if you find yourself in this position, then yes, change career, cause if hate what you are doing each day, then you have picked the wrong occupation.
for some people, making money makes them happy, so they choose careers based on that.
but do you really think you have no passion for anything (ie, you may be suffering from depression)? or do you just need to test the waters a bit and see what is available?
I understood that quote as saying "all things held equal, pick the one that gives you the most money", but you might have seen something else in it
< rant >
Most jobs you do are going to be boring, especially if you don't have any passions that can be made into a career. Yes, if you can find a job that you enjoy, of course, consider it over a less enjoyable job even if it pays less. If you're going to be spending a majority of your waking hours working, and if you're enjoying the work, then (follow the logic) you'll be a happy person for the majority of your waking life.
The trouble is that I think very few people can find a job that they truly enjoy(maybe 1% of people). Every job has their boring parts, and jobs that seem enjoyable at first can become boring and repetitive later on, and probably faster than you realize.
I think a lot of people lie (often unconsciously to themselves) about the fact that they're enjoying their job because they want to believe that they've made the right decision in choosing a career. Convincing yourself that you enjoy your job gives you a sense of satisfaction. These people are usually the one's who are actively seeking to find a career they enjoy. Having that is valuable to them (in contrast to those who are only seeking to make money, or "just make a living"). But the thought of not having found a job you enjoy is scary, and it gets worse as time passes by, so they stop looking and stop at a local maximum where they're at a job that they reasonably like and subconsciously say, "Yep, I'm done, I've found what I truly enjoy and I'm going to stop looking" It's very comforting after a long search or a stressful decision that you don't want to go through again. After someone has made a decision to stop looking, it would be hard for them to admit to themselves that they might have been wrong.
A simple thought experiment to find out if you truly enjoy doing a job is to ask yourself, "would I continue to do my job if I'm not being paid, and if my job didn't have the prestige that it does?" (the prestige is important too because people often choose jobs they don't like just for the prestiges as well). You might say, well those people just enjoy getting money and prestige, so in that sense they're enjoying what they're doing. That's true, but money and prestige are the result of doing the job, not the job itself. The means of getting there is not the same as the ends, and I'm ranting about the means of getting there
Whenever someone asks a question like the OPs on this forum, a lot of people advocate that they should pick a job or degree that coincides with their passion (if they have any). I would say "not so fast, think about it first!" Just because you like doing something doesn't mean you'll like doing it as a career.
e.g. if someone really likes writing, we might recommend journalism as a career. Well it might turn out that they hate writing under the pressure of tight deadlines (writers block?) and having their writing scrutinized by other journalists and readers.
e.g.2. If someone really likes maths and teaching, you might tell them to be a math teacher. Well it turns out that maths curriculum in school is incredibly dull, and instead of teaching kids creative ways to do mathematics, they're forced to teach students to memorize a small subset of not very interesting maths. (
ever read lockhart's lament?)
If that happens, not only are they stuck (at least temporarily) in a career that they hate, but they might have also killed or severely wounded their passion! So be careful when you make that recommendation. Some passions (e.g. sport in particular) are better left for the weekend.
You can use the converse of that argument as a counter to the thought experiment I proposed and say "not every enjoyable job can be enjoyable out of the context of a job" because some people actually enjoy the fact that they're making a difference in the world or at least the workforce, and without that context, they wouldn't be doing it for free. Which is also a valid point, and I won't defend my thought experiment because it wasn't meant to be a flawless test
Back to the original question. Yes, if you have no interests that you can do as a career, money is not a bad heuristic, just make sure you balance it out a bit and chose something you wouldn't mind doing as well. Unless your plan is to make lots of money really quickly doing a dirty job (e.g. investment banking/prostitution/mafia boss, etc) and use that money later to do what you like, then go ahead and do that as well, just be sure that you can carry through with the plan.
And if you do have a passion but can't fit that to a career, consider the fact that more than half the jobs that exists today did not exist 50 years ago. Maybe you should be an entrepreneur
</ rant>
Yes, I've thought about this topic a little too much
