Thanks for your post. You offer valuable thoughts, and I only have one small additional one. Having now been through a stage of my career where I have done hiring, I know the process is way more arbitrary (and less sophisticated) than I previously realized. When I was younger I used to take job rejections way more personally than I should have based on what I know now. There are all sorts of sub-optimal reasons hiring decisions are made, and applicants should not take rejection as a strong signal about their skills, talents, or future potential (IMO). Still, I do think it’s important that hiring managers be as respectful as possible and give feedback when they are able.
If I could give advice to my 22-year-old self it would be, “if you want to work for a certain organization or in a certain field badly enough, just keep persisting through every rejection. The act of persistence alone will increase your probability of working in that area. Also, put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager. What do you think they want to hear from an ideal prospective applicant? Don’t lie or mislead, but if you really think you will be a good fit for a position, freely tell your interviewers how devoted you will be to the work. They want to hear passion.”
It’s interesting that the time of “life getting better” is basically the same time as “humans increasingly using fossil fuels.” I have heard the argument (which I am not yet educated enough to have an opinion on) that all of the economic growth and improvements in standards of living over the last few hundred years have been enabled by cheap, abundant, dense, and easily transportable energy, aka fossil fuels.
Therefore, one reason we could be on the cusp of a crazier time is that the world is basically telling fossil fuel companies to limit new exploration and drilling while we don’t really yet have a replacement ready. To be clear, I am an environmentalist and think we do need to limit and reduce fossil fuel use and ultimately get to net zero emissions by 2050 as a planet. But the magnitude of this task may be under-appreciated, and the likelihood that the energy transition produces chaotic and negative side effects may similarly be under-appreciated.