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In 45 years? I predict the skills you'll need then will include: foraging, scavenging, hacking, repurposing old junk into shelter and transportation, hydroponics, stealing electricity, small scale farming, digging, ammo reloading, evading AI, creating improvised explosive devices, smuggling, ICE breaking, soldering, welding, firearms maintenance, broadcasting pirate radio and television, etc.
Reads like a sceene from terminator movie...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have answers to all of your questions. I don't know where the current wave of AI will go, or what jobs it might eliminate. I have gone through one "AI winter" already and multiple popped bubbles and supposed threats to my career. The hype and expectations have never matched the reality. Because developing software costs so much money, and requires taking a lot of risk -- because software development lacks the…
Thank you for your detailed answer. I will take some time to sink it in. One key takeway is to create value. As someone who is barely starting out, what is value? Is it revenue? Is it efficiency? Is it growth? What is a proper way to clarify value? How can one show that they are indeed valuable?
I'll give an example from my freelancing experience. When I meet a potential customer I don't try to sell them on my programming skills or experience. I ask them to tell me the unmet priorities or pains in their company remotely related to IT/software. I've heard things like "Our system doesn't correctly charge shipping on customer orders," or "We think our internet bill is too high." Those both sound like problems I can fix, so I ask how much that's costing the business, to get some idea of how the customer values a possible solution. Then I will propose I deal with it. If I can fix it they pay me some price I come up with based on their perception of the cost, and if I can't I won't charge them anything. And invariably once I fix one problem -- show that I can add value or reduce costs -- they think of other things I might help with. I'm simplifying but basically that's how it works. I don't have to persuade the customer that I have this or that skill on my resume. Of course you need to actually solve problems. That's how you build long-term relationships with customers, because every business needs people who can solve problems. As a freelancer I focus on smaller companies, not necessarily mom & pop, but small enough that I'm talking to someone who can make a decision.
You can use similar techniques in full-time job interviews, but again it will work better if the interviewer has hiring authority -- rare in larger organizations these days when you have layers of people to get through. Rather than sit there while the interviewer goes over my resume and tries to mentally match that to whatever job they have posted, I ask "What can I start on tomorrow to solve an actual problem you're having?" And chances are good they have a list of things they would like to get someone to deal with. Now I'm not getting grilled over why I quit a job eight years ago, I'm getting a description of something that maybe I can do to show my value.
When I have been in the interviewer seat I see the same deer in the headlights faces over and over, worried and nervous, not asking any real questions (or asking something irrelevant), waiting to defend themselves if asked about details on their resume. Don't be that person sitting in the chair sweating it out. You have just a few minutes to make an impression so show confidence, make eye contact, show that you researched what the company does, and ask about problems and pain points you can help solve. That changes the tone of the interview, and the interviewer will remember you as someone who at least showed some spirit and initiative. You have nothing to lose -- worst case is you don't get the job, which is where you were when you walked in the door.
In 45 years? I predict the skills you'll need then will include: foraging, scavenging, hacking, repurposing old junk into shelter and transportation, hydroponics, stealing electricity, small scale farming, digging, ammo reloading, evading AI, creating improvised explosive devices, smuggling, ICE breaking, soldering, welding, firearms maintenance, broadcasting pirate radio and television, etc.
Reads like a sceene from terminator movie...
And yet...
I have my doubts, and some concerns about what the future holds with the way some things are going. A tinge of concern that a cyberpunk dystopia might just be in our future has started to creep in around the edges.
You have to learn to maths and to code, that takes about a decade. It requires a lot of output from you. There’s no way around that. Even if it was all redundant due to AI , it is essential mental scaffolding for higher thought unreachable without it.
Yes, definitely. And as AI grows into more and more facets of intellectual output, humans will need to reach those higher thoughts to find a niche to occupy. The best thing one can do today is exactly to start building that scaffolding that will allow that to happen.
I have almost 45 years experience in software development, so I can describe the skills that led to my own longevity. Hardware and the tools and languages available for writing software changed and improved in many ways during my career. My phone has more compute power and memory than the mainframes I worked on in the '70s and '80s. We have more expressive and safer languages, and better tools for writing and testing…
Performance, security, and written communication. In my experience CS graduates are hilariously and profoundly bad at each of those. When it comes to performance most developers are absolutely and utterly incapable of measuring things, a bridge too far. As a result most developers simply just guess at this. The problem with guessing is that people tend to guess wrong more 80% of the time and more those 50% of those w…
> Performance, security, and written communication. AIs are good at all of these. Performance & security is largely a knowledge problem which AIs are very good at. And LLMs are great at written communication.
In 45 years? I predict the skills you'll need then will include: foraging, scavenging, hacking, repurposing old junk into shelter and transportation, hydroponics, stealing electricity, small scale farming, digging, ammo reloading, evading AI, creating improvised explosive devices, smuggling, ICE breaking, soldering, welding, firearms maintenance, broadcasting pirate radio and television, etc.
Reads like a sceene from terminator movie...
In 45 years? I predict the skills you'll need then will include: foraging, scavenging, hacking, repurposing old junk into shelter and transportation, hydroponics, stealing electricity, small scale farming, digging, ammo reloading, evading AI, creating improvised explosive devices, smuggling, ICE breaking, soldering, welding, firearms maintenance, broadcasting pirate radio and television, etc.
Practice enough to win at an average table and then know at any time you can get on a plane for Vegas, Atlantic City, or another place with consistent games and make a living playing cards.
Perfect as a backup plan / hedge. Poker also teaches lots of life skills so still useful if you never really use it too.