[yellowbuilding]

I don’t think “following dreams” actually describes what I mean. I just mean doing anything except the safest thing to do, or making any sudden moves that requires a new start. Watching friends try to change careers has been cringeworthy. You have to be willing to lose everything. I think that takes all the fun out of life. It makes you feel absolutely trapped. Maybe i do love my life just how it is, but it’s hard to say when I cannot even visualize working toward anything else. I am just so much more fulfilled when working toward something. I don’t really get much out of just trying to save money so that’s I can risk it all at some point down the road. That feels like a trap. My happiest times have always been when I can be relatively confident I will not lose everything and I am in a place to contribute to something with other people. That is what I mean by “dream” and I currently have one of them, but it’s not a dream. It was once, or, it was at least a goal. I think “goal” is what’s I really mean. I want the ability to have goals in life that are not mere consumption, but that do not require overwhelming risk. The goals can be lame or common everyday things, but more real than a hobby and less deadly than risking homelessness.

[badpun]

I can relate to that. However, you have to realise that you literally want to have everything - both the comfort and safety AND a fullfilling life. This conflict within people has probably been going on from the beginning of time (it's greatly depicted in "The Revolutionary Road", a film by Sam Mendes (director of American Beauty)). I think that in the end, unless you're very lucky, you need to give up one or the other to some extent. Personally, I think I'd be more comfortable living my next 30 years as an at least somewhat free pauper, than spending my days in a comfortable, but depressing gilded cage - but that's a choice that everyone needs to make for themselves.

[watwut]

You can have comfort, safety and fullfilling life. There is absolutely no contradition between the three - unless your value system defines fullfiling as lack of safety. Comfortable does not imply depressing. Pointless and empty and without something to do implies depressing.

Maybe one reason for problems with loneliness and what not are these dichotomies - people believe they have to choose between two extremes and expect others to choose between two extremes - not allowing for harmony between multiple needs and wishes.

For example, the parent feels need to pretend to be obsessive careerist type. Had he did not pretended so, his peers would put him into familly men bracket and he woild be taken less seriously and his work life would suffer. He needs both, but had to choose only one, because we collectively don't allow for those compromises.

[badpun]

In the context of this forum, comfort and safety means a cushy tech job. I don't know how many people feel fulfilled in those, but my guess is that the majority isn't (esp. among people with more than a couple years of experience). The dichotomy seems very real to me.

Regarding your example of a father that needs to pretend he's laser-focused on the job - this is what I was talking about. There are people for whose career is a #1 priority, and these people naturally get the prized positions (managerial, or work on interesting projects etc.) in work environments, at the cost of everything else in their lives. Your example,a a father who secretely does not give a shit, still wants to work on these interesting projects, and thus misrepresents himself as someone who gives a shit. He literally wants to get something that, in a just world, he shouldn't get. He is not accepting the dichotomy.

Of course, the flip side is that there's plenty of other frauds who also misrepresent themselves, to the point of anyone who's open about his real priorities sticks out like a sore thumb - at which point you need to pretend just to maintain a mediocre job, and not to get the prized one. The reason for that is, in the grand scheme of things, even those "mediocre" tech jobs still pay six figures for working on a computer in a climate -controlled office. These are dream jobs for 90% of the population, so the competition for them is intense, hence all the theatrics (like for example people begrudgingly doing personal projects on Github in their spare time to fake passion). I imagine there's much more honesty amongst brick layers or truck drivers, as they don't have people coming for their jobs from all angles.

[watwut]

> In the context of this forum, comfort and safety means a cushy tech job. I don't know how many people feel fulfilled in those, but my guess is that the majority isn't (esp. among people with more than a couple years of experience). The dichotomy seems very real to me.

See, that is false dichotomy I see. You can have technically interesting job that is quite safe and with good management. You can have boring tasks with high subjective stress and disorganized management leading to late nights full of boring tasks and later burn out and leave the industry (looking at you, game industry).

> Regarding your example of a father that needs to pretend he's laser-focused on the job - this is what I was talking about.

I meant parent poster, not father. I have no idea whether he has children and the issue did not seemed to be family oriented one.

> There are people for whose career is a #1 priority, and these people naturally get the prized positions (managerial, or work on interesting projects etc.) in work environments, at the cost of everything else in their lives.

You later again do dichotomy between "career number one" and "does not give a shit". That is not how real world people act or feel. Moreover, real world people often move between the two.

Many many people in tech don't see middle management as desirable position. I know people who work on interesting projects and it did not costed them everything else in their lives. They focused on the kind of tech and positions important to them, but not to exclusion of everything and it worked out great for them. I know people who sacrificed everything and were not rewarded at all - sometimes unfairly and sometimes fairly. Their ego and identity being depended on job ended up hurting that job. People who sacrificed everything and ended up resentfulness and burned out by their own fault.

> Of course, the flip side is that there's plenty of other frauds who also misrepresent themselves, to the point of anyone who's open about his real priorities sticks out like a sore thumb - at which point you need to pretend just to maintain a mediocre job, and not to get the prized one.

Interestingly, there are two kind of jobs for you - mediocre and prized. You don't see different positions suitable for different people nor people possibly unhappy in those prized jobs nor people possibly happy in "mediocre jobs". These is no concept of personality type or aptitudes affecting what kind of job you are effective and happy at. There are loosers at mediocre jobs and those who sacrificed everything for prized jobs, regardless of whether they are actually really effective at that position.

Is it about work itself and meaning of work or rather about what jobs are seen as prized by others?

> The reason for that is, in the grand scheme of things, even those "mediocre" tech jobs still pay six figures for working on a computer in a climate -controlled office. These are dream jobs for 90% of the population, so the competition for them is intense, hence all the theatrics.

Is it that companies have hard time to find people or that competition for mediocre job is intense? Because really, many many low paid jobs are working on a computer in a climate controlled office.

> I imagine there's much more honesty amongst brick layers or truck drivers, as they don't have people coming for their jobs from all angles.

Truck drivers struggle. The competition for jobs and pressures and debts are very real, harder then any position in tech.