not make you happy outside of some truly edge cases and those cases are often temporary until things change. "New boss took away the pinball table. I miss the noisy environment and need it to work!" "New boss won't take away the pinball table! Its too noisy for me to work!"
Its also concerning to make career choices at age 18-22 that will last a lifetime. Young me loved working in tech. Current me could leave it at anytime and kinda wants to. Unfortunately, our employment system isn't set for a mid-life career change, unless you want to take on serious risk and start at the bottom of yet another career mountain to climb, which you may bore of just as fast, if not faster.
My personal wish is to migrate society to accept a very young retirement age. Maybe as early as 50. With automation going where it is, I think this is probably inevitable and am happy to think my kids won't be grueling through work until 65-70 like my parents generation did.