Beer Goggles
Three young men are standing around at a party, each holding a red Solo cup. All are under 25. Two have degrees in computer science, and neither can find a job.
The third guy is still figuring out what to do with his life. He's considered studying computer science, but after twenty minutes of conversation, he's reconsidering. Apparently, coding is a dead end. He'll find something else.
Meanwhile, software is finding its way into practically every corner of the economy. Businesses are racing to automate work, adopt AI, and develop capabilities they couldn't have imagined a few years ago. Traditional programming jobs are changing dramatically, and entirely new opportunities are emerging. Nobody knows exactly where the industry will be in five years.
But our young man is finished investigating. Two guys at a party have settled the matter.
He hasn't investigated the industry, examined emerging opportunities, or considered what might change over the next five years. He's taken the experiences of two unemployed graduates and turned them into a conclusion about his own future.
I've spent decades as a father, coach, and employer, watching young people make enormous life decisions based on remarkably little evidence. College, careers, relationships, where to live, what opportunities to pursue, and which ones to abandon. Sometimes a single conversation, one unpleasant experience, or a friend's opinion is enough to settle the matter.
And older people are hardly immune. There's some irony in writing an essay warning about anecdotal evidence based on anecdotes I've collected over a lifetime.
But why do we investigate a used car more thoroughly than decisions that might influence the next forty years of our lives?
Anecdotes are useful. They're often where investigations begin. Those two unemployed graduates have something important to teach our young man. He should listen carefully and then get curious about what else he doesn't know. Find people working in the industry. Ask questions. Look around. Maybe try building something himself.
The tools for investigating almost any profession or opportunity have never been more accessible. A young person with an internet connection and access to AI can explore industries, occupations, salaries, business opportunities, and emerging technologies in an afternoon. He can identify people worth speaking with, uncover assumptions worth challenging, and discover possibilities he'd never considered.
Yet the availability of information means little if you don't recognize the need to look for it.
What troubles me is how quietly the consequences of these decisions accumulate. A poorly chosen career can influence earnings, friendships, geography, relationships, and opportunities for decades. One decision changes the circumstances in which the next decision gets made.
We spend enormous resources warning young people about smoking, drinking, and other destructive behaviors. I wonder how much attention we give to the quality of the evidence they use to make decisions that will shape the rest of their lives.
The consequences can be enormous, and many of them are invisible.
You rarely get to see the life you eliminated.
Our third boy might have become an extraordinary software engineer, founded a company, or discovered work he loved doing. He might have spent the next forty years building things that mattered to him, surrounded by people he would never otherwise have met.
Instead, he walked into a party considering computer science and walked out having practically ruled it out, without ever investigating the possibilities.
All because two guys holding red Solo cups couldn't find jobs.
A Note About Those Two Computer Science Graduates
I suspect those two young men at the party have more opportunity ahead of them than they realize.
Artificial intelligence is creating an expanding body of work that barely has established job titles. Someone needs to capture human expertise, understand what organizations are trying to accomplish, give AI systems the right information, connect them to the real world, evaluate their decisions, and protect the knowledge they're entrusted with.
I expect demand for these capabilities to grow enormously. Many require a combination of software knowledge, practical experience, curiosity, and an understanding of people and organizations.
A computer science degree could be an excellent foundation for this work, even when AI writes much of the code.
Those two graduates might have more valuable skills than the current job market is telling them. I wonder whether any of the three boys have investigated these emerging opportunities.
Further reading: Every Business Needs an AI Pirate
AI disclosure: I developed the ideas, observations, and direction of this essay through conversations with ChatGPT, which assisted with drafting and editing. The opinions and conclusions are my own.