When I was in school, I was always told “If you get a college degree you’ll on average make 500k more over the life time of your career regardless of what you get your degree in!”
Then as I finishing school, it was all about “If you get into tech you’ll make big bucks and always have jobs!”
Both of those have turned out not great for a lot of people.
Then whenever women say they’re struggling with money online, they get pointed to OF… which pays nothing to 99% of creators. Also very presumptive to suggest that, but we don’t even need to get into that.
So is there a field/career strategy that you feel like is currently being over pushed?
(My examples are USA, Nevada/Utah is where I grew up, if maybe it’s different in other parts of USA even.)
“Unionize, join the party, and eat the rich.”
If you want a good job, become a social media influencer. It pays more than most other jobs, and you can be the worst type of person and still make it big.
That seems like survivorship bias. Curious how much the average aspiring influencer goes on to make in the field…
Networking (AKA meeting people) is a good way to get jobs.
While skill and experience matter, networking is often the catalyst that connects you with the right opportunities. In a way, it’s like investing in your social capital—often as valuable as any degree or certification.
College actually helps with both skill and networking at the same time.
This is essential. Speaking from experience as a guy with bad mental problems who can’t do relationships. Work on that, kids!
In my experience, this highly depends on the college. Mine really didn’t do shit for me as far as networking goes. And what connections i did make didn’t end up helping anyway. Maybe it starts mattering more once you’ve got some experience?
If it weren’t for networking I would have never gone from being a line cook that barely graduated highschool to a CAD tech for a land surveying company. Had literally zero experience and was definitely not what I thought I’d be doing in five years when I was working the closing shift at restaurants every night until 2:00 AM.
I literally got my current job by meeting an old co-worker at a book store and letting him know I was looking after our previous company got shut down. I did happen to have the right skills, but my local area was flooded with software developers in an area that really didnt need that many. But I got the job.
Have you tried being a hunter/gatherer?
NO TRESPASSING
Hopefully: college is bullshit, go to a trade school.
And when you can’t find work “But welding pays well! Why aren’t you doing it?”
If you want a good job just learn how to code!
Yeah. The tech industry is imploding as it switches from development to maintenance.
I think there are a lot of fields people are being encouraged to ignore because “it’s totally going to be made obsolete by AI any day now”. I’m sure some of them ultimately will be, but we still have people doing financial services despite so much of the calculations being handled entirely by software under the hood.
The people pushing this AI revolution concept are those who stand to make money off it, and those who can use it as an excuse for layoffs to save money in the short term before they jump to another company and avoid the consequences.
I remember 14 years ago in high school I was kicking around the idea of becoming a court reporter (type out everything said in court) , but was told “nooo look at Siri, that’ll totally replace all that soon!”
No, no it’s not. We don’t want things like that making choices like that.
Also was told “C and C++ is too old, learn something newer”
People get too excited about new tech, not thinking about why the old tech stands the test of time.
The (Graphic) Design industry is being overmarketed by influencers trying to sell their overpriced courses, so that they can get a passive income instead of actually working in the field. They have no desire to teach nor mentor students, and the industry is actually extremely saturated with very little prospects unless you land a bingo of both skills and networking.
If you want a house, start saving in middle school.
Go to trade school.
Well, I really hope that it remains “go to college”. As someone with a good career in my area, with good positions and salaries, even without a college education, I still think that the lack of college education still makes me have several gaps and difficulties.
I was fooled for some time by the idea that college education isn’t needed and I hope this generation doesn’t do the same.
But some careers I think it will be good for the long future:
- AI industry
- Data security
- Green energy
- Finance (always, but it costs your mental health)
And, the thing that I wish someone told me in a trustable way when I was a teenager: go with your happiness, the sucess is there, because success is WAY MORE than make money
The world has been changing fast and I think the safest advice in terms of always having work is to learn something to do with bedrock infrastructure, like plumbing or welding.
As we approach the singularity, more and more things will be done by fewer people.
No one has a plan for the singularity, they are hoping that AI will figure it out.
May God have mercy on us all.
We’ve been “rapidly appeoaching the singularity” for quite a while now, and the current tools being marketed as “AI” don’t actually have any “intelligence” to them. We are not going to magically turn what we have now into “AGI”, it’s simply not possible given our current models and techniques.
From someone in tech, at absolute best this is something that we might see strides in by the time we all die of old age, and that’s being absurdly optimistic. The only people pushing the idea of a faster timeline are those with money to grift off the idea.
I see where you’re coming from but look at semiconductors. Right now Nvidia has dethroned Intel, and nvidia’s own insiders have stated that they are designing chips based on AI which they are then using to power the AI which design the next round of chips.
