I don't disagree, and wish I'd had a better plan in place by 25, but culturally in the US, we've had a generation or two that have taken longer to grow up. Kids living with parents until late 20s, harder job market, etc. 25 is great, but for some reason culturally we still accept 25 year olds being flakes.
So.. there's still some acceptable excuses for flitting away your 20s (not really acceptable to me, but I'm not in charge!) but by 35 there's just no good excuse to not have a life plan in place.
I'm in Sweden, and it's the same here, possibly even worse.
I've been reading self-help materials non-stop for the past 5 years. When I introduce this stuff to people my age they just stare at me like I'm an alien.
They also seem to have no concept of real individuality. Ie in Sweden most everyone my age looks like a bizarre hipster, 'cause that's what the fashion is and deviating is not an option (the most popular blogs here by far are vapid girls posting about their daily outfits).
Combine this with lack of sunshine, über-costly alcohol, super-cocky entitled chicks who wear basketball shoes all the time and refuse to smile, high taxes, shitty wages, inbred media, lack of gung-ho disruptive startup people to hang with, a culture of mindless consensus, public transportation which is always delayed, snow which refuses to arrive around Christmas when it's wanted and instead fucks you in February, a PM with doggy-dinner bowl eyes and a main contender who's some kind of mustached character who's very creative with the truth, inferior Christmas food, total surveillance of all Internet/phone traffic, getting your Vitamin D solely from a bottle of pills, annoying Stockholm people who think their Milwaukee-sized hamlet is the world, the gov't wanting to regulate everything, the law of jante, Stalinist gov't liquor stores where they scowl at you for buying alcohol, everyone expecting the gov't to fix everything, people being un-creative and uninterested in my ideas, everyone being dressed like some bizarro ironic lumberjack with Buddy Holly glasses, houses being like the albino rhinoceros in terms of their availability to the common man, all people (including chicks) filling their body with ugly tattoos and piercings and being proud of it, chicks who are more interested in dogs than men, supermarkets where they rape your wallet and then scowl at you for entering their premises, punctuality being more important than actual productivity, being hit on by fiendish cougars ONLY when you go out on the weekends, daring to exist and being scowled at, everyone uncritically relying on "experts" all the time, it being FUCKING COLD, etc, and you have one unhappy itmag :(
I think you had better have a day off and perhaps investigate home-brewing.
Seriously, most people have more than one career, I'm on my third. I see no reason why the same should not apply to computer programmers.
Right now, I've slowly begun to realise that I can produce documentation and tutorials that people find useful. This may (or may not) lead to career number four.
You have the entire EU to live in, go move to berlin. I know it will be better weather wise (but not ideal), everyone says how great it is for young people socially, and there is a tech industry growing there. And the rent is cheaper. Go become a startup employee, bootstrap yourself a bit, learn how it is to work in this industry for a while. Many european startups have a more relaxed pace, so you'll still have a life while working in less BS startup land.
I hear Bolivia is really nice this time of the year...
Fellow Scandinavian here, and that rant sure hit home.
Especially the whole hipster mania which is just relentless.
Then again, SAD and a lack of Vitamin D sure doesn't help brighten the day either. But it is nice to see that others also have a bit wider perspective on things.
As a younger guy I could have told you about all the things wrong with my home town in Southern California. A little travel helped me, and I enjoy coming home now. There are good and bad people all over... maybe you are looking in the wrong places?
So.. there's still some acceptable excuses for flitting away your 20s (not really acceptable to me, but I'm not in charge!) but by 35 there's just no good excuse to not have a life plan in place.