[bachmeier]

> I don't mean to offend, and I'm happy for you that you've been so successful, but the advice does not make sense for people whose interest is not in popular demand.

That argument comes up often enough, but it's built on an assumption that "interest" is singular. Most everyone is interested in a wide range of things, and they'd be happy doing any of them at a high level. Some of those are likely to pay enough to cover the bills.

[steveBK123]

Exactly, I find this argument weak. People can have many interests. I enjoy gardening, photography, reading history, and travel. It turns out those are things you do not get paid for.

Fortunately I also find financial markets interesting enough that the programming problems they present to be engaging. It helps if you have "T shaped skills" as they say, where you can apply your technical skills & domain knowledge.

Most jobs will not be as fun as sitting at home and arguing on the internet, for example.

[ghaff]

In some cases, you can align interests though. At peak, I had a job that involved traveling almost 50% of the time. It wasn't all fun and games but enough was.

[steveBK123]

Well that's the idea right.

If you have the mindset to make the best of things - hey I'm traveling, let me do a little sightseeing and max out rewards points, cool.

If you view your job exclusively as a burden then every minute commuting/in office/logging in/travelling is bad, and you probably won't have a great career.

[ghaff]

I was never in a position where every minute had to be scheduled so business travel actually allowed me to subsidize a lot of personal travel which I made a lot of use of (and I like doing). I understand it's a burden on many people for various reasons--including not having a choice and routinely going to less interesting places.