"Just looking for something that will have the best chance of keeping steady employment until retirement (in my early 30s now)"

That's a pretty lame depressing question to ask though. IMHO he should try and find some ounce of passion in himself, and find something he enjoys, or ideally loves.

The insistence for people to be so blithely money-oriented enrages me more than any sort of weaknesses on his part. He didn't even qualify it with "with interesting work". It bothers me just how many people like this I've met, but I'm hoping it's just a misunderstanding; I integrate my work life with my personal life, I feel it's just the way I understand my being, whereas I'm betting these people shut down when they punch the clock and go on to enjoy interesting and fulfilling hobbies at home.

My brother quit being a body piercer not because of the job itself, but because he felt that interacting with people solely for the purpose of a material transaction was banal and ingenuine. He still does piercings, for money, but only if he already knows the person. If you include work that indirectly achieves this goal (working behind the scenes for a company that impersonally sells goods or services to anyone) you have cut out almost every job imaginable in a modern industrial economy. Imagine living your life like that.

My coworker, a mechanical engineer doing product design, sighs every time someone goes to him with another issue to add to his list. One time I jokingly said, "Wow, does it suck that much?" He said to me, "Don't ever get good at doing something you hate."

I suppose he considers bringing a good income to his family as being more important than his enjoyment of his job.

That's certainly true of my parents, who did blue collar work for most of their working lives in order to provide for the family. I remember my mother having such bad joint pain from working all day that she had me pound on her with a baseball until she bruised, for a little pain relief. My parents found the best paying jobs they could, and did not qualify it with "with interesting work," because success of the family meant sacrifice.

My friend's friend Pete is a father of two, a four year old girl and an adorable 14 month old boy, and when he gets drunk he starts giving out life advice. He says that once the kids come, all your priorities change. They are the last thing you think about every night, and you will find yourself working harder and doing what it takes to see that they are taken care of.

I believe "interesting work" is a luxury, and we are the spoiled of the spoiled.

Not too long in the past, marriages were arranged in order to strengthen family power, and not for love. Like the song lyrics said, "if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with."

Where is it implied that he doesn't want work that he enjoys? Are stability and enjoyability mutually exclusive qualities?

In any case, it's neither lame nor depressing to want to pursue a career that will allow you to stay employed until you're old enough to retire.

I didn't get that implication, but I did get the implication that it was a lesser priority. Granted, it is very hard to get inflection from text, and this strikes me as one of those emotional appeals where inflection matters, but his saying that he just wants a stable until retirement job suggests that he is willing to kick enjoyability (and possibly a number of other things) to the curb for the sake of that. He wants it, but he's willing to accept that he can't always have it. It is here that I think he goes horribly wrong. As you mention in another comment, it is worthwhile to pursue more desirable situations and not get stuck in a local maximum. Accepting and/or work just to work, without enjoyment or fulfillment, is one of those places where I think your advice is worth following.