Optionality

How can we give valid advice to young people in a world that is changing so fast?

"Young engineer 5" by The IET | Photo gallery is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

The world is changing fast. It can be hard for people in our 30s and beyond to give good advice to young people. What used to be sensible guidance might now be past its sell-by date, while good advice might appear very obscure. For example, becoming a lawyer or accountant used to be very safe options, but both professions will be hit hard by automation. Meanwhile, user experience (UX) design is on the verge of massive growth, but how many people even know what it is?

There is a cliché that we should follow our passions. This is probably true, but only up to a point. If you turn it around, doing something that you hate is a terrible idea, particularly if you stick with it for decades. The problem is that our preconceived idea of what we will enjoy is probably much too narrow. It would be better to expose yourself to many different fields before committing to one that you enjoy and do well.

If you take this idea seriously, it probably means that young people should make their education as general as possible. If you are good at maths and making things, a general engineering degree will give you lots of options. The world definitely needs more engineers! If you are good at maths but not so good at making things, we are moving towards a world awash with data, so statistics, data science and probability theory will be good bets. If you are good at art, studying design and gaining experience across a wide number of domains seems sensible.

Sometimes young people will have a hunch about what they want to do with their lives, often based on an old-school trade or profession. Journalism is a good example. In my experience as a working journalist, though, there are far too many graduates with journalism degrees, but not nearly enough jobs. Business-to-business (B2B) journalism (writing about business and finance for a professional audience) is by far the healthiest part of the industry. In my opinion, getting a first degree in economics and then a post-graduate degree in journalism would be a fine way of breaking into the industry. If a person who took this advice later decided that he or she didn’t like journalism, an economics degree would provide plenty of other options.

In fact, the word optionality underlies much of the advice in this week’s column. The art is to get a broad an education as possible, leaving as many career paths open to you as possible. Get lots of experience across multiple fields early in your career and then double down on exciting areas where you have an edge. If this doesn’t work, retrace your steps and start the process again.

The world of startups creates many options for young people. I might be biased (I joined a journalism startup in 2002, worked hard as it became a unicorn and enjoy interviewing startup founders), but young people should seriously consider a career in startups before they have family responsibilities. Startups exist to solve knotty problems in new ways, which makes them a high-risk / high-reward endeavour.

Startup Genome has analysed some 3m startups around the world. It valued the scene at a staggering $6.4 trillion. There are some 540 unicorns around the world, with valuations of $1 billion and up. The reason that startups are so exciting is that the best ones can become unicorns by capturing exponential growth when they successfully solve a problem in a new way. Most will fail, of course, but there is no shame in abandoning ship and looking for a more promising project.

Startups embody the advice to seek optionality. Going in as an early employee and getting stock options can be like winning the lottery if you pick the right project and it takes off exponentially. Of course, there are many other ways of getting involved in the scene, particularly on the investment side for young people interested in finance. I would recommend looking into venture capital and private equity as career options.

Just knowing that startups exist can give young people an edge over their peers, particularly those who buy into old-fashioned ideologies with an anti-business stance. Anyone who wants to get involved in the scene should think about moving to a startup hub as soon as possible after graduating. That means Silicon Valley, New York and Boston in the US; London and Berlin in Europe; or Tokyo and Seoul in Asia. There are also many up-and-coming hubs, including Barcelona, where I live.

The advice so far has been aimed at young people considering going to university. Of source, not all people will go down this route. There are plenty of computer-based careers where vocational training is just as valid as a university degree, from information technology (IT) support to coding. Also, anyone thinking about going into the service industry should know that jobs at high-end bars, restaurants and hotels will be safer from automation than those at cheaper places.

So, to sum up, young people who want to thrive in a fast-changing world should get a broad education; try many things early in their career; look for areas where they have an edge, particularly new fields; and dive into the startup scene as early as possible. If you don’t want to go to university, think hard about the risks of automation in your chosen field. The comments are open. See you next week!

Further Reading

Young people should start saving money as soon as possible

My thoughts on the innovation society

Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters*

*This book recommendation isn’t an endorsement of the authors’ politics or their views on grunge music from the 1990s

Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated! If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the first-anniversary post, which includes links to a free book.

Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.