My advice having observed the young adults around me and 30 years since is to start getting a plan together now.
OCD has advantages in certain jobs such as data analyst, data science, risk manager, data audit and data curator and handling and manipulating data (loosely called Big Data). This is where the largest growth in well paid white collar jobs will be over the next few years. I jumped to this sector 11 years ago because I was listening for the early signals of where the next gold rush was coming from. Prior to that I sold trading/risk systems to banks and hedge funds, but the 2008 crash put the dampers on that market. There's still money to be made, but only 50-60% of the gold rush days of the 90s and 00s
I only have 1 real skill in life and that is being an efficient leech and bandwagon rider. I get in on trends early, build up a network of contacts and milk it for all it is worth. I have a nose for what the next big thing is and can smell the money rushing in from investment funds and private equity. Booming industries have HUGE amounts of money sloshing around in them and everything, wages, conference prices, contractor rates all boom as a result. It's difficult to avoid some of that money sticking to you.
Ride a 20 year wave and you can own a $1m house by 40 years old outright just by being an employee. Then with no mortgage and two paid for cars in the drive, you can downsize/backpedal.
Data is the new oil and millions and millions of new jobs will be created in almost every company in the world. Other jobs are going to disappear or reduce to 10% of what they were as robots take over those roles (call centre operator, bookkeeper, financial trader/broker, clerks, low-level accounts). But data jobs are going to boom over the next 20 years. These jobs require a VERY in-depth interest in some pretty esoteric data sets (and if your social skills are lacking that is no disadvantage). Once you deeply understand the data set and understand data quality and completeness you are extremely difficult to replace and therefore your salary tends to outpace wage inflation as firms compete for staff.
Ask the adults around you who know you and those whom you trust to suggest what they think your aptitudes and skills might be. The write to independent professionals and in a humble and polite way ask them for their experience of the career and to tell you the ups and downs. You might be surprised how many people are happy to help if you ask in the right way. Ask strangers not friends as they are more likely to tell you the unvarnished truth about the pros and cons of the sector. Matthew for example could tell you about the realities of being a developer and working from home, the taxes, the problems of working on your own, etc.
Nowadays, it is more important that ever to pick a career path and stick to it. If you decide to become a computer programmer at 40 or change from computer programming to sales and marketing or sales and marketing to running a logistics company then be prepared to take a big cut in salary and climb the greasy pole again. In your 20s you have a lot of ambition and energy but few unique skills and little to contribute. By your 40s you need to have those skills established (by reputation as much as reality) so you can back pedal in your late 40s and 50s when you are lacking in energy. Moreover by your 40s and 50s you are in the middle of raising a large Catholic family (unavoidable if your wife isn't contracepting) so you need to be able to back-pedal a bit to spend the time with your half-dozen to one-dozen children to make sure they get the skills in life to not be dropouts and basement dwellers.
Pick once, pick wisely and throw yourself at it five or six days per week. If you are really busy with work and learning useful commercial skills you should find that the other problems handle themselves. Women will find you if they know you are earning more than the other young men on their radar. If at 26 you decide to try a vocation, then you can afford to take a couple of years out, fund yourself and come back to your career at 28.
If university is free in Denmark and you are smart enough, then go and do something sensible like a STEM subject. Otherwise get into the world of work. In truth for most jobs, most employers don't care much about university degrees. They want reliable employees who turn up and get the job done. I am regularly in Copenhagen, Arhus and Esbjerg so I know what the local jobs scene is like for the banking, insurance and telco (mobile) sectors.
You also have to think of a job that 1 billion Indians and 1.3 billion Chinese cannot easily do in the next 20 years. Because the internet makes them cheaper to employ and companies are always going to watch their bottom line. No Ching-Chong is going to be able to sell a large AI system to a bank, because those are sold in English and will continue to be. An Indian might be able to sell a system, but generally speaking the smaller vendors who sell cutting edge technology are not based out of India and frankly the number of Indians who are westernised enough to do business with western run companies are fairly few and they are usually working for those companies and selling THEIR stuff to India. The vast majority of Indians are peasants. Some of them well educated, but with a peasant mindset.
Topic: Struggle with stress and OCD (Read 4263 times)