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What country are you in?
Trades generally make a decent amount. Masonry, carpentry, welding, transportation, electrical, plumbing, waste management, etc all have decent pay rates in most first world countries with codes and regulations.
Communications and drone operators might have a future career, depending on the job and company.
If you learn graphic design and are good with IT then there's a lot of small companies that need an 'everything guy'.
You see them advertised as graphic design jobs but with executives assistant responsibilities in the descriptions.
It wasn't when I took it, but condominium superintendent. I fell into it. It's very minor work since all the repairs are done by contractors. I'm just a homesteader essentially, I get up and make sure the property is cared for.
I get paid $50k a year plus benefits, pension, Union, and I get a rent free condo unit, free internet and cable, free phone.
The free apartment saves me roughly $2500 a month on rent, in this ridiculous city I live in, so that alone makes this job extremely worth it
In Norway, fishing has the reputation of being a good fit for many who struggles with more theoretical professions while being very, very well paid. Like highly paid IT consulatant sallary.
The finance sector has been good to me, worked at the same place for 8 years, was well paid, got laid off due to cutbacks as my skills were not needed anymore, but got a good deal and am now at another finance company earning more and doing more interesting stuff.
My roles have all been in IT.
In the IT field particularly, if you like programming, Ada and COBOL are easy to learn, not desirable for young people because theyβre not fashionable languages, and pay well because the old people that know them are retiring.
If you learn to code in COBOL, there will always be demand for your coding skills. But you'll want to kill yourself because the only code you'll ever get to work on is half-century-old spaghetti that has absurdly high uptime requirements.
Give it a decade or two, and Java will be the new COBOL
People have been saying that for like a decade now
A decade ago I said it was 3-4 decades away
I was thinking the same thing lately... Which organizations do you know of using these?
In the last fifteen years, Iβve worked at banks, insurance companies, and telcos on COBOL, and defence contractors and telcos with Ada.
There is always talk about replacing these huge legacy systems with something in Erlang, or Rust, or even Java (!); but some of these systems are more than fifty years old, with patches on patches, so in my opinion, replacement is going to be cumbersome and impractical.
https://80000hours.org/ probably has information relevant to you, and they do have specific comments about IT roles, and many careers they talk about are related to computers in some way.
Machinist, electronics, or glass shop at a large university. Half make more than most professors (although that isn't saying much)
HVAC. Takes just as much to learn as other trades but you make way more money.
Electrician, especially if you're ok with relocating. So many places around the world lack electricians when the infra just keeps growing everywhere.
What's it take to learn to be an electrician? Like where do you go to learn?
Your local electrical union will place you in an apprenticeship.
If you really want IT. Then telecom
Most people in telecom are old and are analog phone people, they don't know ip/sip and don't want to learn.
It's basically a small networking job that you never get calls on nights and weekends about and if you do it's a system you can reboot remotely. If it's not the system it's a switch and its someone else's job.
Telecom isn't sexy but it's still needed, no one's going into it as it's not 'sexy' and to be honest it's easy AF.
US government jobs. Find something you're interested in, get some education, take the civil service exams, profit.
When I was early 20s, I wanted to get rich quick. Followed my dad into insurance, even though I had no interest or sales skills. Learned a lot! And dad was a stunning salesman. Made about every penny off referrals, because he hooked people up with products that worked for them, not a monolithic company. (He represented 20 or so firms.)
Yeah. Easing into IT worked out, and I'm doing well, but looking at where I'm at 30 years later, fuck me, I should have stuck with forestry and been a ranger. I'd probably be retired by now and raking in pay. Benefits out the ass, all that. Imagine how healthy I would be after 20-years of ranger work! I'm OK now, despite a "sinful" life. :) Then I could retire to my dream job, being a campground host at a national or state park. LOL, live on a lake and tell the kids to keep it quiet and keep the beer on the downlow. Walk around killing the occasional fire ant mound.
And while we're at it, US military. God. Damn. I could have learned IT properly, retired after 20-years in, came back and consulted for the DoD. My bf in high school went in a fat body, came out hard, spent a couple of years active, then went National Guard.
Retired after a few years in, and then once a month on exercises, he's fucking loaded. Retired at 39. Collects classic cars for kicks.
And for those of you who think "military" = "combat", LOL no, most of you couldn't get into combat if you tried. He only saw "light" combat in central America, in the early 90's (we were not in El Salvador, did not happen!) He got in the fight because he begged for it.
As a vet I can't recommend the military
The military sounds like a great job except for the whole - supporting the US government murder and exploit third world countries and enforcing even more inequality in the world - thing. (Yes, even if you're not actually holding the guns)
Nobody should join the US military.