Steve Jobs advocated the pursuit of dream jobs. Will Wilkinson and Robin Hanson thought that advice was unrealistic. Timothy B Lee defends Jobs:
"Don’t settle" is bad advice for a 35-year-old who is still waiting tables while he waits for his big break in screenwriting. But it’s an important message for a 22-year-old Stanford grad to hear, because if he’s the obsessive type, he’s far more likely to regret taking a well-compensated job he finds slightly tedious than spending a few years in relative poverty while he pursues a career he’ll love.
A reader chimes in:
I was initially surprised by the criticism of Steve Job’s suggestion that you should do what you love. And these criticisms have been on my mind all week long – maybe in part because they remind me so much of my parent's counsel. For my parents, the best kind of work was the work you were "called to" by something outside yourself. This something might be God or it might be the needs of the world or the people around you, but it was clearly something bigger and more important than you. And there was a sense of satisfaction that came with the submission of one’s self to this duty or calling.
So I realized that Jobs is articulating something of a generational shift. For him to suggest that our true vocation could be found by understanding ourselves and our deep inward desires seems both revolutionary and to the previous generation’s way of thinking – selfish! But if we trust in the way we were made and believe that our making was not accidental, might it not be of great benefit, not only to ourselves but to the world we live in, to take the time to know ourselves and our loves and find a way to bring that love into the world through our work?
The Dish 