When I was in my early 20s I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do, signing up for a 40 year career in just one area seemed so limiting and a little depressing.
I ended up making a list of all the jobs/roles that could be interesting and then for each job I made a list of skills and trainings that would be necessary/helpful. For example becoming a software engineer would require learning how to code, but if I wanted to join the foreign service I would be better off learning a new language.
Then I looked for skills that overlapped across careers and tried to find opportunities that would allow me to learn/improve on those skills. By focusing on what I would learn in a role, I didnt feel like I was committing to a life of drudgery and I kept the option to switch between careers open.
I would also second the person who told you to aim for the $$$. If you can earn a lot of money (and not spend it) in your early 20s it gives you a lot more freedom and flexibility later on. Because I saved a large percent of my software engineering salary, I was able to start a PhD program in my early 30s while many of my friends who spent their 20s (happily) earning less money are now starting to freak out about finances and dont have as much freedom when looking for employment.
For me software engineer was an easy answer because it didn't require licenses, certifications, and specifically not a region locked license like law, accounting, medical professions
but paid similarly
I also had the acumen for it, but I could easily see myself doing law or finance. Especially now that I know where I want to live, in comparison to then. It’s just that launching a software practice has just consumed even more industries now, and is a bigger field
I think there are two countercultural pieces of advice I wish someone had given me. I think both of these are more relevant than any “interests-matching” algorithm that pairs you with the supposed ideal career.
1. Focus more on the day to day life of what working in that career is like. Focus less on what the topic is itself, intellectually. If you’re a curious person, there are probably at least half a dozen subjects you find interesting enough to do as a career. So it is less immediately important that you pick one over another. If you had an obvious sole choice, you wouldn’t be asking this question.
The under-discussed thing is that if you don’t like the daily work routine or environment of a particular profession, that intellectual content almost doesn’t matter. Especially after years and years of being in the industry. For example, if you don’t like working in an office at a desk all day, you probably will struggle with being a software engineer, no matter how interesting your find it. You might be better off looking into civil engineering, or construction management, or another semi-adjacent field that isn’t done entirely from a desk in an office.
2. This may be more of a personality thing, but try to pick a field that involves a fairly narrow set of skills which you are able to master over time. Even though many/most white collar technology jobs pay better and are at the cutting edge of the economy, I feel like (and I imagine many others do too) there is a distinct lack of “progress” in terms of your professional self development. It’s very easy to constantly learn new things, but not have them add up to any coherent whole. This is probably because technologies change so often and the business requirements vary wildly. This sort of scenario is very unlike say, a chef, in which it’s more easy to track your progress and feel like you’ve achieved something over the course of a decade.
I'm going to be a downer but this is honestly how I see the situation. Most jobs that can reliably support you nowadays are very boring, but you are more or less stuck with them because it's simply becoming too expensive to live otherwise, especially if you want a family someday.
I remember meeting an old artist at college who had gone to NYC for training in his youth. He explained how such an adventure was impossible nowadays, because it's just not possible to afford living in NYC as a young person without money.
I won't recommend that you don't pursue your passion, but I will say that if you want to do that, you must be excellent at it, meaning at least in the top 1% of people doing it, if you want to survive financially. That's certainly possible if you put the work in, because most people don't. But you have to be prepared for that.
So if you want to do something actually cool, like a college professor or researcher or artist or filmmaker, get ready to work consistently towards excellence, otherwise you won't be happy with the results. Otherwise, go into the most tolerable of the money-making enterprises, like engineering, IT or health care.
> I remember meeting an old artist at college who had gone to NYC for training in his youth. He explained how such an adventure was impossible nowadays, because it's just not possible to afford living in NYC as a young person without money.
Nowadays, there are plenty other affordable places to train. It's not NYC or nothing.
For several years around 2010, I lived in the SF Bay Area for ~$1200/month. I had a (now long-lost) friend near Dolores Park, who maintained a rent-controlled 3 bedroom for $1200/month, which he then subletted the other two rooms.
Sometimes, I wonder if he's still there =P
So much happier to not be that impoverished, but I had a great time wheelin' & dealin' the /bayarea.
My advice: if you can't decide, aim for the $$$. It is always good to have more $$$. The more dough, the more financial freedom you have. Money is more magical than computer architecture as it is one of the most profound drug everyone believes in.
Proven implies near 100% effectiveness in maximizing whatever features whoever means by "the best career".
And people are far too complex and unpredictible creatures to bottle them up into any predefined models.
You may find a "methology" that would fit you better and it can feel and look to you like "proven". But this makes the whole question realative to your personal preferences.
Think of it more like a constraint satisfaction problem, rather than an optimization problem. There's no such thing as "the best" carrer, but there are lots of carrers which would be successful.
Also, its rare for a career to last more than 10-15 years these days, so think about how one career can set you up for another (e.g. 5-10 years programming, then move into management, or go back and get master's degree and teach, etc)
Success in any particular activity is for the most part dependent on the amount of time you are willing to dedicate to doing said thing, which in turn is dependent on the "moral justification" part of your ego.
