Career Advice I Would Happily Never Hear Again - a riff on bad advice from well intentioned folks

I recently wrote a social media post about some of the “shit career advice” I’d happily never hear again. I wanted to take that idea a little further and explore how we can reframe some of these tired career clichés into something genuinely useful.

Rather than blindly following advice that may have worked for someone else, we can get curious about our own circumstances, the systems and influences around us, and the opportunities and constraints we’re working with. From there, we can start asking a much more useful question: what actually matters to me, and what might that mean for the choices I make next?

“Follow your passion.”

“Find your dream job.”

“Pick something and stick with it.”

“Don’t job hop.”

We’ve heard these pieces of career advice so many times that they’ve almost become accepted as fact.

And look, none of them are always terrible advice.

In fact, most career advice probably comes from a good place. It often reflects something that worked for the person giving it — or something they learned the hard way.

The problem starts when we take someone else's experience and turn it into a universal rule.

Because careers don't happen in isolation. They happen alongside real life.

Money matters. Family matters. Health matters. Where you live matters. Opportunity matters. So do your values, responsibilities, energy, interests, and the particular stage of life you happen to be in.

When we don't explore the meaning underneath career advice, we can end up putting enormous pressure on ourselves to achieve somebody else's version of career success.

The advice isn't always the problem. The rule is.

Take:

“Pick something and stick with it.”

Perhaps someone in your life has given you this advice because that's exactly what they did.

They chose an occupation, stayed in it for 30 years, worked their way up, built their superannuation, paid off their house, developed expertise, and created financial security for their family.

They might look back and genuinely think:

Sticking with it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

And they might be right.

But what was it actually about that decision that made it successful?

Maybe consistency gave them financial security.

Maybe progression gave them a sense of achievement.

Maybe becoming highly skilled gave them confidence and purpose.

Maybe predictable work allowed them to build the life they wanted outside of work.

Maybe stability was one of their strongest values.

In that context, “pick something and stick with it” makes perfect sense.

For them.

For another person, staying in the same occupation for 30 years might be completely soul-sucking.

They might value variety, autonomy, learning, flexibility, creativity, adventure, or change. They might happily trade some predictability for the opportunity to keep experiencing new things.

Neither person is doing career better.

They're just using work differently in the context of the lives they want to live.

And that's the part we often miss when career advice gets reduced to a slogan.

“Follow your passion”

This sounds lovely.

It's also not particularly helpful if your response is:

“Okay... but I have absolutely no idea what my passion is.”

For some people, passion genuinely does provide direction. They may have a longstanding interest that gives them energy, meaning, or purpose, and building a career around it makes sense.

But telling everyone else to “follow their passion” can create another problem:

What if I don't have one?

What if I have five?

What if the things I love don't translate neatly into paid work?

What if I choose something and discover I'm not passionate about it after all?

Suddenly, instead of helping us make a career decision, the advice gives us another thing we're supposed to figure out.

We can start searching for some elusive thing we're meant to do rather than exploring the opportunities actually available to us.

Interests can also be developed.

You might become interested in something because you tried it, became reasonably good at it, met interesting people, learned more about it, or discovered that the work mattered to you.

So instead of demanding an answer to:

“What am I passionate about?”

Try:

“What am I curious about?”

Curiosity is much less demanding.

You don't need to know whether something is your calling before you're allowed to explore it.

You can investigate it, talk to someone who does it, take a class, volunteer, try a project, or simply learn more.

You’re allowed to start with curiosity, not passion.

“Find your dream job”

There's another fairly hefty expectation hiding in this one.

Somewhere out there is the job.

The one that perfectly matches your strengths, interests, values, personality, purpose, and ambitions.

And presumably, once you find it, work will finally feel right.

That's a lot of pressure to put on a job.

And on yourself.

If work feels boring sometimes, have you chosen the wrong career?

If another opportunity interests you, does that mean this wasn't really your dream job?

If you prioritise flexibility or money over passion for a few years, are you somehow settling?

Your job doesn't have to fulfil every part of you.

It doesn't necessarily need to be your passion, your purpose, your identity, your creative outlet, your social life, and the thing that pays the mortgage.

Sometimes a genuinely good job is one that pays enough, fits around the rest of your life, uses some of your strengths, offers decent working conditions, and doesn't make you miserable on Sunday night.

And what constitutes a “good job” may change throughout your life.

There might be a season when earning as much as possible matters.

Another when flexibility matters more.

Another when you desperately want challenge and progression.

And another when work can take a back seat because something else in your life deserves more of you.

You can find meaning through family, community, hobbies, relationships, learning, creativity, sport, or things completely unrelated to paid employment.

A job can simply be good enough for the life you want to live.

That counts.

“Don't job hop”

Again, there may be something valuable underneath this advice.

Perhaps the person saying it values loyalty.

Maybe staying with an employer helped them progress.

Maybe they developed deep expertise because they stayed long enough to really learn their craft.

Maybe they've seen people leave good opportunities too quickly and regret it.

That's worth exploring.

But “don't job hop” isn't particularly useful on its own.

Staying isn't automatically good.

Leaving isn't automatically bad.

Moving jobs can be exactly how someone increases their income, develops new skills, finds better conditions, escapes an unhealthy workplace, discovers a better fit, or moves closer to the life they want.

Equally, constantly moving because you're chasing an imaginary perfect job can have its own costs.

The number of years you've stayed isn't really the interesting part.

The better questions are:

Why am I staying?

Why am I leaving?

What am I moving towards?

What might I gain — and what might I give up?

Context matters.

So, before you accept career advice, get curious about it

The next time somebody gives you a neat little piece of career wisdom, you don't necessarily need to reject it.

Explore it.

Ask:

Why does this person believe this?

What did this approach give them?

What do they consider career success?

Do I value the same things?

Does this advice fit my circumstances?

What part of it is useful to me — and what part can I leave behind?

Because perhaps your parent telling you to “get a secure job” isn't really telling you which career to choose.

Perhaps they're telling you that financial security profoundly shaped their life.

Someone telling you to “follow your passion” may be telling you that they regret spending decades doing work they didn't enjoy.

Someone telling you “don't waste your potential” may have a very particular definition of achievement.

And someone telling you to “work hard and climb the ladder” may genuinely love progression, status, responsibility, and challenge.

There's useful information in all of those stories.

But their definition of success doesn't automatically have to become yours.

Maybe we need different career advice

Perhaps we need less pressure to:

Find the one career.

Get the decision right the first time.

Choose something you can do forever.

Follow somebody else's formula for success.

And instead, ask better questions:

What does a good life look like to me?

What role do I want work to play in that life?

What matters to me at this stage?

What am I curious about?

What could I try?

What am I learning about myself?

What might my next step be?

Career development isn't necessarily about discovering one perfect occupation and committing to it forever.

It's an ongoing process of making choices within the context of your life.

We explore. We make decisions with the information we have. We try things. We learn. Our circumstances change. Sometimes we change.

And then we make another decision.

So, if “What am I going to do with my life?” feels like a ridiculously big question to answer, that's because it is.

You don't have to answer it.

Try this instead:

What makes sense for me next?

Sometimes that's enough.