> Wait are you saying I have to be content with who I am?

When did he ever tell you to stop bettering yourself?

> What do you mean I can't expect my employer to validate my passions in life?

Because your passions are yours, and yours alone. You could get miraculosuly lucky and get an employer that shares some of your passions and lets you work in them... or you could remove chance from the equation and write code on your own, and open source it.