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Starting salary where I teach now near Pittsburgh is in the low $40k range, and the pensions in both NM and PA have gotten much worse just in the last decade. I was in my 18th year of teaching in Santa Fe, making just over $80k. It’s not great. I wouldn’t recommend it to mid-career switchers.

Learn to subsistence farm?

I’m hearing “the trades” a lot. World will always need plumbers, etc

This has been an argument I’ve been in since the Slashdot days in the 90s.

There's a huge shortage of skilled tradespeople right now. I'm not saying it's a bad option for many people. Nor am I dismissive of the work, (having done it). It's just not a good solution for willfully collapsing part of society for the benefit of rent seekers.

"Learn to weld" only works when people are planning big projects everywhere, but nobody knows what the price of steel will be next week. I know people trying to get started in metalworking and there isn't a ton of jobs rn

I should say financialization + billionaire class solidarity + grifting, also…ketamine?

And half of all professional govt and science jobs simultaneously cratered because woke And we started an oil crisis And we launched tariffs Like you couldn’t plan a national demolition this good if you tried

Yikes. Sure, we'll always need healthcare, just like we'll always need childcare -- but that doesn't mean those will be good, well-paying jobs that don't grind you to dust.

i got halfway through a medical degree and worked in healthcare for about a decade previously... but the only job listings rn are for practitioner roles OR clerical/coder float pool contracts with no benefits for barely above minimum wage, often requiring a second language fluency. we're doomed.

Yes, I would genuinely rather starve in a ditch than do a healthcare job. Profoundly Not For Me.

Yes! It’s work I absolutely admire people for being able to do and am so grateful for it bc I’m very sensitive and also humans are gross

It is true that there IS a very obvious and apparently rather easy way for normal people to make money off of GenAI right now: unfortunately this way is “scams.”

I quit teaching because I realized I was phoning it in (and also being stuck as an adjunct wasn't super incentivizing). I couldn't imagine recommending *healthcare* to people unless they want to work in the field, phoning it in there is so much worse!

It's going to be decades of unpacking just how unhinged the abuse of healthcare, service industry, and other front line works got during the pandemic and largely persisted at far greater levels after '22

And F that S

Also, while there absolutely is industry demand for say nurses, the demand to get into nursing programs vastly outstrips the slots available in said programs.

Which, aren’t they trying to replace a bunch of that work with AI

Isn’t the thing anti-college people tell you to do is work in the trades? So maybe pick up a hammer?

In the last few years the shift with high schoolers that don’t want to go to college is back towards the trades. HVAC, welding, small engines, etc.

unless you're a direct care role, healthcare is pretty dogshit too now tbf

What I have heard, seriously, is "ICE" being the new answer.

at our place, we have a very strong culture of teamwork and shared mission across all layers of the enterprise –– not just patient care –– which helps us recruit & retain people who feel the same way 90+% of the positions are just like any other large organization

Yes, it's "learn to build data centers"

Probably I had a friend try to become an electrician, only to find out that apprenticeship in our area is a nightmare of graft and having to know somebody I went STEM and it is no better I hate this timeline

The assumption in tech circles is that somebody will pay eventually if the vibe coding is good, which uh

I feel *extremely* lucky that I landed a tech job at a not-tech-but-tech-adjacent company where the boom-bust cycles in FAANG-world have largely passed me by. But I’d be lying if I said anything feels safe, much less has a bright future. The bolt’s busted loose from the lever.

"Learn to kiss ass" works in all times and places, but if it doesn't come naturally to you, it's a hell of a slog trying to learn it.

2. And people without jobs can’t even buy products

Without UBI

Even before AI, learning the particular syntax of a language and tech stack your employer happens to be using is the least challenging step, especially with modern IDEs.

Currently I feel like my future (late Millennial with educational neglect and no continuous career) is just Entry Level Hell at best unless something drastically changes. I don't have any illusions this system would ever find me valuable.

I do regularly encourage people to explore building trades, unionized if possible, but that's not something with infinite capacity (among other problems such as requisite physical fitness)