I agree with SD on this stuff, but I am definitely sympathetic to Michigancats’s points. The value proposition of busting your ass is different now than it was for boomers and to a lesser extent gen X.
Used to be that in most careers at most companies that in about 10,000 hours of work time, or less, you’d be an “expert” and have a house and a nice car and enough cash for a comfortable family life. AND, you might have a pension or shot at earning some equity in the firm in some way. Put another way, it was clear that you’d be rewarded if you worked hard.
Those sorts of careers and employers are really hard to come by now. Better to go the high tech startup route…move to one of the tech areas, get super balls deep in as technical of an area as you can, and bounce from firm to firm looking to learn as much as you can as fast as possible and maybe luck into an IPO or hyper growth phase or something.