I (23M, American) feel completely paralyzed from a career perspective because I have no idea what the hell to do. If I choose the wrong degree program, I have to pay back all the debt with nothing to show for it. Even if I get a job, there’s no telling how long that will last. Everything keeps changing so fucking fast and it seems like any field I could go to college for could cease to be viable by the time I finish. On top of that, I have chronic health conditions to worry about that limit what I can even do.
(Edit: Basically I have POTS and a neck injury, so it’s hard to do physical labor and I suffer from dizziness, brain fog, and fatigue from being up for an hour or so. I don’t know my exact limits yet, since the severity of my condition varies by day and there appear to be ways to partially recover from the fatigue without having to lay down.)
I think stuff like urban planning and designing walkable environments would be cool, but I’m not sure if that’s a viable path in 2027 and beyond. I also used to be interested in programming, but ever since AI and mass layoffs hit the scene, I’ve become disillusioned and stopped pursuing that path.
I used to feel like the world was stable and I could pick a career based on my passion and be fine. But ever since 2020, everything has felt increasingly more uncertain. The world seems to be losing its collective shit and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
Is staking your sense of stability on your career the wrong way to think about this? Should I be trying to find close friends or some kind of supportive community that could act as a safety net? Or is everyone too hyperindividualist to look out for each other?
Hi I’m an American doctor here. I’m going to parrot something my father told me growing up. (I come from a family of doctors). “They will always need doctors”.
I resisted it because I took it for granted but he was right. Being a doctor is among the most stable lifestyles you can find today. I live like I think everyone should be able to live. I can tell my job when I’m not available. People take my opinion seriously(even in non medical matters).
The road to being a doctor is hard as balls and will take a minimum of 7 years (often more) before you can do anything with it but you get to help people, you get to think critically every day, and the life is stable. Tbh I can’t imagine myself doing anything else now. (If you had asked me during training how I felt, I would have told you this was the biggest mistake of my life).
The road to the end is very very long and it is very very stressful. I felt like I was going to die during it several times.
I would encourage you to continue to pursue your interests in programming despite AI advancements. Sticking with something you’re interested in means you can stay motivated even when dealing with less pleasant other aspects of your job that always exist like annoying co-workers. Having the core work you enjoy has been critical in my career as I could get absorbed into it and block out other negatives. It also is a job where its quite acceptable to work remotely and based on your health conditions it seems like a good match.
I totally understand the anxiety around the future, and a degree is a huge financial investment. One way that might help is to think about learning in terms of adding tools to your belt, and less about training for job A and then getting job A. Programming has a lot transferable skills across many industries so you can follow the money into whatever industry is in demand by the time you finish your studies (it will probably be ai related IMHO). Whereas city planning is highly specialised and those skills are harder to transfer to the point you’re locking yourself into an industry with a heavily limited revenue stream.
AI has changed how we work significantly but we will always need humans in the loop who actually know what’s going on. This comes from someone with 26 years in the industry. There is so much more to building software than just coding too. Don’t let the doomers get to you.
My other advice is while support networks can be helpful don’t put your survival onto anyone else’s shoulders. In my personal experience people are human at the end of the day they can let you down, and at the worst possible time. It’s so so so much better to build self reliance and resilience. I think your assessment is true, people are hyper individualistic today, that said people do care still (look at all the replies in this thread trying to help), but there are limits to altruism. So for the question, where to invest to get stability, honestly my answer isn’t community or your career, it’s you invest in yourself and your own capabilities for the best chance of a successful future.
Good luck!
I think there’s value in asking not what interests you but rather how you want to work, particularly in your case. The ugly thing is that you don’t just find that knowledge on the kitchen counter one morning, you usually find out by working a job.
Disclaimer: I live in Europe, I am middle aged and I’ve worked in more than one profession and more than one country.
I think ideally you do some entry level thing, maybe without study if you’re worried about the expense, and you see what “how” suits you. Then you decide if you want to study or not but the aim is to expand the “how”.
Design or Architecture: This usually requires you or someone else to sell your skillset rather well. That someone else is difficult to find, so the question is: Are you cool with doing that? Are you happy to tell people just why your design is the best they can get? There’s niche jobs in this area as with many others, but in my experience not quite as many.
Tech: IT has for a long time served as a great market for people who did some sort of STEM-stuff. As a result of the size and growth of the industry in the past 50 years, people were much needed and earned rather well. This also means that cutting costs by reducing employee count looks rather attractive right now. But it’s also starting to backfire in many ways, be it the fact that AI runs wild in some cases or that in others companies just didn’t really know how much AI would cost them. There’s a lot of examples, but it’ll still take time to sink in that AI can do some stuff, but it can’t do all the stuff all the time, unless you’re fine losing control of your code. There’s also not a whole lot of regulation yet and that will absolutely change.
