I didn't vote you down, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the people who did voted you down because they failed to think. I don't find your point of view particularly convincing. It's not because I think everyone should be blindly encouraged to do any particular thing. It's not because I didn't think. It's for reasons such as the following:
* The grass is always greener on the other side. It's not obvious to me that, had the author of this blog started as a farmer and eventually ditched it to become a programmer, he would not have felt a similar sense of having moved to something better.
* It's not obvious to me that we should not be encouraging everyone to do whatever constructive thing they want to do at that particular time. Maybe by demotivating someone we're lowering their chances of getting far enough along that trajectory to even realize whether they like it or not. Maybe your advice makes it more likely for people to choose to do nothing hard or risky and end up unhappy flipping burgers.
It's not my first time around this loop... it's about the fourth time, and the first time I spoke up about being hit for the opinion. People really are uncomfortable with the idea that encouragement is not necessarily a good thing, and now I think even more so, it's a subconscious thing that does not survive conscious examination.
Also, I'm not saying to never be encouraging... I'm encouraging honesty. People need to know what a job really is.
* The grass is always greener on the other side. It's not obvious to me that, had the author of this blog started as a farmer and eventually ditched it to become a programmer, he would not have felt a similar sense of having moved to something better.
* It's not obvious to me that we should not be encouraging everyone to do whatever constructive thing they want to do at that particular time. Maybe by demotivating someone we're lowering their chances of getting far enough along that trajectory to even realize whether they like it or not. Maybe your advice makes it more likely for people to choose to do nothing hard or risky and end up unhappy flipping burgers.