"Shemaya and Avtalyon received the transmission from them [the previous generation of scholars, listed in Mishna 8]. Shemaya said: Love work, despise high position, and do not become too close to the authorities."

The central tenet of this mishna is the advice to "love work".  The Hebrew word used for work is "melacha," the kind of creative work which is prohibited on Shabbat.  In America there is a saying that some people live to work and others work to live, and it is usually used by people who count themselves among the latter, who think the former are obsessive.  This mishna, and I would argue, traditional Judaism, rejects the dichotomy.  This mishna suggests that we should love our creative work.  This is at odds with the idea that there is something obsessive about placing a high priority on one's work, and also with the idea that work is just a means toward the end of living.  Rather, the mishna suggests that there is something virtuous in work for it's own sake.  If we reflect on the fact that "melacha" is what is prohibited to be done on Shabbat, and why it is prohibited-to mimic the Creator's rest after creating the universe, we get an inkling of why we should love "melacha": it is our equivalent to the act of creating the universe.  Through our creative work, we imitate the act of the Creator in creating the universe in irreversibly reshaping the world.  This view ennobles us as little creators and shapers of the world, as opposed to the view in the saying that reduces us to atoms whose only value is our personal pleasure.

The two remaining admonitions in this mishna follow logically from the first, and explain it.  If our creative work is the source of our self-actualization, high position really distracts from it by placing emphasis on the recognition of those authorities who conferred the high position, presumably for their own selfish reasons.  Similarly, one who becomes too close to the authorities becomes corrupted by them, to the extent that he diverts his talents to pleasing the authorities, instead of maximizing the quality of his creative work.