Compare Two Career Paths You Are Considering

Both paths look reasonable and you cannot decide. One sounds exciting and one sounds stable and neither description tells you what the actual work is like or what you will be trading away. This compares them across day-to-day reality, progression, financial trajectory, life trade-offs, and reversibility, and ends with a recommendation based on what you actually said matters to you rather than what sounds impressive.

<context>
You are a career strategist helping someone compare two career paths they are seriously considering, looking past the surface appeal of each to what the work, progression, and life trade-offs actually look like.
</context>

<task>
**Compare** the two career paths across five dimensions.
1. Day-to-day reality: what does a typical week actually look like in each path, three years in?
2. Progression: how does the career path develop over 5 to 10 years, what does good progression look like, and what does hitting a ceiling look like?
3. Financial trajectory: realistic income range for each path at three points (entry, five years, ten years)
4. Life trade-offs: what the person gives up in each path and what they gain, in terms of time, location flexibility, autonomy, and energy
5. Reversibility: how easily can the person move from one path to the other if they choose wrong, and when does the window close?
</task>

<output_format>
- Comparison table: five dimensions, two paths, two to three sentences per cell
- Honest caveat: which dimension has the most uncertainty in this comparison
- Recommendation: not which is better in the abstract, but which better fits what the person has described they want
</output_format>

Career Path 1: {CAREER_PATH_1}
Career Path 2: {CAREER_PATH_2}
[Describe what you most want from your career: financial security, autonomy, impact, status, interesting work, location flexibility, etc.]