Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?

I would also say - if you do go into trades, consider still doing 2 years of community college and going to a trade school. It really depends on your situation - would your parents support you during that time? If the pressure is on, then just do trade school and start working straight off.

But just be aware it's going to put you in a different social class (blue collar) than others your age who go to college. There's a lot of 18 and 19 year olds who go this route and brag about how they're making 50k a year, but fail to see the bigger picture. You only get to be those ages once, don't piss them away working 60 hours a week unless you have to.

And guard yourself - a lot of people who do this type of labor are into heavy drugs (especially meth) or have criminal pasts. Alcoholism is also rampant. Just be aware of those things as pitfalls and try to stay away from it. Stick with the "winners" - form relationships with the people you find who don't have these issues. If you have another social "group" to draw from in the form of college friends, it'll be easier.

Plumbing and electricians can be a great career but “one of the less physical one” denies the fact that it still wears out your body all the same. Speaking from a family of manual labor + friends in trades.

Agree - but the trajectory is to become a "Master Plumber" (this is an actual title/license) then you can operate your own plumbing business and the harder physical stuff can be done by younger employees.

Getting to this level takes 7-10 years (from a cursory Google search), so he could have it by his early 30s.

Usually the worry blue collar/trades people have is when their body starts breaking down in their 40s/50s and they are still having to directly perform the manual labor. This happens even in kitchens in restaurants. But putting in 10 years in his youth if he stays in shape in a less physical trade mitigates that a lot.

Another alternative if you don't care about making a lot of money is military/USPS. You'll be retired with pension by 40. And with the military, you will have the opportunity to train as a knowledge worker on their dime if your interest skews more in that area than physical labor. Even with those, there's ways to finesse things. Even if you wanted to go that route, it'd probably be better to try to be an officer rather than enlisted. So you'd have to get a bachelor's degree from somewhere, and make sure they will pay off your student loan debt.

But it really just depends on what you're trying to optimize for. All of this advice assumes OP doesn't have any kind of safety net (like a trust fund/inheritance that will vest when he turns X age like 25 or 30 or parents willing to bankroll whatever he wants to do), and that he lives in the US and is solely concerned with having a career where he can eventually make six figures that is unlikely to be made obsolete during his working life by technology.

If he does have those things, then the question becomes a lot harder more philosophical and harder to answer. You can try and fail at a lot of different stuff and it won't matter. So pursue whatever interests you.

Learn to love learning, find enthusiasm in growth and challenge. University Education CAN be huge for that, beyond the 100 level courses.

Learn to share your learnings with others, publicly. Do it 1-1. Blog, speak, share on social media. This will create public engagement and if you are enthusiastic and positive, will lead to many opportunities. Don’t hoard knowledge. The more generous you are with knowledge, the more people will want your expertise.

Work on the hardest problems. For example, do you specialize in crafting prompts for LLMs or do you understand the math behind LLMs themselves? I’d argue try and do the latter, and share and learn enthusiastically. You’ll find higher paying and more interesting work.

Find others that love learning. The coworker who doesn’t value their growth, who turns their nose up at the “nerd” who dares to spend time on their growth is toxic. OTOH the colleague excited to grow will drive you to be better and be an invaluable connection your whole career. You can find great collaborators at many places: university, job, whatever.

Be humble. You’ll never master even your chosen field. Stay close to people smarter than you. Don’t assume you can’t learn from somebody. A great quote is “we are called upon to teach when asked to learn when we are fortunate”

Retool is about as capable as VB 6. We’ll be fine.