AFAIK the satisfice for money, optimize for interestingness tends to be something more for already highly experienced people. For young people most jobs tend to be optimize for experience, satisfice for money and hardly any fun, or have a fun startup and optimize for fun, but not a living salary.
Modestly but regularly paying jobs with high fun level for beginners... perhaps he should avoid for-profit businesses for now, as they expect beginners to do sucky jobs in return for experience, and focus on academia, public sector or NGO's. Somewhere abroad perhaps. Teaching abroad perhaps? Some kind of an NGO sending CS/Math people to teach or tutor bright kids in third-world countries?
Let's focus on one criteria: if it is one year, it cannot be something that takes half a year to learn. He must work from what he already knows and that is probably academic stuff, not job experience, hence it should be probably teaching or academic research. Teaching is likelier and probably abroad as he can contribute more that way and find it more interesting.
Hello, all. My sibling asked my for advice recently, and I'm making this post on his behalf.
Said sibling is currently currently has one more year to go at MIT before he gets his bachelors degree in Mathematics/CS. He is also enrolled in a 5-year masters program, so he will need one more year after that to finish a Masters, after which he anticipates getting a job somewhere the CS Industry / Finance / Academia. Anyway, he is interested in taking a gap year after finishing his Bachelors to pick up some novel experiences, and trying something different from what he has been doing already and plans to do after graduation.
Right now, he is in the brainstorming stage, and is looking for ideas. Note that he is not opposed to getting a job or something of the like - as long as its a different experience that what he would get working for a large software company, or a hedge fund, or something of the like. Financially, he does need to earn enough to live on (this isn't quite a vacation), but he isn't worried about money aside from that (so the "money" constraint only needs to be satisficed, not optimized.) With that said, what are some things that he might consider doing?