Maybe the stuff that you and I have access to will never cross the border into AGI territory to some sort of AGI scenario, but that doesn’t mean that there are not systems and processes in play that can.
And here we have issues with the many different definitions of AI. Nvidia used machine learning to simulate countless iterations of their chip design to find the best configuration and layout (for the specific goals they set their AI to optimize for). They did not use chatGPT or anything that has textual output. It literally cannot spontaneously develop that ability.
It is constrained by the bounds that are inherently neccessary to make it function and by the goals it is created to optimize for. It cannot just arbitrarily “choose” to go do something they aren’t pointing it at. It may do things that aren’t intended, but those are “happy accidents” related (again) to the goals it is given to optimize for. Like a delivery AI jumping off a balcony because it’s the fastest way down, since no goal weighting was given to self preservation or damaging the package.
At the very least, until we have some way to codify the abstract concept of comprehension into a scoring system can be optimized for, none of these things are going to even approach AGI. This is due to the simple reality of how they work under the hood, and don’t for a fucking second believe the charlatans saying that we can’t understand them. We may not be able to discretely track each and every step a model takes in modifying it’s weights or each decision poiny when optimizing for specific output, but that’s a matter of storage space to store each step and drastic speed loss that would occur recording each step. It is not some inherent untracable magic in how they work.
Computers, even quantum computers, work through billions of discrete traceable steps occurring each second. AI still needs discrete inputs, discrete goal/optimization/math to discern good output from bad, even if we choose not to track each step in between.
Put as simply as possible: You cannot duct tape infinite speak and spells together to spontaneously create an intelligence, and that is effectively what current AI is doing in ever increasing amounts. We’re brute forcing it by throwing ever increasing amounts of resources at it, with rare and minor improvements in the underlying math occurring at far slower rates. The nvidea chip thing is just improving the ability of chips to do the math we’re already doing for this stuff even faster, so… more brute forcing.
Edit: Also, nvidea is making more money than they ever have riding this hype train. Of course they’re going to push the idea that absurd leaps of progress are right around the corner, and that their products will get us there. They are the best in the market right now, but anything beyond that is pure conjecture to help drive sales. Their chips are not fundamentally doing anything new, just the same things but more efficiently.
I tell my kids that a) they must graduate high school, and then either go to college or learn a trade. Regardless, they need to be educated.
- “Learn how to teach yourself”
“Give up hope now before the pain of existence rips it away. Oh, also eat healthy, and do some light exercise daily that stuff is important too.”
Probably “switch jobs often” but who knows, that might still be good advice.
I’m in IT. It’s the advice I wish I’d followed from the beginning.
Once you get comfortable in your job and it becomes routine, you need to find a new one. Keep growing your skill set, and probably take a hefty raise each time.
Don’t worry about being a job hopper - it resolves itself easily enough when you don’t find the next position for a while.
I so need to do this. Been at the same job for almost 10 years and it feels like everyone else I started with has surpassed me for this reason in terms of salary and position. But i hate applying for jobs in tech so much, having to do the leetcode study bullshit as if I’m still in school and all that. It’s so exhausting and annoying. Maybe it’s the ADHD, but it’s hard to bring myself to sit down and do it.
But also, I could really use more money, it’s been impossible to save for a house where I live, and I’d love to be able to have one someday. I know it’s not too late, I still have so many years before I retire, but I’m still jealous of you guys that could sit down and more easily do the interview dance every 2-3 years.
Get fired.
That’s how I did it.
Haha that’s one way. Seems like it would make it harder to land the next job, though.
That sounds super stressful to me and you need to have a lot of energy left after your workday to look for a new job. I’m so glad I don’t have to do that
Try doing a bachelor next to you job. Dear God, do I long for some rest. I’ve been slacking on my studies lately, but I only have 50 EC left to do. Anyways, I’ve got no choice but to change jobs after I get my bachelor. Employers don’t give proper raises, they only give unfair wage gaps to new employees. That s how you get the “I’ve worked here 30 years and the new college kid gets twice my salary” rethoric. That’s sadly how it works. So eventhough I’ll have my degree next year, I know I won’t get paid for it unless I leave. I’ll try, because I like my job, but I know they won’t accept my offer.
Also in IT, I’m not as frequent a job hopper as some but it’s how I climbed the ladder to where I am today. Ultimately companies don’t give a fuck about you and just care about their profits so they will pay you as little as they can. Your only time to get more $ is when they’re vulnerable and hiring cause they need you.
Just be careful when you do, because there’s a risk of screwing up your retirement savings. Losing employer contributions that could have kicked in if you held out another 6 months or whatever. (I’m not an expert on this subject by the way, and ymmv)
