Realistically, probably nothing great.

I enjoyed programming and computers as a hobby in high school, but had eventually decided it was not something I’d like to do as a career.

But my initial plans after high school fell through and I found myself needing to make a living. Naturally I reached for a software career, but I do hate it as much as I expected.

I didn’t really have anything else going for me skill wise. The idea of spending four more years in school didn’t appeal to me as a teenager (though I regret this greatly). I didn’t attend a community college for a few months, but dropped out as it felt like a waste of time and money.

So realistically, I’d probably have been stuck working unskilled near-minimum wage jobs I had been working before I started my career. Prior to that, I had a fascination with biology that competed with computer briefly. “Bioinformatics” was a word that came up often in career ideas while I was in high school, but that was such a small niche, I really had no concept at all as to what that career path would have looked like.

Nowadays, there’s many more things I’m interested in, but they’re all inaccessible as careers at this point.

Over the years, I’ve been inspired by things like RF engineering, physics, PLC programming, and even various natural sciences, but lacked the education/intelligence/cash to go back to school. Certainly for as long as I’d have to for those careers. AI will likely reduce the number of people needed in the sort of fields anyway.

I like programming so I'd probably just keep doing that.

If I didn't have to work in order to live I'd probably spend more time sailing, playing music, and being with my family.

But I'd still be programming. The kind of programming I'd do would be focused on my interests rather than the interests of businesses and shareholders that employ me though.

I'd be a cook/chef, which is what I decided on in HS, but I let everyone talk me into tech, which I regret in hindsight.

If I had money, I'd start to set up free after-school tutoring/play areas. I'd love to open a new business of a dog park that sells coffee in the morning, and beer in the afternoon/evening. A small amount of nice workstations for people to get some work/studying done. If I never got into tech- well I was going to be a Materials Engineer, but if I were a tradesman I'd probably be an electrician because of my superiority complex, lack of craftsman-level hand-eye coordination, and I like expensive tools.

I haven't had consistent or full-time work in tech in 2 years (1 year since any work, 8-9 years in tech before that)

I'm still doing software work related to activism, but I haven't been looking for paid work because the pickings are incredibly slim for work aligned with my values. I'm planning to get into rope access work in a few months.

I'm not going to stop working on software as long as I'm able to provide value beyond what AI tooling can do, but I'm not hopeful for a return to the industry when I'm so misaligned with Big Tech™.

If I take the question to mean: "you still have to work but you can't work in tech, what would you do?" I had thought about this around the time of the last layoffs that we had ... and I think I'd go to a trade school to become an electrician.

BUT ... to be 100% honest there's nothing I am really any good at other than tech. I guess I could try my hand at teaching. Would that be a good enough loop hole? I could maybe teach Econ 101 at a junior college probably. It'd be a huge pay cut but it'd be better than being jobless.

I would probably be a NEET without partner and kids. I really like computers and it's what pulled me out of online multiplayer games. Without them,I would probably have succumbed to my high school burnout and not made any progress academically or professionally.

Nowadays, probably something in finances, I realized I could have enjoyed accounting or some work related to business finances, but this is something I learned while working, not before.

I’d probably become a chef - cooking has always felt like the most natural non-tech path for me. It’s a craft and a very creative process, with immediate, tangible results.

I would have had almost no choice but to work for my father in the family rigging business, given that I was the first son of a first son. There's a good chance I'd be dead or severely disabled due to my lack of awareness (ADHD) of heavy machinery moving around me. If tech wasn't an option otherwise, I think I would have chosen to become an electrician—less chance of me becoming dead than moving machinery.

I don't really know what I would do. I'll probably find some other jobs that I don't need to talk to other people very often, but there are not many of these. I don't care too much about salary because I can always scale back to backbone lifestyle.

Maybe a janitor/security job or a bus driver job suits me well. Neither requires a huge amount of training, and neither requires a lot of brain activity so I can preserve my brain cells for hobby programming. Both have a non-trivial number of job openings too, especially for janitors/securities.