Getting to this level takes 7-10 years (from a cursory Google search), so he could have it by his early 30s.
Usually the worry blue collar/trades people have is when their body starts breaking down in their 40s/50s and they are still having to directly perform the manual labor. This happens even in kitchens in restaurants. But putting in 10 years in his youth if he stays in shape in a less physical trade mitigates that a lot.
Another alternative if you don't care about making a lot of money is military/USPS. You'll be retired with pension by 40. And with the military, you will have the opportunity to train as a knowledge worker on their dime if your interest skews more in that area than physical labor. Even with those, there's ways to finesse things. Even if you wanted to go that route, it'd probably be better to try to be an officer rather than enlisted. So you'd have to get a bachelor's degree from somewhere, and make sure they will pay off your student loan debt.
But it really just depends on what you're trying to optimize for. All of this advice assumes OP doesn't have any kind of safety net (like a trust fund/inheritance that will vest when he turns X age like 25 or 30 or parents willing to bankroll whatever he wants to do), and that he lives in the US and is solely concerned with having a career where he can eventually make six figures that is unlikely to be made obsolete during his working life by technology.
If he does have those things, then the question becomes a lot harder more philosophical and harder to answer. You can try and fail at a lot of different stuff and it won't matter. So pursue whatever interests you.
The second is that running a business is a different skillset from being a plumber or whatever, one that you won't have learned organically on the way up. And there's still the risk that you launch your business into some 2008 recession shit or whatever just through bad luck and now you're as broke as you were starting at 22 years old but without a body that can do physical work for 15 h/day anymore.
If you're american suggesting people join the military is socially normative but frankly obscene. Look what they've been into the last couple decades. "Assassinate civilians for twenty years and you can retire" is a harsh but realistic rephrasing of that recommendation. That's even aside from the very real risk you'll be sent off to get a life changing TBI, or be gang-raped by your colleagues and then blamed for it by the institution.
If someone is in the situation of needing to figure out their career from the beginning without any sort of support, money, or connections to get it started, I'm not sure what I would suggest either. The trades are maybe a good gamble but be realistic: the opioid epidemic is ground from the souls of the unlucky ones on that path.
This is a good point, but everything in life carries risk. You could make the same argument about cars, but people still drive every day (and some for a living!) Also, this is labor that has to be performed for society to function. The way you're talking about it makes it seem like an absurd proposition.
You can mitigate risk by choosing a safer and less physical trade (plumbing vs. tree service) and by being aware of the other dangers (like avoiding hard drugs.)
If he's a hard worker, sober, and attentive to detail it is likely he would be promoted quickly anyways.
>The second is that running a business is a different skillset from being a plumber or whatever...
The is true for every kind of proprietorship. It's just as true when a lawyer starts a law firm. Starting a business does mean assuming some amount of risk, but a proprietorship generally doesn't require any startup capital. The only adjacent business I can think of is property development, but those companies raise financing for their projects they don't just pay for them out of pocket.
It's also worth pointing out that even without starting your own business the wages that come when you are at the experienced level of a trade are livable and roughly commiserate with a lot of office jobs (obviously not talking about software engineering here.)
Regarding your comments about the military, there are many jobs in the different branches of the U.S. armed forces that would never see combat or even deployment to a combat zone. Unless you're saying that serving in any capacity puts you at that level of culpability (this is not something I care to debate about, it's too tangential.)
You would receive decent pay, a free college education, many other government related benefits, a path to retire by 40 and you get to choose from a wide variety of jobs to do (including many IT/Computer related) if you do well on the ASVAB. Like you pointed out, joining the military can be very risky, but those risks can be mitigated just like with trades. Someone who joins as an infantry soldier is much more likely to die than the person who joins the Navy to cook on their ships.
It's like you're looking for something perfect with no potential downsides to contend with, but I don't think that exists. The fact that the kid posted on here asking for advice shows he's clearly thinking about his future.
Personally, I wouldn't go for programming if I was his age at this point. Not because I think the job will be replaced by AI, but because the field is such a pain now. Entering it will be hell, even if you get a degree you're going to have to grind LC and you will face completely disparate hiring standards at every company you ever work for. Not to mention the multitude of bootcamp people. All to work in a field that has basically devolved into dealing with ever more complex abstractions on top of other abstractions. I'm sure AI will enter the stack at some point and it will truly be a black box. Programming these days just isn't very much fun anymore IMO.
