I bet we agree on the substance, and that any disagreement is probably just a word choice thing. Like, if we could figure out how to describe and predict the “real content” for a given person—the way they would feel psychologically and physically on a daily basis to do the job—then that would clearly be much more useful than just knowing the topic. And we probably can improve at that task as a society. I just think it is a difficult problem (as you point out), and I worry that solving it might seem to some people like all it requires is a small change in mental focus. In my experience negotiating a mid career job change and hearing about the experiences of others doing the same, I am skeptical of how much the job shadowing and such helps.
However, I have gotten quite a few benefits from the line of thinking you sketch here. In particular, just knowing how many hours per week a job (or course of schooling) can be a big help. When I originally considered med school, one of the factors that decided me against it was the 80⁄90 hour weeks, and lots of reports that med school students/residents who are parents rely entirely on their partner for parenting duties.
I bet we agree on the substance, and that any disagreement is probably just a word choice thing. Like, if we could figure out how to describe and predict the “real content” for a given person—the way they would feel psychologically and physically on a daily basis to do the job—then that would clearly be much more useful than just knowing the topic. And we probably can improve at that task as a society. I just think it is a difficult problem (as you point out), and I worry that solving it might seem to some people like all it requires is a small change in mental focus. In my experience negotiating a mid career job change and hearing about the experiences of others doing the same, I am skeptical of how much the job shadowing and such helps.
However, I have gotten quite a few benefits from the line of thinking you sketch here. In particular, just knowing how many hours per week a job (or course of schooling) can be a big help. When I originally considered med school, one of the factors that decided me against it was the 80⁄90 hour weeks, and lots of reports that med school students/residents who are parents rely entirely on their partner for parenting duties.