alt Hacker News> My economically valuable skillset – programming – suddenly feels less valuable. What shall I teach my son?
Maybe that's just me, but this strikes me as a bit odd. When i think about my parents and what i appreciate about them and how they raised me, hard skills are not very high up the list. Things like encouraging curiosity, agency and freedom to pursue things that I showed interest in even if it meant spending many weekends and many eurodollars on me that they would no doubt have found ways to spend otherwise come to mind first, along with general values about society and how (not) to treat people.
Edit: there are "hard skills" they taught me, but they are more along the lines of "we want you to be a self sufficient human being capable of dealing with life" (cooking, cleaning, how to budget and think about money,...) and less about increasing my value as a participant in the labor market
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Speaking for myself, although I never expected that I'd pass on hard skills to my child (unless they showed a particular interest), at least up until 2019 I felt confident that I could guide them in a general direction to be successful in life. How to do well in school, how to develop a work ethic, how to learn and pursue the things that interest them, how to approach planning a career, how to market their skills, how to manage risk, how to balance doing what they love vs what pays the bills, how to approach relationships... things like that. Regardless of whether they wanted to become a piano tuner or a park ranger or an astronaut or a homemaker.
But right now I know almost nothing at all for what to tell them. I don't know if any moticum of the experience I have that put me on a successful path will be valuable in the future at all.
Basically my plan is to just spend time enjoying time together and having fun, and cross my fingers and hope that things turn out alright.
I hate to be “that guy” - but I truly believe there is a degree of so-called privilege in that perspective.
Not that I don’t value or agree with it, those soft skills are incredibly important, but one can I hope have both the soft and the hard skills.
Family and romance have evolved quite a bit in recent years - but all things equal are you wanting to marry into a family with productive skills, assets, etc? Would you pick true love with the peasant girl or marry to strengthen the alliance with Normandy? Would your answre to the latter change if you were the pauper?
>> My economically valuable skillset – programming – suddenly feels less valuable. What shall I teach my son?
> Maybe that's just me, but this strikes me as a bit odd. When i think about my parents and what i appreciate about them and how they raised me, hard skills are not very high up the list.
For better or worse, parents with lucrative professions have been able to give their kids a leg up to enter those professions. They know the path to get there, have connections, etc. That's especially important in increasingly competitive environments (like we have today).
Thinking you had such an asset to offer your kid, then being forced to doubt its value, is a loss.