1. Listen to sofrtwaredoug.
2. Learn with AI as a tutor
3. Get certified. Don't say you know something until you are certified in it.
4. Get a job early. Spend 2 years shoveling French fries if that is what it takes to get a better job.
Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
131–140 of 151 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the job market has been in a rough place for the last twenty years at least.
How? A year ago I was getting 2-3 recruiters contacting me every day.
I suppose my suggestion was that it seems like the news always says the job market is bad.
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#133In any times and any circumstances the only sustainable answer to your question is: whatever you feel you truly like, has value (to you personally) and has meaning. Not for commercial rewards, but in itself.
Assuming you have several interests like most people - choose the one to start from based on your intuition.
It’s as simple as that.
It’s dangerous to follow any more specific advice from anyone, they will never be in your shoes and nobody in this universe can predict the future.
But the future is created every day by billions of small decisions like this.
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#134If I could go to college cheaply, I would. But try to be $20k or less in debt when you get out. If you can do that, just study whatever you want. Or even better just go and have fun. You’ve got your whole life to be a miserable adult, put it off a bit.
Career-wise, keep your expenses as low as you can, and do whatever you want for awhile.
Finally remember that essentially all advice you get is terrible. Most people are very wrong about most things.
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#135I got by first job in software just when the first big software bubble started popping and companies started falling left and right. I still stuck with it and I'm still here. You start seeing the signs of downfall when you're made redundant for the 3rd or 4th time. =) If I could do it all over again, I'd get an actual degree in a trade. Electrician, plumbing, carpentry. Both as a backup job (that I would never really…
2008 was a pretty crappy time to be a carpenter or electrician.
Oh you sweet summer child. The dot-com bubble[0] was in 2000-2002 :)
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
2008 was a pretty crappy time to be a carpenter or electrician.
Oh you sweet summer child. The dot-com bubble[0] was in 2000-2002 :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
2008 aka the Great Recession aka the housing crisis which nuked construction. (In reference to your desire to be an electrician or carpenter). :)
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#137get an electrical engineering degree.
Why? Do you see a nascent boom in hardware? EE isn't particularly useful in the software world.
I've only ever done software. Never had an actual EE job. Getting an EE was one of the best choices I ever made.
You'll also likely have more interesting hobbies.
EE gives a high level knowledge about how the modern world works instead of assuming it's all magic.
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#138Go into trades, they will take longer to be automated since they require a wider range of skills, labor is still far cheaper than automation, they're more sensitive and have space constraints that are all hard to solve with robotics. I would recommend plumbing, metalwork, and being an electrician.
Knowledge will only become meaningless as a means to pursue wealth, it is still meaningful in terms of understanding the human experience since that relies on perception, and only humans posses and will ever posses human perception.
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#139This may sound odd but I would recommend a trade that cannot be easily replaced by AI. Something like an electrician or roofer. Then try to get an apprenticeship with an older professional and learn as much as you can. Skip college completely and just start a business instead. You will be so much better off financially compared to say, a lawyer who will be in debt for a while and who’s job is about to be made obsolet…
Blue collar means spending your youth with tough physical labour surrounded by grumpy men to make some even angrier old man richer - while your friends are in college partying with fun girls and making contacts for easy jobs. Some people can be successful in a blue collar career, but the odds are you'll be abused, dogged and low paid. For that experience, you are better off spending your youth in the hospitality busi…
>while your friends are in college partying with fun girls and making contacts for easy jobs
Most of those people are making extremely bad life decisions and you will be significantly more wealthy before they've even left college. The best way to make money is to have money, you have a massive edge if you literally just start working early, live with your parents and stay the hell away from debt. It's a simple formula, and it's how I managed to climb my way into the middle-class.
A good thing about blue-collar is that it will make you tough and keep you fit, and you will also learn to socialize properly with people from different generations, as well as being able to absorb whatever experience they might have gained over the decades they've lived.
Re: Ask HN: What would you recommend a 16 year old to pursue career wise?
#140This may sound odd but I would recommend a trade that cannot be easily replaced by AI. Something like an electrician or roofer. Then try to get an apprenticeship with an older professional and learn as much as you can. Skip college completely and just start a business instead. You will be so much better off financially compared to say, a lawyer who will be in debt for a while and who’s job is about to be made obsolet…
Nah. Get an education in something you enjoy and that pays well. In the event that AI does replace your job, you can learn a manual labor trade quickly. Starting a successful business is not easy.
>you can learn a manual labor trade quickly
As with software you can get competent quickly, but quality comes with time and effort.