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

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

#81

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

I would stop to push specific careers. I would instead push mental tools that are career overlapping useful. The engineering mindset, to learn and adopt into a topic fast, recongize standardization patterns and be able to move within a uknown system is one such thing which is quite transferable.

Same goes for sozializing and organizing. The problem is though, that teaching such abstract tools, without a usecase tends to look pointless from a beginners perspective. Same way math looks pointless in school.

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

#82

Post by dusted »

I wrote about 10 different, and conflicting answers to this before realizing that I don't know, and that I disagree with just about any comment mentioning anything specific.. I'm also in the "general" camp, learning to learn is good, for a career, and otherwise, but is it "the right thing" versus specializing ? Don't know. This is scary, because I have a young son whom I also want to prepare for life, and this made me realize I don't even know where to begin.

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

#83

Post by zamnos »

dusted wrote: post #82

I wrote about 10 different, and conflicting answers to this before realizing that I don't know, and that I disagree with just about any comment mentioning anything specific.. I'm also in the "general" camp, learning to learn is good, for a career, and otherwise, but is it "the right thing" versus specializing ? Don't know. This is scary, because I have a young son whom I also want to prepare for life, and this made m…

You have 10 or so years to figure out your answer, which need not be as concise (and should not be, imo) as an HN answer, given the breadth of experiences that life has to offer.

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

#85

Post by codingdave »

If you are concerned that AI will make knowledge meaningless, don't be. It is important to be able to parse out when AI-provided answers are wrong. As AI improves and that becomes less common, the importance of being able to critically look at information and understand its accuracy is more important than ever.

But that aside, what you should do with your life is a question that only you can answer. What are your goals? The cliched questions of "Who do you want to be when you grow up?" and "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" are actually great questions. But we cannot answer them for you.

If you tell us your goals, we can guide your steps to help you get there. If you are having a hard time defining your goals, that is why you get an education - to understand more about the world and about yourself in order to figure out what direction you want for your life.

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

#86

Post by bardan »

At this point in time trades seem like a pretty good bet. They pay well (in my country at least), you will always have work, and the skills you develop are very practical. Nice to be able to look at an issue with your own living space and comprehend what it will take to get it fixed.

But that isn't a very hacker news response. I guess you would also develop these sorts of skills in eg. industrial engineering.

There are plenty of other options if what you're spooked about is automation and language models erradicating all of our jobs. If you enjoy baking you might consider getting into it.

On the other hand, it might be best to ignore all the hype about LLMs and automation and go into whatever you feel most passionate about. Learning and working in whatever field will always lead to growth. It may eventually be GPT'd away, but then I know a lot of people who have completely changed career later in life and achieved success and satisfaction.

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

#87

Post by robertlagrant »

runjake wrote: post #36

At your age, I'd be a generalist and do as much exploring and learning as you are able. After you have plenty of experience, then examine specializing more. Me, I'm 50 and have been a generalist all my life. People have told me all my life to specialize but I didn’t ever listen. It's fun, and I never get bored with it. And I've been in the game long enough that I could probably be considered a "specialist" in many di…

What does that mean? What did you actually do?

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

#88

Post by robertlagrant »

Vanit wrote: post #47

Career wise? Software engineering, 100%. That's not going away, and this is an industry that mostly does still care about university degrees (though I'm sure you could self-study, build a small portfolio and go that route and have success).

I don't know why this is downvoted. It's a good idea.

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

#89

Post by robertlagrant »

bbertelsen wrote: post #35

Whatever you do, focus on a deep specialization. Find something you really love then become a profound expert in it. Education is absolutely critical in a world where you are either telling machines what to do or being told what to do by a machine.

I agree with this one. Specialise, and then branch out if you like into a second or third specialisation. People who say "stay generalist" - I don't know what they mean. Maybe they mean "people/project management", but that is still a specialisation.
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