@skrlvr tell him to watch out for shiny unicorns!
Unfortunately not every kid is cut out to be an engineer or techy…that’s a fact. Once again a lot of talk on this forum is about money, money, money. People here need to get over it and let their kids be and do what they want even though they may not be “as special” as the engineers/techs/etc.
Now I step down from my soapbox. Have a great day and an even better tomorrow!!
This:
I wish I could figure out exactly what the “coming new world order” of jobs would be.
From reading through this thread, I gather it means “more competitive”, and maybe increasingly “technological”?
I think to some people it means High Stakes competitive and exclusively technological, but those people don’t get out enough. Yet, they like to dictate to others from on high and we’re supposed to acknowledge their gnostic insight. 
Of course, it is a great simplification to categorize lives with a binary outcome variable (winner v. loser).
The research on happiness suggests that below a certain level, happiness increases with income and beyond that threshold, happiness and income are not correlated. Happiness does increase with autonomy and control over one’s life. The OP might be trying to suggest that being a winner means being in the top 1% or .0.5%. Income or wealth are only one dimension of success, and the happiness research says that income is only a limited contributer to happiness. Not all wealthy folks are happy or have fulfilling lives. Alternatively, having fulfilling employment that isn’t likely to go away is likely to increase a sense of security and thus make one happier.
The articles OP cites (and I haven’t looked at lots) undoubtedly have to do with the fact that in addition to lower class jobs (many of which have already been automated away), new information and communications technology (ICT) will eliminate a vast swath of white collar jobs. A thoughtful study by some Oxford professors says something like 30% of white collar jobs will go. Lots of middle managers. Bookkeepers/accountants. Middle managers generally. ICT eliminated secretaries but in my small firm we still have some administrative folk who really need to think. Over time, they could be physically distant. But, lots of functions are yet to be fully automated. At the moment, they pull together expense reports from receipts. We’re going to try Expensify and/or Concur to see if that is a function that can be automated. In addition, ICT has transferred and will transfer jobs to other countries with lower wage levels. As such, I’d argue that some of the jobs that will not go away from North America (either because of automation or outsourcing) probably combine technical skill and creativity and/or people skills or can’t be outsourced (note per an earlier post radiology can and will be outsourced though I don’t know if that would apply to radiation oncology; direct patient care is less likely to be outsourced). I suspect that other jobs such as executive management and sales of complex products and services will also not go away. There will also always be entrepreneurial opportunities. In general, I think that jobs will change (what I do for a living didn’t exist when I was in college). As such, what matters most is learning how to learn. Combine that with technical skill and there probably will always be opportunity. Technical skill on its own (like many engineering jobs) will become obsolete and, as some have pointed out, becomes subject to boom and bust cycles. It needs to combined with creativity/learning how to learn so that its possessor can transition as the world does.
My kids seem to have made wise choices in this regard. My daughter is training to be a nurse practitioner. She will be doing the hands-on diagnosis and patient care. Right now, while going to school, she is working part-time working as a nurse at a residential school for kids with psychiatric issues. It is hard to see how that would be outsourced. She won’t be in the top 1% (unless she marries well from a financial standpoint) but her would should be fulfilling if she finds/creates a job that gives her enough autonomy because she loves what she does. Yet, she has real potential to have a life with meaning and satisfaction and enough money. My son is often a deep thinker. His diagnosis: We live in a post-scarcity society. ICT means we can make the same amount with fewer people. In the past, greater productivity meant creating more goods and thus jobs increased. Now, we will just have fewer jobs. There will be a lot more competition for jobs and thus the returns to labor will generally go down relative to the return on capital. This means more of the wealth going to the owners of capital. As a result of this analysis, he has decided that he wants to be the owner of capital and not just highly skilled labor. So, he wants to be an owner of his companies. He was a math/econ major in college who had never taken a programming course. He co-founded a company in college, raised capital, dealt with customers, etc. and was the CEO until he decided he needed a more experienced manager to run it. He is now in graduate school at a top university getting the training he believes will help him to be part of big data startups (his backup plan is to go into areas of finance that would draw on his skill set like hedge funds or maybe VC. Given his talent and drive in the areas on which he’s focused, he is likely to be in the top 1% and quite possibly top 0.1%. I hope both kids will be happy and I have given both kids a fair bit of coaching in this regard.
I agree that economic success or lack thereof doesn’t classify a person as a winner or loser in life. Being able to make your highest and best contribution to the world, and being able to help others, your family and yourself, that is the goal and that is winning as far as I am concerned. Economic success can be and hopefully is a byproduct of that, because it can certainly make life easier and can put you in a better position to help.
Anyone who thinks that is a Loser in my book.
Hey, I watched The Matrix.
The solution: bada$$ jiu jitsu moves
One of the happiest (and well-to-do) people I know came to NY to be a playwright. He paid the rent by being a carpenter and the next thing he knew he was a developer/builder of custom homes running his own business. While the housing market goes up and down, it never goes overseas.
I think he’s happy because he’s his own boss, and is reasonably comfortable. He’s not private jet rich, just pool in the back yard on a big lot in an expensive county rich.
Not a parent, but I recently read a NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/the-hackathon-fast-track-from-campus-to-silicon-valley.html) about a Stanford hackathon and how even genius high school coders! were making big bucks! from their apps.
One reader’s comment stuck with me: “What we need are scientists, not coders. We don’t need another social media app. What we need is someone to come with an energy efficient means for desalination so that these same kids will have water to drink in California 5 years from now.”
Thank you, LikeThis.
Post #71, there is an article from wsj about California drought. Google for it, it’s considered a self inflicting wound just like the high price of electricity that Californian had to pay in 2011. It’s more political and may have nothing to do with science.
I am a nurse practitioner and have never been 1 day w/o a job as a RN or NP. My DD thinks she wants to go into CS (6th grade). I worry about this.
Ain’t that the truth.
Alternatively, with climate change and sea level rise inundating all our coastal cities (which is where all our finance and technology centers are located), maybe civilization will collapse. Then the “winners” will be the ones who can survive in a post-apocalyptic Walking Dead (minus the zombies, I hope) kind of world.
In short, quit trying to predict the future. You’re probably wrong.
We should get off CC too, it’s another social app in my opinion.
Another reason for everyone to at least take a few CS classes in college- regardless of the industry a student plans to pursue, CS will be involved. Don’t forget to take machine learning/artificial intelligence 
^^ That. Always and completely that.
If you try to predict the future, you will end up in the wrong specialization. There’s a good reason that liberal arts majors, though they generally make so much less straight out of college, do so much better in comparison 10–20 years out—they’ve been trained in critical thinking and adaptability, rather than in overly specific skills.
Actually, some liberal arts majors are high Gini in terms of pay levels by mid career, according to surveys. The top graduates may do really well, but the bottom ones do not do as well.
In general, the top graduates in anything do well pay wise. But the weaker ones may not. The fields where the weaker ones do better (e.g. engineering) do tend to weed out the weakest ones before graduation – a selection effect applied before graduates enter work.
Of course, pay level is not the only measure of success.
Post #79. I agree with you the engineering and computer science major graduates aren’t trained for critical thinking. They are just a bunch of robots.