Ask HN: What is the smartest career path to take?

Does your family have a lot of money?

Yes: Do risky things that offer a high reward.

No: Do stable thing that offer good constant pay with sensible career path.

The career path that enables you to have the most fulfilling life.

You only get one life - if you're not spending it doing what you enjoy or are passionate about, you're wasting it. Decide what you want to do or accomplish with your limited time in this mortal coil, and then make a plan which allows you to meet those goals.

This decision is personal and exists entirely outside of the economy and your role in it. Your career only comes into play when you need to make money to meet your goals, then you have to figure out the balance between working and living and make sure that the work supports the living. The perfect career is one which directly supports your life goals by virtue of being paid to get the most out of life, by making a career out of something you're passionate about. Don't fall for the propeganda that would have you be satisfied with a corporate wage slave life simply because it "feels right". Become a corporate wage slave because it enables you to meet your goals, not because it is a goal in and of itself - but if you can manage it, try to skip or minimize the wage slave step and accomplish your goals directly.

In short, think about your life before you think about your career, and use your conclusions to frame your thinking around your career.

I found useful general career advice on https://80000hours.org which I can highly recommend to study.

Not the OP but if you're interested in my take -- I've been freelance ops/devops in/around europe for around 10 years;

I would say it's not so feasable as a junior unless you really can hit the ground running which only comes with experience, at least in ops. Most clients expect me to be productive within about a week of landing if not less, otherwise they would have found a permie. They also expect senior freelance people in such a space to be making or helping to make a lot of decisions for them, which is hard to do until you've made enough mistakes to learn what not to do, instead of just knowing the latest doo-daa or other.

Finding work isn't hard, you register with a few agencies (e.g hays, linuxrecruit, etc etc and then they farm your CV out to their clients, and then you interview and start working.. I've never spent more than a week looking for a new contract)

As for the amount of work -- endless, at least in devops...

Currently I am working as a senior devops/sre for a startup, k8s, cloudy stuff, big springboot stack (50 or so services across 10 instances, etc) -- I do the same work as the full time staff, mgt treats me as slightly more senior/more votes than those because I am really, but you have to walk a bit of a political line sometimes.

Any questions feel free :}

1. Work for a FAANG for 15-20 years.

2. Manage your personal finance wisely.

3. Don't get a divorce.

4. Retire.