Comment by BrandoElFollito
3 months ago
I think it is going to be difficult for you to get advice outside of the herbal "find a job you like, live a full life"
I am working for 30+ years, a combination of academia, then tech until today, where I have a very senior position in a company you know.
The world changed drasically over these 30 years and my path to an arguably successful career is absolutely not what I am suggesting to my children.
My generation built the Internet from a state of nothingness. This meant that whatever clever you were doing was new and recounting, and was bringing money. You had z limited set of technologies so you could be a master in many of them, and good in the rest.
Today this is not possible, you need to specialize, and often early.
I know that this not help, what I am probably trying to say it's that there are immutable truths (having fun, having friends and/or family, having hobbies, ...), then there is luck and maybe a statistical relevance in some jobs more than others.
I’m not sure if this is good advice.
The problem is that tech fashions and job market change rapidly every few years. And it takes a long time to specialize in an area. If you’re lucky and happen to be in the right place at the right time, sure, specialization works for you. Otherwise, there can be no job for you as a specialist. If you start early, who knows what the job market will look like a few years from now, let alone a couple of decades.
It’s a bad environment. It might be time for a universal income.
I am not sure either if this is the right advice, this is just my view over a convoluted 30+ years career. I have two children who are in the middle of their studies now and I had the same concerns suggesting a path.
I will try to expand a bit.
There are manual jobs that are very interesting and work well until 40-50 years old.
An example is physiotherapy, where you can concentrate on more dynamic activities when you are young, and move to softer ones later. With the demographics in Western Europe, you are good.
Another one is electrician: it is constantly evolving, with major shifts such as home automation and it is reasonably physical (the added value is that you do not keep a static position for the whole day).
Importantly, none of the above is at risk with AI or shifts in the market. You always need people to help you physically and you always need electricity. On top of that these jobs are regulated so you can't be short-cut.
One of my kids is going this way and it is great.
The other one is in Finance, in the best and most competitive school in the world. I see his future as bleak, something I would not have even thought 30 years ago.
He will live in slavery for 5-10 years, doing insane hours and without a social life at the moment when it counts the most. He will make heaps of money, without real opportunities to spend it. And he realizes that.
As I said, 30 years ago it was unthinkable, at least in my country. A diploma from that elite school was the real way to everything. Your year mates where the future ministers, president, head of national or international institutions. And the weird few who would go for NGOs.
All this means that any advice a 50yo will give is heavily impregnated with their past and that past (which was their future when they were young) is fundamentally different from the future of current youngsters. We do not live in an era of fundamental changes as we did in the 90s.