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[Lagslayer]

I'm curious what the forum thinks on the subject. How soon should someone be preparing for a specific career or line of work?

[MDFification]

University.

Honestly, you can weed out things you're particularly poorly suited for through highschool, but everyone should take the first year of university to study as many things as possible and only decided their major/minor in year 2.

[TheDarkStar]

It depends on the career and what you consider preparation. You should gain a decent amount of background knowledge in the career you're pursuing. And yes, university.

What kind of career(s) are you thinking of?

[Lagslayer]

It depends on the career and what you consider preparation. You should gain a decent amount of background knowledge in the career you're pursuing. And yes, university.

What kind of career(s) are you thinking of?

I'm just talking about in general. It's not about me at all. I'm not looking for advice, just opinions.

It's because I notice in different countries/regions, specialization is being pushed at different times, and in different ways.

[Orange Wizard]

In NZ the standard seems to be the second year of university.

[mainiac]

When you apply to PhD programs.

[Frumple]

Functionally, it seems like about the best time would be mid to late twenties. Time enough for strong general education and some broad water-testing* (so to speak) and for brain development to finish so that likelihood of being grounded enough to rationally and effectively choose a career specialization is much higher.

I'd kinda' question if pre-career specialization is a good idea at all, though, especially if you're in a tumultuous economic region. Broad-base and effective general education and a wide base of previous experience in disparate fields would seem to be the best idea t'me, probably with an emphasis on re-training and learning on the job. Heavy and early specialization seems to just leave quite a few people sitting around with a great deal of training and nothing to use it on, or incredibly miserable when they find out five or ten years into a career they hate what they're doing and don't have the means to change venues...

*This part in particular seriously doesn't get enough support in basically any society, though, at least from what I've seen and heard. Very few people actually have any bloody idea what they're getting in to, and it's damned rare there is, and double-damned difficult to get, a chance to actually get that exposure outside of maybe one or two fields (usually the parents or relatives, who are pretty likely to be in similar fields). And the individual that doesn't like those few fields are often just kinda' buggered insofar as preparation goes.

[Levi]

University is good to decide at.  I was planning to be a business major when I was in high school until I took a bunch of university business courses that bored me to tears and a programming class that I had fun in. 

[crazysheep]

On one hand, I think early preparation (as early as 15, maybe? I'm not too sure on specific ages) should be the way to go, so that people are given as much time as possible to gain the requisite skills for the career path of their choice.

On the other hand, I can see the problems with early preparation: interests change as they get exposed to new things, economic situations and technological advances modify career prospects, which then render your undertakings thus far moot.

In short: I don't know what's optimal. Whatever period of time specified to start preparing for your career of choice will have some issues associated with it, and I feel that it's probably better to try and handle those issues before they become stumbling blocks.

[MaximumZero]

As soon as you know what you like to do. If you know what you like to do, you should try to make a living doing it.

[Bauglir]

Voluntarily.

[sneakey pete]

I find it interesting that the default assumption is a university based system, and not trades etc.

[acetech09]

Due to my background, I'm pretty devout that it should be allowed to start early. The ones that start early almost undoubtedly have a huge start in our capitalist economy.

To answer OP, whenever they want, but the earlier the better from an economic perspective.

I find it interesting that the default assumption is a university based system, and not trades etc.

This. I'm not surprised, though.

[LordBucket]

I'm curious what the forum thinks on the subject. How soon should someone be preparing for a specific career or line of work?

I'm just talking about in general. It's not about me at all. I'm not looking for advice, just opinions.

Ask an "in general" question, get an "in general" answer:

"At the appropriate time." "After you know what you want and before it's too late to do it."

For example, if you're planning to complete a conventional four year degree regardless, it doesn't especially hurt you to not decide on a major until your general ed is out of the way. If you're going to be a medical doctor, there's no particular benefit to deciding your field of specialization until after your bachelor's is completely finished. You're probably better off waiting at least until you're in med school so that you'll have some exposure and therefore more information with which to come to an informed opinion.

But if your career goal is to drive trucks or fix computers or something for which a degree is not especially important and that you can very easily get a professional certification for, then you might be wasting a lot of time and money if you don't start "preparing for that specific career" until after general ed or your bachelor's, even though that wait was perfectly sensible in the previous examples.

So the answer to your question is "it depends."

[alway]

As early as possible in the US. University is way too expensive to waste years of it piddling around in a state of indecision. And a lot of how well you do something is really how much time and how many years are spent on it. Personally, I went into university for game dev, having already been programming in C++ for years and having started doing 3D graphics programming. So it's no big surprise I left university one of the top programmers in my class; I had been doing it for twice as long as most of my classmates. Someone who really started that in their second or third year of university simply can not compete with someone with a head start that large.

Ideally, you choose a path of things you like doing or at least earn you money without actively disliking them. From there, ensure you have a number of potential escape routes. Figure out what skills would be transferable to and if those things would work for you as well as your original path. Always ensure you have several of these escape routes. Thinking you're going to do the same thing all your life is ridiculous in the modern world and is only setting yourself up for failure.