Capitalism allows trading money for solutions to problems: The massive problem in this system is that people and groups with less money end up with a surplus of problems. There are schools that need help with their tech stacks. There are legal aid groups who need better ways to process massive amounts of text. There are kids all over the world who need better ways to learn math, languages, etc. Plugging in and helping people solve their concrete problems is IMHO the best way to get started.
Lemme try to put it another way, because I am suggesting a different way to think about the idea of work, which /also/ was not the dominant way of thinking about things when I was a student. The notion that you go get credentials in order to get a job standing in a spot and doing a thing and get paid is... perhaps fine, for the trades. But, as I mentioned above, the beaten path is saturated, and you will find yourself in what is essentially a lottery system. (Perhaps most of what has changed since 2006 is that the odds of the lottery have gotten worse...)
Alternatively, you can think of yourself as a problem-solver for hire. You might be more or less specialized as a problem solver, but ultimately, you're asking someone to pay you money in exchange for regularly engaging in creative problem solving to make their business/NGO/whatever run better. Plenty of people come out of school or whatever and have no problem solving ability. And some people create more problems than they solve.
How do you prove that you're worth hiring then? With a portfolio of problems that you have successfully solved. How do you get that portfolio? By plugging into some area you're interested in and solving people's concrete problems.
You don't need to restate your point. I understood and it's what's trite and insulting to new grads.
> Alternatively, you can think of yourself as a problem-solver for hire.
This isn't the alternative and hasn't been for a decade. It's absolutely mainstream thinking among students and new grads that the traditional career is dead and that they need to take alternative routes, one of the most common being to present themselves as "problem-solvers for hire", with personal brands, turning friends into networks, etc.
It's so common it's a trope, and of course the market of businesses who need problem-solvers for hire is absolutely saturated. It's a segment exploited by employers for cheap labour and terrible opportunities for progression as you're competing against so many people, many in LCOL areas.
So after their entire youth being told the same thing you're saying by podcasters, influencers, slightly older peers, etc and then arriving into a labour market which is absolutely barren, your advice is trite and it is insulting.
It's even worse than when challenged, you assume I must not get your profound advice and choose to reiterate it, instead of reflection on the possibility that the world and opportunities you enjoyed 20 years ago simply don't exist any more. Not that there aren't other opportunities.
> But, as I mentioned above, the beaten path is saturated, and you will find yourself in what is essentially a lottery system.
The irony of this comment.
> By plugging into some area you're interested in and solving people's concrete problems.
Yes, you and literally everyone else. It's almost ridiculous how out-of-touch this is.
> perhaps fine, for the trades.
As an aside, this is an absurdly arrogant comment.