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Comment by cdreke | Hacker News Reader

This is what I would say to my younger self if I was starting out today: This is no different than at other times in history. Creative destruction at its best. New jobs will arise and there will be plenty of jobs to go around once the new growth cycle gets underway. In the meantime, create your own job. Youthful flexibility is your biggest asset. Be helpful and you will succeed. Oh, and stay away from social media. It is the cigarette of the day - you don't need to smoke because everyone else is doing it.

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> This is no different than at other times in history. Creative destruction at its best. New jobs will arise and there will be plenty of jobs to go around once the new growth cycle gets underway.

This feels a bit unwarranted. There doesn't need to be some major new paradigm shift for things to get bad from an employment perspective. All that needs to happen is for this creative destruction rate to slightly exceed the new job creation rate, and there's your tipping point. I certainly feel that your average grad today doesn't have the same opportunities I did in the late 90s.

> New jobs will arise and there will be plenty of jobs to go around once the new growth cycle gets underway.

That is a gamble. Everyone talks about how the dotcom bust quickly recovered and housing bust recovered. But that period was when smart phones started, everyone got broadband and most businesses moved to the web. Can you be surely something else will come along?

> Can you be surely something else will come along?

something has come along - the new fangled AI stuff.

People back then also didnt think the internet would amount to much when it first came out, and people also thought mobile phones were for business users not casual consumers.

I'm at the point where I hope AI doesn't catch on long term. At least how it currently is, it seems like a societal downgrade.

The whole point of the new fangled AI stuff is to reduce the demand for knowledge workers.

Once you’ve automated manual labor and mental labor, what’s left?

If you frame it like a farmer back in the day hearing there will be more jobs because of the industrial revolution so they conclude that means there will be more farmers but just doing a new type of farming, that would obviously be wrong.

To me, it seems obvious the next boom 10 years out is in physical labor and being an advanced robot with your body. That is what will have value with the hugely deflationary knowledge work part going from super expensive to insanely cheap.

Not OP, but of course they can’t be sure. No one can but if it doesn’t come along we will just be kind of screwed.

Better to be optimistic and make moves to position yourself for the “new thing that comes along” then to give in to despair. Then if it does come along they are ready to jump on that train.

In this case their is nothing lost with cautious optimism.

Of the many good comments, this is the one that IMHO is the most helpful.

I got my first real job in a very down employment market--much worse than today. Got skills, learned how business worked. Found a pigeonhole where I could profitably work for myself based on the new skills. Built a reputation. Was hired by folks who needed my expertise, etc. The key for me was to get an accurate read on the employment market and let it guide my decisions.

My path night not be directly reproducible, but the orientation in OP's post nails the kind of thinking that's needed.

Pleasantly optimistic sentiments, but if you want to get certain kinds of job you benefit from being on LinkedIn, and if you want a "be your own boss" job it's almost mandatory to have a social media presence so that you can find customers. It's like being in the phone book used to be.

It took me way too long in life to realize that you can do whatever gives you money, at the end of the day. Like it doesn’t have to be a job, just anything that gets cash to you.

Some people run errands. Some people make stuff. Some people are valuable friends. Some people are wise advisors. Some people help you get healthy. Whatever!

I know this is painfully obvious in hindsight, but maybe something about 18 straight years of “your choices are military, college, or trades” prevented me from thinking outside the box. I probably would’ve gotten started on a career I was excited about a loooot earlier in life.

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