So here’s what I think you should ask yourself:
- Am I extroverted and happy to spend time with strangers? (This pays into sales jobs and promoter-stuff.)
- Am I someone who is good at disappointing people? (Regulation needs its own people, they often come highly specialised and their job is to tell others what’s safe to do, thus creating disappointment. Management is also a lot of eggshells to walk on, but it’s not always creating disappointment.)
- Am I passionate enough about a field to deeply invest and let it bleed into my life? (Sometimes there is something you absolutely must do and when you know that, it’s okay to embrace it.)
- How well do I work within a team? (Your first team may not be the best team ever, but if you can fit in without hating the situation, cut the others some slack and exist within that system, that’s a skill.)
- Am I someone who gets into that hyper focus kinda state where I just work alone for hours and that makes me happy? (This is going the science route, even IT relies on team work to a certain degree, but the more trial and error and writing a job involves, the more you need to be motivated on your own.)
- Am I a born service provider? (Some of us are not front row extroverts but really just want to make life better for everyone. In that case look at support or some job that cooperates with a team but does their own thing later on. We’re looking at assistant roles, documentation - where AI didn’t ruin it, UX … and as I said: Support.)
- Do I need pressure or stress to get things done? (Some of us do. That’s okay, but let’s then pick something that gives us deadlines or the right amount of pressure to actually perform. Or - if you’re on the other end of this - a place with long-term planning and very clear expectations, so you can settle into a routine.)
Many of these things are completely independent of the area you later work in, if you do the finances for a charity or work on organising funds raisers for start ups, if you end up as a scrum master with a dev team or an auditor for building sites, they are all different combinations of those things above. If you find the right combination, you find what you can do well and what will make you somewhat happy.
My personal advice: Pick something that comes to you with ease (meaning it’s something you don’t look at the clock about), life will find a way to make it challenging anyway.
Good luck!
Do not take in student loans, period. Trust me im 40 with 300k in student loans still. Havent used my college degree in ten years since i left my degree profession to make more money.
Just keep practicing coding, learn how to use AI to take care of simple but tedious tasks. You’ll be fine i was in the same spot as you at your age and now i make $100k, only regret sre the student loans. Should have just worked those four years instead.
For the time being, it’s still relatively easy for US citizens to move to a prosperous society. If things continue on the current trajectory, then at a certain point waves of refugees will start flowing outward, and with nationalism on the rise globally it’s likely to become more difficult on the medium- to long-term.
You can’t. Neither can any middle-aged person, nor old person.
Join the union building trades my dude. Wake up early, make six figures, and get paid to be trained. We dont go into debt for education. We go into debt buying boats and shit.
Trades are fine but IMO if you have to use a union to make your income then the people at the top of the field are too much of an asshat to know that what they do is broken and causing people to need unions.
I mean, that’s always been the case, in almost every company ever. There are some rare business owners out there that truly take incredible care of their people without a union demanding it, but organized labor and collective bargaining are what brought an end to child labor in the US and Europe. It’s where we got weekends and mandatory safety practices. We’ve always had to fight back to demand humane conditions.
I’m not saying unions are bad and we should not have them I’m saying we should not need unions in the first place so we should seek out where they aren’t needed.
Also side note, I’m surprised how many people are downvoting my posts in this thread lol can people not read the subtext?
I mean, your reply comes off a little, well, unwise? Like you’re maybe making assumptions on a subject you don’t know much about. I’m not trying to be mean, just guessing at why you’re getting beat up on the votes.
You should in fact seek out unions, because union membership makes unions stronger, and union presence increases working conditions and wages for not just union members but for non union workers as well. It’s documented and confirmed.
A lot of the union contractors I’ve worked for have worked with our trade unions for generations, and some of the higher ups in those companies came from the union ranks and still mostly keep their loyalties. It’s not all roses, but usually when companies get used to playing by our rules, they end up doing okay at it and some are downright pleasant.
This is probably less the case when you’re hearing about sectors that are traditionally non union (gaming studios, Starbucks, whatever) where Union organizing is a new thing and those companies are kicking and screaming and plotting to stop it.
Seek out unions where unions are happening is different from seeking out unions where they aren’t yet established and where they aren’t at all are places where they seem to be functionally well without extra governance and so likely more people worth helping out because they have things going in non destructive ways from the start.
Sure whatever
the people at the top of the field are too much of an asshat to know that what they do is broken and causing people to need unions
Isn’t that the case with almost every field?
Unless the people at the top have an incentive to keep the field healthy, they’re not going to bother to do it. That’s why regulations, regulatory boards, and unions are helpful
That is the perverse incentive of capitalism yes.
Not every field is prone to this perverse incentive and it depends on a per company level how bad it is at any given place, we can choose to get paid well and not need unions easily enough so I’d avoid supporting a company with the work I do for them if something got so bad that it needed a major regulating body to sprout up.
