> In the context of this forum, comfort and safety means a cushy tech job. I don't know how many people feel fulfilled in those, but my guess is that the majority isn't (esp. among people with more than a couple years of experience). The dichotomy seems very real to me.

See, that is false dichotomy I see. You can have technically interesting job that is quite safe and with good management. You can have boring tasks with high subjective stress and disorganized management leading to late nights full of boring tasks and later burn out and leave the industry (looking at you, game industry).

> Regarding your example of a father that needs to pretend he's laser-focused on the job - this is what I was talking about.

I meant parent poster, not father. I have no idea whether he has children and the issue did not seemed to be family oriented one.

> There are people for whose career is a #1 priority, and these people naturally get the prized positions (managerial, or work on interesting projects etc.) in work environments, at the cost of everything else in their lives.

You later again do dichotomy between "career number one" and "does not give a shit". That is not how real world people act or feel. Moreover, real world people often move between the two.

Many many people in tech don't see middle management as desirable position. I know people who work on interesting projects and it did not costed them everything else in their lives. They focused on the kind of tech and positions important to them, but not to exclusion of everything and it worked out great for them. I know people who sacrificed everything and were not rewarded at all - sometimes unfairly and sometimes fairly. Their ego and identity being depended on job ended up hurting that job. People who sacrificed everything and ended up resentfulness and burned out by their own fault.

> Of course, the flip side is that there's plenty of other frauds who also misrepresent themselves, to the point of anyone who's open about his real priorities sticks out like a sore thumb - at which point you need to pretend just to maintain a mediocre job, and not to get the prized one.

Interestingly, there are two kind of jobs for you - mediocre and prized. You don't see different positions suitable for different people nor people possibly unhappy in those prized jobs nor people possibly happy in "mediocre jobs". These is no concept of personality type or aptitudes affecting what kind of job you are effective and happy at. There are loosers at mediocre jobs and those who sacrificed everything for prized jobs, regardless of whether they are actually really effective at that position.

Is it about work itself and meaning of work or rather about what jobs are seen as prized by others?

> The reason for that is, in the grand scheme of things, even those "mediocre" tech jobs still pay six figures for working on a computer in a climate -controlled office. These are dream jobs for 90% of the population, so the competition for them is intense, hence all the theatrics.

Is it that companies have hard time to find people or that competition for mediocre job is intense? Because really, many many low paid jobs are working on a computer in a climate controlled office.

> I imagine there's much more honesty amongst brick layers or truck drivers, as they don't have people coming for their jobs from all angles.

Truck drivers struggle. The competition for jobs and pressures and debts are very real, harder then any position in tech.