Finding a Path

← Pathways Forward

This fall, people from very different corners are telling parents the same thing: nobody can promise which careers will still be safe twenty years from now. Writing as fathers, Packy McCormick and Alex Danco of a16z put it bluntly. No set of schools and degrees can guarantee a safe career into the 2040s and 2050s. That is not a reason to guess blindly. It is a reason to teach a student how to find a path, test it cheaply, and find a new one if jobs in that field seem likely to have no potential, or are found to be uninteresting.

Pathways Forward adds one more question to every path a student explores: can it grow, in the years a young family is being raised, into work that carries a household on one full-time income, so a parent can stay home and teach? A young woman who hopes to teach her own children also asks a second one: will this field give her a satisfying career she can keep up from home, on hours she sets? See who these pathways are for.

The common thread

Their advice comes from investors, founders and the heads of some of the largest technology companies, and it points the same way. Start by exposing students to many kinds of work early, and watch closely for the fields that genuinely excite them. That excitement is not a luxury. It is what keeps a young person practicing long after the novelty wears off, and real depth only comes from that kind of sustained effort. So give each student room to explore what draws them, then help them follow it into something specific and practical that general knowledge, and now AI, can't do for them. Look for where real demand is growing, including the trades that build and maintain the AI economy itself. Treat youth as the cheapest time to try things, even a business of one's own, but only things the student truly cares about. Encourage them to lead real projects and to make things rather than only consume them. And use the new AI tools to learn faster, not to skip the learning. None of them says a costly degree is the safe default. Depth, proof of ability and a willingness to adapt are what hold their value.

What the people building the future are saying

Explore wide, then go deep McCormick & Danco (a16z): expose children to many things early, then help them go as deep as they can on whatever excites them most. It matters less which field it is than that curiosity and depth get built.
Specific beats general Alex Karp (Palantir): AI has made general knowledge cheap, so a smart generalist with nothing specific to offer is exposed. The rewards go to deep, practical ability, such as shaping a ship's hull, pouring a factory floor to precision, or diagnosing a complex machine with only a high-school diploma. Outside a handful of top schools, his advice is to go to the cheapest one.
Watch where the work is Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), in his 2026 Carnegie Mellon commencement address, told electricians, plumbers, iron workers and technicians "this is your time." The AI buildout is a new industrial era, and it needs people to build, wire and maintain it.
Try while the stakes are low Palmer Luckey (Anduril): a young person with no mortgage and no family to support takes less risk starting a business than they ever will again. Trying costs little but time. The same window is the time to earn the credential, before a family’s costs arrive.
Follow what actually drives you Amjad Masad (Replit): many young founders commit to ideas they don't care about because friends are raising money. Ask what is really driving you. The right idea keeps pulling you back, and money that locks a young person into a path before they have one is a trap, not a gift.
Lead something, make something Chris Painter (METR): two habits that hold up however AI changes work. Take charge of a project that leaves you feeling out of your depth, and create more than you consume, ideally in something you care about. Which project matters less than learning how to start one and learn from it.
Learn with the tools AI companies now publish free, on-demand training organized by role. xAI's Galaxy sessions, for example, have tracks for engineers, product managers, founders, sales and support. A student can see how a field actually works in an afternoon, before spending a dollar on it.

How we put it into practice

1 · Sample (ages 12–15)

Many short exposures: a shop day, clinic or office shadowing, a coding weekend, a business pitch night, a ranch or forestry crew. Keep a simple log of what held the student's attention and what didn't.

2 · Test (ages 15–17)

Pick two or three and test them for real: a paid part-time job, a first industry certificate, a dual-credit course in the field. Tests should be cheap and give answers quickly.

3 · Commit (17 and up)

Choose the field, then the credential it actually requires (license, certificate or degree), and reach it at the least cost. See Paying for the Path. Map the climb as well as the start: which license, promotion or shop of one’s own brings the income a family of three or more children needs, and whether it can come before the children do.

4 · Stay re-routable

Stack credits and certificates that transfer, learn to use AI inside the chosen field, and keep the general foundations strong: clear writing, sound arithmetic, honest dealing with people. If the field shifts, the student takes a detour, not a dead end.

The test for any path

Can the student do something specific that people will pay for, prove it, and hold the credential the field requires, without taking on debt they can't carry? Does it lead, by the time a family is growing, to an income one earner can support that family on, or, for a mother at home, to skilled work that bends around her own home school? A path that passes that test is a good one, whether it runs through a shop, a clinic, a lab, a campus or a business of their own.

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