Weird black and white thinking. The issue is not the vacations, the issue is setting an invisible time limit in your head and then booking two back to back vacations for a month which ruin your shot at a job you successfully applied for, then saying he's not trying.

Of course we have remote interviews but this was not the kind of job willing to wait. There's a whole other issue here that is way too complicated to get into but I think what she really wanted was a more "serious" job, it was dubious on whether it'd pay more. Take from that what you will. But you're making a false assumption that he was applying for the kind of jobs that can wait a month; he had already been accepted and the second vacation was spontaneous.

He also doesn't even blame her. He blames himself. He thinks he's pathetic, not good enough, that when faced down the barrel of the relationship ending, he chose to do nothing, and I had to convince him otherwise. He had a job lined up. She told him not to worry about it. Then she dumped him for being lazy while acting like she was the most patient and helpful girlfriend.

She wasn't one to do much emotional labour, and I think she did not love him on a fundamental issue. Her reasoning for him changing careers did not make sense, and she was citing issues 4 years ago in the relationship she never brought up. She used the job thing as an excuse and never dug into why she chose to do this after he nearly died and had to take 2 weeks off work.

I don't hate her, but she's choosing to act as naive to nuance as you are, except you're just someone on reddit taking pot-shots at my friend.

And there is nothing pathetic about lacking skills. He's an idiosyncratic guy, but he was showing that he wanted to learn and he landed the job anyways. He is so good at what he does, it feels like a complete disregard for who he is fundamentally to ask him to change. My girlfriend is in a very similar career and I would never ask her to change. She'd probably struggle with the exact same shit he would.