First off, he mentioned that this is primarily about knowledge workers

I must have missed this in the lecture, but it's certainly implied. This, however, doesn't mean the advice he gives will lead to the outcome they want, as I'll explain below.

It's not just for the extremely talented either: this is more a path to become better than your competitors than to become the world's best at what you do.

That second is just an extension of the first. As globalization continues and markets open, everyone may be forced to become competitive in global terms.

Follow your passion has nothing to do with external factors either... I think the craftsman mindset is better to reach happiness because through increased experience and expertise, you are more capable of arranging your situation in a way that you like best.

The linchpin criticism is that neither is the solution people are actually looking for in the labor market today. The worsening working conditions leading to less compensation, personal autonomy, peer recognition ("relatedness"), etc. are driven by an oversupply of labor even for specialized knowledge economy jobs (ask science PhDs), which individual action directed towards becoming relatively more competitive in comparison to their peers, while good for the individual, isn't ultimately a sustainable solution, because it doesn't address that problem.

Of course the first part of one's journey into a new field is riddled with inexperience, but that doesn't mean you won't make any money off it.

In some cases you do, and in some you won't. Artists laboring in obscurity before their big break might be one example, which again speaks to the double standard of this advice (the ones that succeed do so because they had correctly identified a specialization and took all the right "craftsman" steps that would result in high career satisfaction, but if they fail it's because they illogically pursued something they were too "passionate" about rather than practical about). I don't think the idea that

if you just follow your passion, the rest will come by itself!

really is what is happening in many of these cases of the people whose pursuits don't pan out.

I've know people who've compromised their passion with practicality when choosing a career path, taken all these hard work "craftsman" steps aimed at improving their mastery of (not their love for) their subject, become world-class and still not attained the results even close to what they expected. For example, in my country, individuals who went to highly ranked laws schools did not get the professional results they wanted, because the market for the law profession collapsed faster than they could even complete their education.

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If you, individually, do want to excel in a field, yes, he is definitely pointing towards the right ways to do it, given some luck and support.

But if credential inflation without increase in average job satisfaction is an indication, in the wider view, it's not a sustainable recipe for the growth of everyone's happiness.