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?
If it makes you feel better, in Sweden, the average age of students is 25. Why? A lot of them do what they want and figure things out first before deciding. A lot travel, work, or save money before going to college. It’s the norm for them.
Meanwhile for the rest of the world, we’re pressured to figure things out as soon as we leave high school. Looking back, it’s mainly because we are pressured by our parents to go to college. It became a status symbol and bragging rights for them if their kids went to college.
It depends on what you actually like to do. For something like computer science, I wouldn’t pursue a higher education. This was my path. CS was the hot thing back then (it might look like it still is sometimes, but it’s not really, it’s a lot more like plumbing now). I ended up with a PhD in CS, which is essentially useless. In CS, the only thing that matters, after understanding the basics, is keeping up with new tech and learning for yourself. No college degree can really prepare you for this. Now, if you want to be a doctor, you wouldn’t be able to skip the degree. That’s why I said it depends.
Personally, for my job, if I went back I wouldn’t pursue a higher education anymore. I was doing perfectly well learning by myself even before high school. If you are able to get into an online community of people with the same interest, you’ll be able to learn a lot more, and build a network of contacts. You’ll skip useless subjects and just build up what matters.
My advice to you is to follow your passion (everything will fail anyway, so that’s how you get motivation to keep going). After you know what you want to do, then decide if you need a course or if you can get a job and learn by yourself in order to progress. Unless the job you’re seeking requires some kind of credential, like medicine or law, then you can progress much faster by doing. It won’t look like at first, but you will. If you end up pursuing a higher education, then my advice is to try and go through it as quickly as possible. The goal is to get out quickly. Staying in academia has a terrible cost for the mind. If you lose your mind, you’ll lose everything later.
I don’t think there is job stability anymore. Society fucked over everybody except the ultra rich.
There’s so many people transitioning from IT to plumbers and electricians that market will be oversaturated soon enough. I guess there’s becoming a doctor if you can handle 7 years of schooling.
You don’t. We live in a fucked up society and nothing about this situation will changed until society changes at a fundamental level.
We’re fucked mate.
You don’t. You get a new job every two years.
Despite what the Boomers have told you, “stability” is a thing of the past. Your best opportunity for growth and regular raises is to constantly switch jobs until you’ve contributed enough to your 401K to retire. And if you don’t have a 401K, get one ASAP. Don’t wait until your late 30s like I did or you’ll be working until you drop dead. Take advantage of that employer match ASAP. It’s basically free money on the table. (And if your employer doesn’t offer a 401K with a match, well that’s yet another reason to switch jobs.)
Also, I know this won’t make you feel better, but you really do need to make sure that you’re both happy with your choice of major, and able to make money from it. Otherwise you will struggle even more than the rest of us. I fucked around and dropped out because I didn’t know what I wanted for a career, and I’m still paying for it. I will never know what it feels like to own a new car or anything nice. (FWIW I’d likely be in the same situation even if I did graduate, because I unfortunately picked STEM as my major and anyone who has gone down that path can tell you how useless of a degree it is.)
It fucking sucks that life is this way, but that’s the reality we live in. When I was your age it took me about a decade to come to terms with the fact that the American dream only existed for two generations in America (Boomers and Gen X); everybody else gets to suffer. You’ll eventually come to terms with it as well. Or you’ll get mad enough at the billionaires that killed the American Dream and start a revolution.
As a 22M I think we’re fucked
A lot of negativity online and in this thread but imo that doesn’t really represent the world. There’s more career paths and options today then there ever was. If you have no responsibilities (family etc) then you should allow yourself to explore and time to build something.
Don’t be afraid of weird or “low skill” - everything builds skills and connects to more opportunities but most importantly now more than ever it’s important to be quitter - so you can actually leave at diminishing returns point and take advantage of new opportunities.
explore your degree, if they have job prospects, change if its low prospects, if it requires a GRAD degree to be able to advance in the field(reconsider your plans)
I received some great advice once: when you die nobody will read your resume. Do with that what you will.
I’m older but have the same sense you have. I think your best bet is to choose a career to pursue based on the kind of contribution you’d like to make to the world.
Right now, AI is mostly changing the way some jobs are done. Other new tech will probably contribute to more of those kinds of changes. If you choose a career primarily based a skillset you like using, I think there’s a good chance you’ll end up very disappointed later when the way the jobs are done changes. But if you choose based on impact and then develop a range of skills (especially people skills!), you’re more likely to end up OK.
You mentioned that programming and urban development interested you. Urban development seems more directly about making a certain kind of impact, so in your shoes, I’d go that direction. That said, I don’t know why you’re interested in programming, and maybe there’s an impact you want to make in that field too.
