A major new study questions the common wisdom about how we should choose our careers.
Why ‘Follow Your Passion’ Is the World’s Worst Career Advice
The popular "follow your passion" advice has become an overused and generic phrase. Below is another method that may just do the trick in helping people's careers.
How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You) — Wait But Why
Our career path is how we spend our time, how we support our lifestyles, how we make our impact, and even sometimes how we define our identity. Let’s make sure we’re on the right track.
From Academia to Alignment
What to do when your career crumbles before your eyes
The Toolbox Strategy: How To Become Uniquely Valuable
After having just dropped out of university, at 19-years-old; I received a line of advice that changed how I made every decision in my career…
The secret to living a meaningful life
Your ambitions to improve your life do not need to be confined by your personality.
Going to university does not broaden the mind
But going straight from school to work narrows it
Chasing life goals is a recipe for disaster – so try these tiny experiments instead
Whether its our careers, health or relationships, we often set the bar too high and end up feeling disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Try this new way of thinking … and you may just see some real results
Claude Opus 5.5 Should Raise Your Ambitions
When it comes to making things, or doing most things in general, Fable 5.1 and especially GPT-6 Astra raised my ambition level.
Read the docs like a book - Aaron Francis
Reading the docs straight through, like a book, can provide outsized benefits for your career.
What Happens When Your Career Becomes Your Whole Identity
Many people with high-pressure jobs find themselves unhappy with their careers, despite working hard their whole lives to get to their current position. Hating your job is one thing – but what happens if you identify so closely with your work that hating your job means hating yourself?Psychologists use the term “enmeshment” to describe a situation where the boundaries between people become blurred, and individual identities lose importance. Enmeshment prevents the development of a stable, independent sense of self. While identifying closely with your career isn’t necessarily bad, it makes you vulnerable to a painful identity crisis if you burn out, get laid off, or retire. Individuals in these situations frequently suffer anxiety, depression, and despair. By claiming back some time for yourself and diversifying your activities and relationships, you can build a more balanced and robust identity in line with your values.
I'm addicted to being useful
When I get together with my friends in the industry, I feel a little guilty about how much I love my job. This is a tough time to be a software engineer. The job was less stressful in the late 2010s than it is now, and I sympathize with anyone who is upset about the change. There are a lot of objective reasons to feel bad about work. But despite all that, I’m still having a blast. I enjoy pulling together projects, figuring out difficult bugs, and writing code in general. I like spending time with computers. But what I really love is being useful.
Becoming a stranger in my own field
There is a difference between making scientific work more accessible and changing what institutions recognize as valuable scientific work.
Engineering Career Paths at Big Tech and High-Growth Startups
Levels at big tech, the most common career paths, and what comes after making it to Staff
In 2026, I’m no longer interested in ‘working on myself’
We think of ourselves as full-time projects, but what if doing so much inner work does more harm than good?
The Four-Phase Model of Interest Development
Building on and extending existing research, this article proposes a 4-phase model of interest development. The model describes 4 phases in the development and deepening of learner interest: trigg...
