[someone emailed me. question redacted. this answer is lightly edited for presentation.]
This is going to sound blunt—but everything in the industry is changing. And so is everything in the world.
I'll let you in on an opinion I hold that I haven't talked about with a lot of people very much, because it sounds a bit obtuse, but I sincerely think this will help you.
The idea of "career" and "work" is fundamentally fake. They are neat constructs and boxes drawn by modern industrial society. There used to not always be jobs, and the idea of a "career" is still younger (barely a few hundred years old). We just happen to fall in a blip in history where we created one box that bundles in the idea of income, daily structure, socialising, status/purpose, and the expectation of a ladder of rising seniority into this thing we call "work." Everyone's life revolves around work, which we created a boundary for, which means we now have to define another fake boundary called "leisure" and then have to figure out how to do "work-life balance." Even if they are recognised in our laws and economy, they are fake and arbitrary boundaries of convenience. Think about it: do we talk about chore-life balance? Entertainment-life balance? Exercise-life balance? There is only life, and there is nothing to balance.
This bundling of various things we do in life into packaged jobs will go away. Powerful AI will unbundle them and dissolve most normal jobs as it diffuses through the economy. In a way, it has already killed a certain class of junior engineering that used to exist in my time, it's just not diffused yet. It has already eaten up a big chunk of what I used to do, and I think there's maybe a good 5-10 years (in the best case) after which it will be generally better than me at all the things I know to do today. But I'm not too worried, for reasons I'll outline soon (editor's note: reasons were not clearly outlined).
What I'm trying to tell you is that you are aspiring for a future of a specific shape that will not exist. Think broader, bigger and more long-term. Almost no one does this, because it's uncomfortable to do so, and so they pick the "default config" that life offers to them. What you should seek is not an "appropriate workplace" or WLB. What is worth pursuing is a well-examined, good life. Start with the outcomes and work backwards from there to see what will support those outcomes. Apply the hacker mindset there, see that the idea of "work"/WLB/"succumbing to a workplace"/"being compensated fairly" are mere abstractions, ones which are falling apart.
Let's take an example: say you have lots of hobbies, you want a life where you can pursue a whole bunch of varied hobbies/passions, but you also need to earn a living. You can work at an "easy" but maybe not so technically demanding/low status job where you get lots of free time to pursue these passions (think Kafka working in insurance, or Ted Chiang being a software documentation writer). The other end of the spectrum is doing demanding, fun work—maybe you want to make your hobby/passion as your source of income, and it might be something that will demand most of your time, and something where it doesn't matter whether you have "work-life balance" because it's just weird to think of a thing you are having a blast with in those terms. Most startup founders would fall into this category.
It's also too early for you to settle on a specific line of work, especially when the world is not going to be the same or recognisable anymore in 10 years. Again, do you want to work in a domain, or do you just want a well-examined, fulfilling life?
The only thing that will matter soon enough is the capacity to autonomously set goals for yourself, be willing to pursue those goals, and see reality clearly enough that you know how to manipulate it. So what do you actually want deep in your bones? No human is born wanting to one day become "a fairly compensated labourer with work-life balance." These are all artificial concepts of a modern industrial society. See through it and figure out what it is underlying all of this that you actually want.
it's true