Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

The writer is a general partner at Silicon Valley VC firm Benchmark and author of ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love’

If you are the parent of a university student or high schooler, there is a good chance you are quietly panicking right now.

You were probably already uneasy about your child’s future — about whether their internships would turn into job offers and whether the subject they chose would pay off. So many of the professions that once felt like sure-thing pathways to financial security now look uncertain: law, medicine, finance, engineering. With the pace of technological change, even the safest careers seem vulnerable. 

It’s tempting to blame all of this on AI, but the truth is that the system for matriculating students from high school through to university and into a career was broken well before AI entered the picture.

I recently teamed up with University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business researchers to design a study that would look at career regret. They surveyed over 10,000 people in the US in various stages of their careers across a variety of industries. What they found was surprising. Nearly six out of ten people said that they would do things differently if they could start over. More than 40 per cent of them said that they would choose entirely different occupations. 

The results of this research are echoed in other polls. A 2023 global Gallup report found that less than a quarter of employees said they were “thriving” or “engaged” at work. The same survey also found that 59 per cent of respondents were “quietly quitting” — they were passively disengaged from their jobs.

This is not a system that is humming along smoothly. In the professional world, what might have seemed like a straightforward pathway into adulthood has been turned into a high-pressure conveyor belt by well-intentioned parents, teachers and politicians. Pick the right schools. Choose the right subject. Stack the résumé. Land a job within a small subset of “safe” fields. The result is large swaths of adults living with regrets. 

But there is hope.

For many people, the most meaningful careers do not follow straight lines. I spent two years as an engineer and three years on Wall Street before I found my place in venture capital. At the time, those moves looked like detours. In hindsight, they were formative. They provided perspective, skills and clarity that no carefully crafted résumé ever could.

That experience is not unusual. In my research I have found countless examples of successful people who switched careers midstream. It often takes time to figure out what work truly makes you happy. When you are driven by curiosity — as opposed to society’s conveyor belt — your career feels less like work. When you love what you do, the more you want to do it and the better you will become, increasing your chances of success, financial and otherwise.

This is where the conversation needs to shift, especially for parents. Wanting your child to be financially secure is understandable. Even the great Willie Nelson suggested mamas make their kids “be doctors and lawyers and such.” But in today’s world, that instinct can backfire. 

We have legions of young people who have worked out how to get into great universities, get good grades and land prestigious internships. But when you ask them what they are passionate about, their faces go blank.

Recommended

In this way, AI may actually be a blessing. If it disrupts traditional career paths, young people could be forced to think more carefully about the work they pursue.

The technology means it has also never been easier to learn about something new, whether niche fields like astrobiology, computational linguistics or quantum cryptography or popular fields like filmmaking. AI allows all of us to explore the intricacies of different subjects faster and deeper than before.

So if you are worried about your child’s future career, I would challenge you to think of things in a different way. Do not become yet another source of anxiety in their life. Instead, become someone who helps unlock their potential.

When you see a genuine interest and an intrinsic motivation, ignore the instinct to redirect them back on to the conveyor belt towards something more respectable or financially stable. Instead, find a way to support it, even if you cannot imagine how it might one day make money.

In a world in which AI is disrupting every career path, the best way to support your child is to nourish their innate curiosity wherever it leads.