Re:'My degree is next to worthless'
by netcan on Monday August 24, 2015 @11:58AM
(#10110721)
Thanks for the link. That's an important point.
I think part of the problem is the pace of change. That's both the reason for the bad data and the time lag issue. It's just impossible to make a decent guess at the necessity of acquirable skills on a useful timescale. Even technical skills that have a fantastic outlook from todays vantage point… Our visibility is not really that far, 15-20 years at a stretch.
For example, it seems like a good bet that for the next 15-20 the skills that allow you to write programs for a living will still be marketable, assuming a non trivial amount of re-skilling along the way. past that, who knows. For a 20 year old, that's one third of a career.
Take the skills required to be employed in the enormous and affluent financial sector. Accounting, finance, data analysis, math.
Can you imagine that over the next 15-20 years something happens (bitcoin?) that turns this business on its head and makes a big chunk of its employees obsolete?
For the opposite, can you imagine that 15-20 years from now gene-tech has created industries that demand geneticists the way programmers are now in demand?
I think part of the problem is the pace of change. That's both the reason for the bad data and the time lag issue. It's just impossible to make a decent guess at the necessity of acquirable skills on a useful timescale. Even technical skills that have a fantastic outlook from todays vantage point… Our visibility is not really that far, 15-20 years at a stretch.
For example, it seems like a good bet that for the next 15-20 the skills that allow you to write programs for a living will still be marketable, assuming a non trivial amount of re-skilling along the way. past that, who knows. For a 20 year old, that's one third of a career.
Take the skills required to be employed in the enormous and affluent financial sector. Accounting, finance, data analysis, math.
Can you imagine that over the next 15-20 years something happens (bitcoin?) that turns this business on its head and makes a big chunk of its employees obsolete?
For the opposite, can you imagine that 15-20 years from now gene-tech has created industries that demand geneticists the way programmers are now in demand?
Pace of change is itself a meaningful change.