Maybe this is just me being privledged or something but I’ve never seen instances where a union was just automatically better and I’ve actually heard a handful of accounts where it was mostly wasteful so it seek very much like your mileage will vary.
I’m in my mid 40s and I dunno. I thought I had it. Now, my company that promised permanent remote work and confirmed my moving was fine, is trying to kill remote work. I live in very rural Japan and there aren’t many jobs out here. No US/Canada companies seem interested in working with a backend engineer on the other side of the world. I have back problems so there are also limits on what physical work I can do so something like construction is basically not an option. So, with my life more than half over, I might lose everything again. If I do, my life will just go to being completely over.
I sort of know that feeling. Hope things go better for you.
I think stuff like urban planning and designing walkable environments would be cool, but I’m not sure if that’s a viable path in 2027 and beyond
Without knowing that much about the field, I would think that urban design should stick around long into the future. Those projects take decades to complete, and there’s always new cities and developments.
Even if the US is currently drinking the stupid juice when it comes to what makes a good city, either that will change soon or you can apply your skills to projects outside of the US
I’ve worked with many people who like stability, and those who embrace change. It really depends on one’s personality.
Problem is that the world of work has changed. There are very few guarantees any more. In that case you have to decide if you want something that appears stable on the surface, but can be rug-pulled in a hurry. Or if you just accept that everything will change and adjust your expectations and life plans.
The former allows you to go deep and acquire expertise in one area. The latter gives you breadth, but may mean you won’t get deep into a single field.
This might seem a bit abstract, but it really means one needs to do a gut check when planning a career.
A third option is to just wing it and see what comes along.
This is fantastic advice in terms to your approach
An additional prospective to consider is the environment you want to work. Do you want to be indoors, outdoors, traveling? around other people? Practical or your brain.
From there you can likely start to hone in on some careers. Don’t be scared to look at unique or niche areas. I know making money is essential but a balance between chasing steady and chasing gold is a must. A lot of people chase a mindset ‘want/love’ rather than a lower option that is satisfactory but lucrative.
There is always cycles. Ask yourself questions that can guide yourself…like Who has money and what will they spend it on? What is a problem that needs attention? - a Real problem. In the last 20 years people are making solutions but id say half are a false solution focused on sales rather than stemming from a problem.
And SAVE. Save as much as you can. Having a savings to fall back on gives you stability in an otherwise unstable world. It’s not easy, especially early in your career, but you’ll be extremely grateful that your past self built up something that gives you peace of mind.
Honestly? Take a small business accounting class and bone up on the tax code (which is more common sense than people think - I do my own taxes and have for decades… it’s pretty easy once you work it out) that relates to it and become a CPA.
THAT one will always be needed because people that run businesses often have the lousiest head when it comes to the numbers.
Done right, you won’t be in any situation that demands too much physicality so if your not as mobile as you’d want, you can stil work.
That and doing peoples passports. A dude at the mall was doing peoples passports filing and photos in like 15 minutes charging each person a couple hundred because it was quicker than trying to schedule an appointment at the post office that’s usually a few months wait
This book was a great help to me.
“Discover What You Are Best At” by Linda Gail .
It’s a series of self tests you can finish in a day, and then the book lists the jobs that you might find appealing.
For example, a hair stylist and a nurse both need good people skills and good dexterity. Two totally different jobs with similar skill sets.
I found the book when I was abotu your age, and it gave me a push in the right direction
Stay true to yourself and accept that you can’t win but you also don’t have to settle.
In the biggest picture it really is what you do now. Be mindful of the now. You can’t do anything about then. You might be able to have an effect on the next.
So make your now as better as you can and do whatever it takes to make the next the best it can be.
Do your self a favor and be honest with what you can and can’t do.
If you can, then you should do
If you can’t, then find the way that makes it so you can.
I believe in you friend. I can’t really explain how much you have against you but it’s nothing new. Make sure to figure out your priorities and set goals to make it happen while being ready to take advantage of options.
Opportunity and timing and the truth factors in life.
Make sure you take the opportunity when it comes. It will come and sometimes it comes with baggage or in the most inopportune moment
Im sorry but I honestly don’t know what to recommend. I can say I changed my career when it did not work out in my late 20’s and that lasted awhile but now im unemployed in my 50’s and can’t really do that. I can’t move in with family and retrain and such. The one thing I can say is I have gotten more things out of academia than just jobs. I am very glad I was in a LAS program and took an elementary logic class. LAS gets a lot of flack and admitadely its not great at a large school with crazy large classrooms but having a good breadth of education outside of your field is valuable. That being said you mention your 23 which would suggest your passed that point. If not I would recommend doing as much cheap education like community college and searching as much as you can for scholarships to avoid the debt trap.
This is not a new problem, humans since the beginning of our species have had the same feeling. You’ll persevere the way that unprepared and scared homosapiens have since the dawn of our species. Simmer down, you dont need to solve existence.
