Marc Andreessen Gives The Career Advice That Nobody Wants To Hear

This weekend, Jim Carrey gave the commencement speech at a small university in Iowa, doing a variation on the "Follow your passion" speech. Even if you fail at what you love, he said, you'll have fewer regrets than if you fail at the thing you weren't passionate about.

Mac Andreessen disagrees. In his latest series of Tweets, Andreessen explained why following your passions is actually a terrible idea.

Too often, people follow their passions into fields that are simply too competitive for where their skills actually are in those things.

Instead, Andreessen believes one should "do what contributes" - follow the thing that provides the most value to others.

Check it out:

1/Thesis: "Do what you love" / "Follow your passion" is dangerous and destructive career advice.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

2/We tend to hear it from (a) Highly successful people who (b) Have become successful doing what they love.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

3/The problem is that we do NOT hear from people who have failed to become successful by doing what they love.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

4/Particularly pernicious problem in tournament-style fields with a few big winners & lots of losers: media, athletics, startups.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

5/Better career advice may be "Do what contributes" -- focus on the beneficial value created for other people vs just one's own ego.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

6/People who contribute the most are often the most satisfied with what they do -- and in fields with high renumeration, make the most $.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

7/Perhaps difficult advice since requires focus on others vs oneself -- perhaps bad fit with endemic narcissism in modern culture?

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

8/Requires delayed gratification -- may toil for many years to get the payoff of contributing value to the world, vs short-term happiness.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) May 27, 2014

Andreessen isn't the first to reject "follow your passion." Two years ago Marc Cuban suggested you should "follow your effort." There's also the classic, "Don't do what you love, love what you do." And still others have suggested a more complicated if more realistic calculus of doing what you're good at so long as it gives you some satisfaction.

The consensus best commencement speech of the season still appears to be the one delivered by Adm. William McRaven, the head of U.S. special operations, at the University of Texas.

His advice: You can't follow anything until you've made your bed.

Disclosure: Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.