दूरेण ह्यवरं कर्म बुद्धियोगाद्धनञ्जय।बुद्धौ शरणमन्विच्छ कृपणाः फलहेतवः॥
dūreṇa hy-avaraṃ karma buddhi-yogād dhanañjayabuddhau śaraṇam anviccha kṛpaṇāḥ phala-hetavaḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Work done for what it will fetch is far below work done from a settled mind. Take shelter in that mind, Arjuna. People who act for results are poor creatures.
In plain words
A hard word at the end: kṛpaṇāḥ - misers, wretched, pitiable.
Krishna is not saying people who work for results are wicked. He is saying they are impoverished, and the word carries pity as much as blame.
They are getting much less than they could have.
Where you've felt this · in growing older
Your uncle can tell you what every year of his working life earned him, to the rupee. By any measure he has done well. He has also spent thirty years never once being in the hour he was in.
Going deeper
Krishna's word for the person working only for results is kṛpaṇa - miserly. In the Upanishads it is used of someone who dies without ever understanding what they were: a person who had a whole life and never found out what it was.
The pity in that word is the point. This is not a condemnation of the ambitious. It is a claim that they are being underpaid, in a currency they have not noticed.
Then he tells Arjuna to seek śaraṇa - refuge - in buddhi, the discerning mind. Refuge is devotional vocabulary. It is the word Arjuna used at 2.7 when he gave up and asked to be taught. Here it is pointed at clear understanding rather than at Krishna.
That is a quiet hint about how this book's paths relate. Taking refuge in clear understanding and taking refuge in God are not, in the Gita, two different moves.
And he does rank them. Work done for results still counts as work, and the Gita never says stop doing it. It says something better is available and costs nothing extra.