Explain your reasoning further.
I had become some what of a "fan" of McGinn in High School and read excerpts of his books from the local library. Especially on subjects of meaning, mind, and consciousness and other such things.
Through college, I had decided to focus on Mathematics and Engineering and chose Engineering as a career, but still had some interest in philosophy (enough so that I had a reputation for being philosophical among the Engineering students).
I had early regrets about going into Engineering in a corporate environment when I graduated, because it was right after the dot-com bust, and much of the innovative work opportunities were simply not being funded--everything became about getting the next product to market.
When McGinn wrote his "intellectual autobiography," it was instantly on my "must-read" list. I was even thinking I could see how to make a career change.
But I found that there were similar issues with "self-selection" in academia and distrust of intellectualism outside of academia that I had seen in Engineering. In fact, it seemed, somehow, universal. In addition, McGinn himself seemed disillusioned in finding answers to the questions he had first sought to answer, and seemed like he had resorted to dealing with fiction.
Also, I saw very clearly how limiting not having empirical methods can be in the search for truth, since I was spending long hours in the lab debugging silicon during the same period I was reading the book.
I found the critical thinking done in the lab to be much more satisfying; I brought more of my "philosophical" engineering style into the lab (encouraged by "re-discovering" my interest in it through McGinns book) earning me a promotion at work.
The summary is that I found that critical thinking could be applied equally well outside of philosophy, and at the same time more likely to yield tenable answers if empirical methods are utilized in conjunction with logic.
One reason I second guessed the decision to not pursue philosophy as a career, is that Engineering in a corporate environment (even in lab-work) has become increasingly bureaucratic, and more effort is needed to simply obtain basic equipment, tools, and documentation than it does to do actual engineering work. Beyond that, I find I am solving the same problems over-and-over again. What used to take critical thinking, is now done by route and brute-force. Finally, management no longer has the patience to look for the "root" of issues, and simply wants "workarounds" all the time.