I made the mistake of choosing a career based on a skillset. New technology has reduced jobs in my field, but the much larger problem is that I hate the way the jobs are done now. I could probably stay motivated and do the extra shit needed to survive in that career in the longer term if I still felt like it made a positive impact on society, but the field itself doesn’t make the world better. So I made a shift into a new industry, although I’m not expecting stability from this one either, and it’s not one that would make sense for you based on your post.
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 got like 4 friends trying to be drs and it really is a grueling process
Plumbers and electricians will always be needed too
Except everyone and their mother are trying to become those now. There’s a good chance that that labor market will become oversaturated. 😢
Take it from a nurse, any job that regularly deals with literal human shit will never be over saturated.
go find a really boring unglamorous job.
it will be stable.
the problem is people don’tw ant stable jobs that are boring. they want glamorous jobs with high salaries and from big name companies… and wonder why they can’t get those, but they won’t work for a small business because they ‘don’t pay enough’.
I’ve spent most of my life working for & in small businesses, and stability has never been part of the deal lmao
For small businesses, pay is only part of the issue. Small business owners often get put on a pedestal in the States as the cornerstone of the economy, but they’re often petty tyrants who subject you to their whims for the most trivial things. At my previous corporate job, my process to take things of was:
- Check my PTO balance has enough to cover what I’m asking for.
- Put in a request in the system for the days off and wait for a decision on my request.
Once it was approved, it was locked in, and quite difficult for my bosses to wiggle out of if they realize they needed more people present than anticipated for the time I would be away.
In contrast, my current job at a small business:
- Tell the owner’s son (my direct superior) that I’m thinking about going somewhere in the future and wanted to make sure I could take the days off.
- Wait a bit, then get told it’s okay.
- Put my name on the shop calendar and indicate I will be away those days.
- Wait several months until the week prior to my departure.
- Owner will come by and say “Hey, I saw you have a week off. You really can’t work that week? I was thinking of going down the shore this week and getting away from the shop (which he’s done a few times already within the last couple of months), are you sure you can’t come in?”
- Spend the rest of the day annoyed until his son comes in and reminds him they already discussed it and gave me approval and I have now spent significant money on travel, accomodations, etc.
- The day before I leave, get another lecture from the owner about how "I’m not trying to keep you from going places, but you really need to give us a heads up first, rather than just booking stuff and telling us after the fact.’
- Spend the first day of my vacation pissed off because I already did exactly what I was told off for not doing.
It’s the same song and dance if I need a doctor’s appointment or anything. I’ve also only gotten a $3/hr raise over 2.5 years there, since “We’re a small business, we can’t afford to give raises,” while the owner has acquired several new vehicles, gone on international vacations, bought and sold a boat, and generally thrown his money around on everything and anything but retaining his employees.
Small businesses can be decent jobs when run by the right people, but they’re miserable when the thinks the universe revolves around them, and anyone else is a secondary consideration, at best. You also lose several workers protections if your small business employer is small enough to be exempt from meeting basic requirements, like my current job doesn’t even have 10 employees, counting the owner and his son, so now FMLA protections for us if we fall seriously ill.
Climbing the corporate ladder and grinding 24/7 is a fool’s errand, but I’ve certainly found more stability in a corporate environment than most small businesses I’ve worked for, with superior working conditions and pay, provided you’re happy with doing a less prominent role. LIke, nah, I definitely don’t want to be plant manager at my previous job, but I would go back in a minute if Document Control offered me a job in batch reviewing. Set schedule, decent pay, minimal OT, solid benefits, and nice, boring work of reviewing paperwork for mistakes certainly isn’t glamorous, but it’ll do you fine and I’d take it over a small business position any day of the week.
I wouldn’t mind being a garbage truck driver, but I do mind being forced to pee in a bottle to make a quota
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?
You’re catching downvotes because what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Non-union workplaces are usually more fucked up, that’s not a sign that “unions aren’t needed.”
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 come from a nordic country with very high level of union membership. Pretty much every time it’s a benefit to be a part of a union just because of collective bargaining. It’s also very important for when there’s a dispute and you need a lawyer, the unions can have a salaried lawyer that has experience with your contract because it’s the same one as for all the other people.
Unions also sometime provide heavily discounted vacation homes and bunch of other nice things.
Oh yeah definitely wasnt thinking about Nordic countries.
Its my understanding that Nordic countries are basically moving capitalism along the slowest by burdening everyone in many ways but more evenly compared to somewhere like in the us so it makes sense to me that in countries like that people could benefit more from unions because they have more direct things for unions to deal with but in the us all the businesses operate much more variably so it really depends on what place in particular is in question and it could even be a matter of location of the same business having wildly different problems or lack of problems.
Funny, you actually think businesses are less varied in the nordics. Capitalism is also just not slow, nordics at the top of billionaires per capita lists, income and other money metrics. Only difference is we’re not swimming in poor people like the US.
You can’t. Neither can any middle-aged person, nor old person.
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!
