Have you thought about trying to become a serial entrepreneur?
You won’t likely get bored—entrepreneurs typically have to play many roles since they are the 1st employees of the companies they start. If you’re still afraid you’ll get bored, you could make each company you start be in a different industry, getting a job in that industry before you start the company in order to acquire industry knowledge and spot inefficiencies. (Consider reading this book to learn about various industries.)
Perhaps most importantly, if you make more money than you know what to do with, you can become a philanthropist and have a larger positive impact on the course of world history than is possible with most careers. (Even if you want to have a large positive impact on world history using some other method, such as by being a good politician, you’ll likely find having a ton of money to be really helpful. The main world changing career that doesn’t benefit highly from having a ton of money is the academic/public intellectual one, which has its own perilious “graduate student” advancement track.)
If you find this idea interests you, I recommend reading a few of the books on the personal MBA reading list. I think you’ll be surprised by just how unintelligent and irrational the median entrepreneur is, including the median successful entrepreneur. As far as I can tell, the only thing all entrepreneurs have in common is fearlessness, which is a prerequisite (and quite possible to develop, I’m happy to elaborate on how I developed fearlessness in myself). Then the successful ones have things like intelligence, domain knowledge, and inclination to work hard.
Regarding programming in particular, it’s a very useful skill to have regardless of whether you go into it as a career. Being able to write software will allow you to optimize your computer use, and learning is quite a mind expanding experience.
And based on my research from when I was choosing a major, software engineering is basically the best career achievable for someone who only has a 4 year degree. The combination of job outlook (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905410), salary, working conditions, and interestingness of work is very hard to beat, especially if you have chops and you’re willing to move to Silicon Valley. (The only downside is that keeping up with the constantly changing field can be difficult as you grow older.) My runner up choices would be mining engineers, who, based on my limited research, get paid a lot of money to travel the world and blow things up, and police officers, who make quite a bit of money and retire early with a pension in certain US localities.
Choosing a career for the next 50 years of your life now is a fallacy. For modern workers, midlife career changes are the norm, not the exception. If you really don’t know what to do, choose the highest paying job you can find without upgrading your lifestyle so you’ll have more options down the road.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I’ve never seriously considered becoming an entrepreneur, so your post is very useful and may even significantly change the rest of my life. I need to do a lot more research about all this. Those links are also really helpful; Paul Graham’s essay makes lots of sense.
My plan at the moment is to settle on some vague life plan. I’m not nearly competent enough yet to go off and start a business or get a job, so I think my plan at the moment, if said “vague life plan” is to become an entrepreneur, is to finish high school and then go to some university. While I’m doing that I’ll be learning more about entrepreneurship and other useful skills, then decide where to go from there.
I happen to remember reading a couple of posts of yours, and you strike me as very capable guy.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/61t/what_would_you_do_with_infinite_willpower/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/5xw/training_for_math_olympiads/
Have you thought about trying to become a serial entrepreneur?
You won’t likely get bored—entrepreneurs typically have to play many roles since they are the 1st employees of the companies they start. If you’re still afraid you’ll get bored, you could make each company you start be in a different industry, getting a job in that industry before you start the company in order to acquire industry knowledge and spot inefficiencies. (Consider reading this book to learn about various industries.)
Being an entrepreneur is the archetypical example of a job in which you actually get paid according to how awesome you are.
Perhaps most importantly, if you make more money than you know what to do with, you can become a philanthropist and have a larger positive impact on the course of world history than is possible with most careers. (Even if you want to have a large positive impact on world history using some other method, such as by being a good politician, you’ll likely find having a ton of money to be really helpful. The main world changing career that doesn’t benefit highly from having a ton of money is the academic/public intellectual one, which has its own perilious “graduate student” advancement track.)
If you find this idea interests you, I recommend reading a few of the books on the personal MBA reading list. I think you’ll be surprised by just how unintelligent and irrational the median entrepreneur is, including the median successful entrepreneur. As far as I can tell, the only thing all entrepreneurs have in common is fearlessness, which is a prerequisite (and quite possible to develop, I’m happy to elaborate on how I developed fearlessness in myself). Then the successful ones have things like intelligence, domain knowledge, and inclination to work hard.
Regarding programming in particular, it’s a very useful skill to have regardless of whether you go into it as a career. Being able to write software will allow you to optimize your computer use, and learning is quite a mind expanding experience.
And based on my research from when I was choosing a major, software engineering is basically the best career achievable for someone who only has a 4 year degree. The combination of job outlook (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2905410), salary, working conditions, and interestingness of work is very hard to beat, especially if you have chops and you’re willing to move to Silicon Valley. (The only downside is that keeping up with the constantly changing field can be difficult as you grow older.) My runner up choices would be mining engineers, who, based on my limited research, get paid a lot of money to travel the world and blow things up, and police officers, who make quite a bit of money and retire early with a pension in certain US localities.
Choosing a career for the next 50 years of your life now is a fallacy. For modern workers, midlife career changes are the norm, not the exception. If you really don’t know what to do, choose the highest paying job you can find without upgrading your lifestyle so you’ll have more options down the road.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I’ve never seriously considered becoming an entrepreneur, so your post is very useful and may even significantly change the rest of my life. I need to do a lot more research about all this. Those links are also really helpful; Paul Graham’s essay makes lots of sense.
My plan at the moment is to settle on some vague life plan. I’m not nearly competent enough yet to go off and start a business or get a job, so I think my plan at the moment, if said “vague life plan” is to become an entrepreneur, is to finish high school and then go to some university. While I’m doing that I’ll be learning more about entrepreneurship and other useful skills, then decide where to go from there.
Great to hear that you found my advice useful!