Ask HN: What's a “rare and valuable” skill that is not programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a “rare and valuable” skill that is not programming?

21 pointsgamechangr27 comments

My kids (10,14,15) are all learning programming in school, which is good. It kind of makes me think in the future programming will not be as rare or as valuable as it was 20 years ago.

I want to create a list of tangible skills (with your help) I could help them develop, so they have a good future.

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Sales. 2X more important that the rest of this list. As long as there are people and products, sales will be a valuable skill.

The "Trades": Carpentry, Plumbing, Electrical. NOT just as a job... most Americans own houses... knowing these skills can save you tens of thousands, and potentially add massive value to your property. Its a great fallback in case you lose your job.

Contract Negotiation/ Drafting. In the future much of our drafting work will be normal people using templates from the internet. Knowing the basics of drafting will save you a bunch of money and keep your risk levels down.

A Foreign Language. If you are based in the US your top choices should be Chinese (Mandarin , Cantonese) or Spanish.

Bartending/ Cooking The single fastest way to get decent income in case you lose your full time employment. PLUS I would argue culinary skills are valuable in business.

Culinary skills are also very valuable for dating, socializing and can also be used for networking. Also good culinary skills can improve one's life significantly by eating better food for cheaper.

This list is excellent. Sales, programming and writing was going to be my list.

About a decent income: can't you just become a tutor?

Yes, but the market isn't as large, AND it focuses primarily on ACT/SAT prep in the US. Which is extremely seasonal. So between seasonality, plus corporate providers (Kumon, Mathnasium) you either need to be extremely specialized (Statistics) or catch it at the right time to not have your income de-stabilized.

What is 'drafting" exactly? (like a Lawyer or more like an Architect?)

Legal Drafting

The ability to explain the same thing differently to accommodate different people.

I have found that tutoring really helped me develop this skill. It also forces you to figure out what doesn't make sense to the other person and clear that up as well, even if it's not part of the question. Also, sometimes people aren't even sure what they need to ask.

I have worked with lots of people that know exactly what they were talking about, but couldn't convey it to the rest of the team. It can be crippling.

I'm a dad who has been struggling with this. I've come to the conclusion that 'helping' just re-enforces the 'wot do you know old person'. I've had great results from emailing things that I find fun - most of which is ignored - but every so often it sparks an interest. Fan those flames - not your own. BUT remember. EVERY child is different and YMMV on any approach. Be very adaptable. Horrid answer for us prog types I know, sorry.

Diplomat level negotiation and mediation. The level of skill that supports work that takes years sometimes. Some of those people can work magic.

Cooking, everyone needs to eat and a good cook is popular with friends, at dinners and in the dating scene.

Drawing and Writing. The ability to communicate your thoughts and ideas through sketching or typing is valuable skill of communication that most people neglect. Conveying an abstract idea effectively could get them the job or win a contract.

Be good-ish at 2 or 3 different things - one of which is programming which has a leveraging effect on anything else you learn (just trust the default libraries). Being good-ish at 2-3 different things (as a strategy) is rare and if you're actively looking you can translate that into valuable.

This is good advice, programming should underlay the other skills, then learning any specialty/domain on top of that will translate into very unique, valuable skills in that new domain. The more I learn the more I see how sooooo many things are in uncharted territory, so many ideas yet to be had.

1) Public speaking

2) Body language

3) Basic finance - for which I recommend a no chore allowance. Make them buy all non essentials with allowance. Oh we are at a fair, you want a lemonade? Sure, with your money. Water I will give (buy) for free. Total cost is less than the cost of your 23 year old child calling and saying they need rent money or they are being thrown out. Make the amount age based, and pay them once a month. We do ours on the last Friday of the month.

What's the best way to go about improving your body language?

Practice! (With video or a mirror) Additionally, if you want to see some of the fundamentals there is a book called "what every body is saying"... pretty good read

Deep concentration is a rare and valuable skill IMO, especially the ability to do that at will.

Panning for gold.

lots of youtube videos available for self-study as I have recently discovered

Outside of the last and current tech bubble programming was never that valuable. And even then and now it's constrained to a few places and a few kinds of "programmers".

Nowadays crypto seems like the a space that could produce hypergrowth while being obvious and underappreciated at the same time.

How is programming not that valuable when average programmer makes $150k in US and university students from top colleges with programming can find $100k jobs straight outta college? Being good at programming is almost a for-sure way to mid to high wealth nowadays.

What's your source for the average of $150k? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the median is $82k [0]. Glassdoor seems to agree [1]. Plenty of jobs in the legal and medical profession command higher salaries and provide better job security.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/programmer-salary-SRCH_KO...

But none of these jobs are available for people without university degree.

It's tricky. You'll see different titles like "software engineer", "backend engineer", "fullstack developer", "systems engineer" etc... who are mostly just programmers, so it's not an objective classification.

Keep in mind that these high salaries are a permanent force behind businesses outsourcing programming extremely aggressively.

the overall results are negative but the bean counters are very very happy.

> Nowadays crypto seems like the a space that could produce hypergrowth while being obvious and underappreciated at the same time.

Well the skill you generically refer to as crypto involves a huge amount of programming and maths, unless you mean getting skilled at trading and promoting crypto.

Yes, the dev side in the broadest sense. This space is really starving for tech talent. It's still relatively ignored by most techies (with no shortage of business types). Kind of like many seasoned programmers didn't want to work on web stuff a couple of years ago (more like 6-8 years ago I guess? time goes fast!).

The promotional side is interesting too though. It seems like nowadays you can go pretty far (financially) by having a dedicated community.

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