KeySkills

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What skills will matter in tech in 2030?

By 2030, nearly 15% of the global workforce could possibly need to switch jobs. That's the main finding of a new report released by the McKinsey Global Institute last week. Within the next 15 years, 75 million to 375 million will likely change job categories and another 400 million to 800 million may be displaced entirely by automation.

I recently attended an exclusive event on the report with speakers such as O'Reilly Media Founder and future of work expert Tim O'Reilly, ServiceNow CEO John Donahoe and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner to get a better sense for what these findings mean specifically for today's tech professionals. The report discloses that 8% to 9% of labor demand by 2030 will be in new types of occupations, with tech being a big driver of that growth. Spending on tech is predicted to increase by 50% in 15 years and in the process create 20 million to 50 million new jobs in both in-house and outsourced IT consulting.

The rub: The skills of those tech workers are rapidly changing. Today, only a small portion of tech-related work prioritizes so-called "soft skills" like management, high-level logical reasoning and emotional skills, but those talents will be increasingly important in the future. As occupations like web development and electronic technician become more automated, tech workers will be expected to do more than just routine coding, according to the report.

For Weiner, this is a good thing. At the event, he outlined how "repeatable high-volume" tasks are being taken over by tech. In finance, reconciliation and billing is increasingly automated, for example, and now workers can focus on more creative aspects of the role. The same can be said for recruiters, who now can rely on machine learning to do more of their candidate sourcing so they can spend more time evaluating and wooing prospects.

Donahoe is convinced tech will only take pieces of jobs, not whole occupations. Often, the piece that is taken away is the lowest value piece of the job. At ServiceNow, for example, Donahoe has applied machine learning within customer support to guide clients to the right representative faster: 10% of the job is to categorize the problem, which is now part of the task that has been taken over by automation. This sentiment was echoed by O'Reilly, who said that we have to stop thinking of work in terms of "jobs" and think about it more in terms of "tasks."

While all of this sounds good on top when you're sitting on a stage, I'm curious about examples of certain tasks — or whole jobs — that are already being automated within your company. Email me at [email protected] with some examples, and I'll share any that are relevant next week.
Tech's diversity divide is as wide as ever
Last week, I promised to share the results of our survey. Here are the high-level findings, which were released just today:

Less than 5% of investors surveyed by LinkedIn rated diversity as their "top concern" as compared to macroeconomic conditions, raising capital, hitting revenue targets, or hiring the right people. Fewer investors rated diversity as their top concern this year than did last year.
More than 70% of investors and founders report seeing "little to no change" — either positive or negative — in how people at their companies treat gender/racial discrimination and harassment in the past year.
When asked if their startups are supporting any diversity initiatives for employees — such as hosting events for minority groups or actively recruiting from communities that are underrepresented — nearly 70% of founders said no.
Some 25% of female founders agreed with the following statement: "I have done business with venture capitalists who have acted inappropriately in the past with a founder or associate of the opposite gender, but never got caught."

Last week I asked what companies should do to prioritize hiring diverse candidates. Reader Sarah Fink, a managing director at marketing and advertising firm Sosemo, wrote to say that policies won't help until people admit there's a problem. "Once an investor/founder can acknowledge those biases (or we focus on hiring practicing that w**d out those with that kind of bias) and learn to look beyond them in a more neutral way, 'diversity' is no longer a dirty squishy 'have to' to please the marketers."

Check out the full report here, along with more insights from leaders like Melinda Gates and Black Girls CODE Founder and CEO Kimberly Bryant on how we can get these numbers moving in the right direction.

Source: McKinsey Global. Job Loss, Jobs Gain. Workforce transitions in a time of automation. Dec 2017

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An Inspirational Prospective

Letter by Hunter S. Thompson to his friend dated April of 1958 on meaning of life when his friend asked for advice.

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called “Being and Nothingness” by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called “Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre.” These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors.WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires — including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN — and here is the essence of all I’ve said — you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know — is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo — this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

Your friend,
Hunter

Career Camp 2016 in colloboration with edushala supported by USAID.

TEAM WORK: Some beautiful quotes about team work ;

No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it. -HE Luccock

A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of others. -Norman Shidle

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. -Henry Ford

A successful team is a group of many hands and one mind. -Bill Bethel

Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results. -Ifeanyi Onuoha

The ratio of We’s to I’s is the best indicator of the development of a team. -Lewis B Ergen

Individual commitment to a group effort – that’s what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. -Vince Lombardi

Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team. -PatrickLencioni

The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side. -Margaret Carty

Strategy is not a solo sport, even if you’re the CEO. -Max McKeown

Bad attitudes will ruin your team. -Terry Bradshaw

Teams share the burden and divide the grief. -Doug Smith

Many of us are more capable than some of us, but none of us is as capable as all of us. -Tom Wilson

We realized that no one of us could be as good as all of us playing unselfishly. -Bill Bradley

.. and finally to dirty politics ... A boat doesn’t go forward if each one is rowing their own way. -Swahili Proverb

Nepal has carved a precarious living from the steep slopes of the Himalaya, its foothills and plains for century after century. Generation after generation has farmed the terraced fields that wrinkle the hillsides of a country where only 10% of the land is arable. But if the past has been brutal and threatening, the future seems overwhelming with Himalayan odds. Recent activities in Nepalese geology, politics and policy should compel us to learn some valuable lessons on togetherness and unity. So, lets muster some tolerance and celebrate our differences this festive season.

– KeySkills family.

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MALPI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL: Earthquake Preparedness and Response.

YOGA: The definition of yoga is not restricted to the bodily postures with breathing exercises like most of the western world relate. it encompassed a wide range of ways to connect with one’s highest potential.

Its also expanded beyond that into descriptions of what such evolved states of being felt like. It’s as if yoga were asking us not to worry about time, or about what yoga can do for us, or where it can take us, but to simply be in the present moment with our yoga practice. - (Catherine Ghosh)

Yoga in essence is a path to connect one with the higher self. According to Bhagavad Gita three yoga paths are:

Karma Yoga
Bhakti Yoga
Jana Yoga