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

None of them would have impressed my parents as they would have had no idea what they were. My uncle was a doctor ( the only family member that I knew that went to a university ) but they weren't keen on him. They met in the army and had little education.

I did do a MEng in a high rating university, but they'd have been equally happy if I'd been a plumber.

It's impossible to predict what the job market will look like in 10 or 20 years or what skills will be in demand. I studied biomedical engineering 12 years ago because it was "a promising field," but it had been "a promising" field for 20 years before I started and it remains "a promising field" today. It does deliver on its promise if you go into pharma though, which (as of today) requires a college degree, a master's degree, a PhD, and some luck.

In 2016 I was fresh out of college, meeting people, looking for a job and I met a neuroscience PhD who had been having such bad luck that he was asking me, who was basically a kid, if I knew any places hiring. And now just a few months ago one of my college classmates who had gone on to get a PhD in materials science is career-changing into software because of the grim job market for his field.

In the 90's you could walk into an office in jeans and a t-shirt, say you knew programming, and get a job (or so I'm told). In the 2000's, after the dotcom bubble crash the job market for software developers seemed bad but I think it recovered quickly. In the 2010's demand for software devs was insanely high; VC's were over-funding tech startups, unicorn companies boomed, and older companies were giving more respect to their own tech stack so as to not fall behind. By the late 2010's though, the labor market started catching up to demand for software devs so junior positions were getting harder to obtain. In 2023 I think software jobs for junior devs are very hard to get. I do think this trend will continue.

On the flip side, the recent government initiative & funding for bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the US has brought a lot of new jobs to my hometown, some that sound really cool. A lot of new software jobs for automation, mechanical engineer jobs for manufacturing, and probably in the near future once things are set up and running they'll be hiring chemical & electrical engineers if they aren't already.

So yeah I have no idea what advice to give to a 16 year old. But I think it's better to have multiple skills than to try to be an expert at one thing. It's less of a gamble to you if one of your skills doesn't work out, and possibly you can combine the 2 skills into something that really is unique.

Get enough sleep. At your age thats probably 9 hrs a night. A lot of things will follow as a matter of course

If sleep is a struggle, then see a mental health counselor to help you learn the habits and treatments for good sleep, i.e. not one that will just give you a pill and tell you to get lost

> When knowledge becomes meaningless is there a reason to learn?

Knowledge hasn't become meaningless. It's not going to, either. Even if we wind up in a world where an AI knows more than you (for whatever "knows" means), it's still worth having knowledge, having more understanding of the world around you.

Knowledge is a multiplier. Knowing how things work multiplies what you can do. It opens multiple doors that would otherwise be closed. It's still absolutely worth time and effort to get.

Even if AI knows everything, it will be something to learn. It will be a force multiplier; learning how to use it effectively will be like learning to drive a car after you already know how to walk. That will also be a part of knowledge.

At 16, you don't need a specific direction. Get broad (learn many topics) rather than deep (focused on one topic). There will time to become deep later, preferably after you find out which area interests you.

Just don't confuse your vocation with your avocation. You do want to find a job doing something you enjoy, but if it isn't fulfilling you can look at volunteering outside of work or take up a hobby.

Try to narrow it down. Do you want to work in a cubicle/office? Work outside? Do you want to work with people all day long? Work with animals? Tech industry? Humanities? Healthcare? Even then there's a lot of overlap (e.g. IT in the healthcare industry).

And deciding what you don't want to do can narrow it down a lot.

Are you willing to relocate? That will greatly open up your possibilities, especially if you want to work for a big company but grew up in a small town.

Is there a company you want to work for? Tesla? Lockheed Martin? SpaceX? Find out what kind of positions they are hiring for.

As others have mentioned, don't forget trade skills. Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) has a lot to say on that matter.

If you can narrow it down, message boards like this can help with more specific suggestions. You left it pretty wide open. And I would always recommend an education.