For example, you could intrinsically feel very good and justified as a person that is able to to work with his hands to build or fix stuff because of whatever reason. In this case you will likely become a very good tradesman, or mechanic or CNC technician, or something dealing with manufacture or repair or construction. In the same way, you fundamentally believe that math contains the answers to everything, you pretty much live and breathe it, and can likely become a professor or researcher at some university or institute.
If you don't have any strong conviction about anything, it becomes much harder to determine the kind of stuff you will be good at because of external factors. For example, you could find yourself among peers that stimulate you emotionally in other ways, and then you end up developing a set of values that cause you to pursue a career that you never have thought of before.
Whether you like it or not, you don’t know which of your interests will withstand the test of time, especially if you indulge in them for 40+ hours a week. You also don’t know how good be, and how much you’d enjoy, careers that relate to them.
There’s no way for you to do this better than the way that everyone does it.
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I ended up making a list of all the jobs/roles that could be interesting and then for each job I made a list of skills and trainings that would be necessary/helpful. For example becoming a software engineer would require learning how to code, but if I wanted to join the foreign service I would be better off learning a new language.
Then I looked for skills that overlapped across careers and tried to find opportunities that would allow me to learn/improve on those skills. By focusing on what I would learn in a role, I didnt feel like I was committing to a life of drudgery and I kept the option to switch between careers open.
I would also second the person who told you to aim for the $$$. If you can earn a lot of money (and not spend it) in your early 20s it gives you a lot more freedom and flexibility later on. Because I saved a large percent of my software engineering salary, I was able to start a PhD program in my early 30s while many of my friends who spent their 20s (happily) earning less money are now starting to freak out about finances and dont have as much freedom when looking for employment.
but paid similarly
I also had the acumen for it, but I could easily see myself doing law or finance. Especially now that I know where I want to live, in comparison to then. It’s just that launching a software practice has just consumed even more industries now, and is a bigger field
1. Focus more on the day to day life of what working in that career is like. Focus less on what the topic is itself, intellectually. If you’re a curious person, there are probably at least half a dozen subjects you find interesting enough to do as a career. So it is less immediately important that you pick one over another. If you had an obvious sole choice, you wouldn’t be asking this question.
The under-discussed thing is that if you don’t like the daily work routine or environment of a particular profession, that intellectual content almost doesn’t matter. Especially after years and years of being in the industry. For example, if you don’t like working in an office at a desk all day, you probably will struggle with being a software engineer, no matter how interesting your find it. You might be better off looking into civil engineering, or construction management, or another semi-adjacent field that isn’t done entirely from a desk in an office.
2. This may be more of a personality thing, but try to pick a field that involves a fairly narrow set of skills which you are able to master over time. Even though many/most white collar technology jobs pay better and are at the cutting edge of the economy, I feel like (and I imagine many others do too) there is a distinct lack of “progress” in terms of your professional self development. It’s very easy to constantly learn new things, but not have them add up to any coherent whole. This is probably because technologies change so often and the business requirements vary wildly. This sort of scenario is very unlike say, a chef, in which it’s more easy to track your progress and feel like you’ve achieved something over the course of a decade.
I remember meeting an old artist at college who had gone to NYC for training in his youth. He explained how such an adventure was impossible nowadays, because it's just not possible to afford living in NYC as a young person without money.
I won't recommend that you don't pursue your passion, but I will say that if you want to do that, you must be excellent at it, meaning at least in the top 1% of people doing it, if you want to survive financially. That's certainly possible if you put the work in, because most people don't. But you have to be prepared for that.
So if you want to do something actually cool, like a college professor or researcher or artist or filmmaker, get ready to work consistently towards excellence, otherwise you won't be happy with the results. Otherwise, go into the most tolerable of the money-making enterprises, like engineering, IT or health care.
Nowadays, there are plenty other affordable places to train. It's not NYC or nothing.
Sometimes, I wonder if he's still there =P
So much happier to not be that impoverished, but I had a great time wheelin' & dealin' the /bayarea.
You can decide what you really want to do later.
It's easy to see with a little bit of reasoning.
Proven implies near 100% effectiveness in maximizing whatever features whoever means by "the best career".
And people are far too complex and unpredictible creatures to bottle them up into any predefined models.
You may find a "methology" that would fit you better and it can feel and look to you like "proven". But this makes the whole question realative to your personal preferences.
Also, its rare for a career to last more than 10-15 years these days, so think about how one career can set you up for another (e.g. 5-10 years programming, then move into management, or go back and get master's degree and teach, etc)
For example, you could intrinsically feel very good and justified as a person that is able to to work with his hands to build or fix stuff because of whatever reason. In this case you will likely become a very good tradesman, or mechanic or CNC technician, or something dealing with manufacture or repair or construction. In the same way, you fundamentally believe that math contains the answers to everything, you pretty much live and breathe it, and can likely become a professor or researcher at some university or institute.
If you don't have any strong conviction about anything, it becomes much harder to determine the kind of stuff you will be good at because of external factors. For example, you could find yourself among peers that stimulate you emotionally in other ways, and then you end up developing a set of values that cause you to pursue a career that you never have thought of before.
Whether you like it or not, you don’t know which of your interests will withstand the test of time, especially if you indulge in them for 40+ hours a week. You also don’t know how good be, and how much you’d enjoy, careers that relate to them.
There’s no way for you to do this better than the way that everyone does it.