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Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

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Re: Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

#21

Post by paxys »

College curriculums are barely teaching skills that are directly relevant in the industry today, let alone 10 years from now, and that is by design. The best approach to your career as a student is to get a solid knowledge of the basics. Coding, data structures, algorithms, statistics, combinatorics, proofs, compiler design, computer architecture, cryptography, operating systems, databases. And work on the non-technical areas as well – teamwork, communication, technical writing.

All of this will provide a foundation that you can build on for the rest of your career, no matter which direction the industry happens to go in.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

#23

Post by oriel »

Strix97 wrote: post #6

Honestly, the most important skill is to learn how to learn. There are some basics that will always be useful such as SQL or any of the popular high level programming languages. But in 10 years, the demands of whatever sector you want to work in will have changed in ways that we can only guess. But learning how you learn, what techniques help you stay focused are much more useful in the long term. If you are serious…

I'd doubly emphasize this. Technology changes rapidly regardless of bubbles, its better to learn how to pick up skills quickly and grok (deeply understand) them.

I found these two courses to be really good foundations for kicking off in my own reeducation post-bachelors (in CS). They filled in blanks and reinvigorated my internal monologue of "yes i can do/learn that" growth mindset.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

https://www.coursera.org/learn/mathematical-thinking

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

#24

Post by bequanna »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #13

Communication and marketing. Nobody really knows what will be important on the technical side, especially as 10 years is a good timeframe for disruptive changes from AI. But being able to communicate well, with other humans, with yourself, and maybe even AIs, and marketing yourself on at least the basic level, are skills, which are very important in any business.

Sure, I follow you. But you need to actually have some hard skills in order for those to have any value, right?

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

#25

Post by not_the_fda »

There will always be demand for people that can:

1. Solve problems.

2. Communicate complex issues in a way everybody can understand.

3. Discover the real problem that is trying to be solved instead of the perceived problem or per-determined solution.

The technical tools at your disposal are constantly evolving but the principles remain the same.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

#28

Post by gnatman »

aristofun wrote: post #17
gnatman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every small dead or dying forum I've ever been in pushes new contributors away with some version of "did you even try to use the search function???". https://xkcd.com/1053/

Asking same question is not a contribution. Every dying community I've ever seen was full of low quality and repetitive questions.

That's fair- low quality rebuttal on my part, sorry about that.

Re: Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?

#29

Post by mywittyname »

jjice wrote: post #11
Desafinado wrote: post #3

It's difficult to predict, but I don't see the classics going away: Java, JavaScript, SQL. But overall, the goal should be to get a broad range of experience in different platforms so the technology you use is irrelevant. From that point on you just need to decide where you want to invest your time. For example, when I was doing internships in college I invested in getting Java experience because I knew that it was u…

SQL is a great one because I've found so many devs either know nothing, or so bare minimum that it's easy to become the SQL guy on a team just because you're familiar with window functions. There's a lot of SQL out there too, and nothing has dethroned it after probably near 50 years now and I don't see anything coming close. It's also one of the best bang-for-your-buck things to learn, time to usefulness wise. Whethe…

I addition, the industry has repeatedly attempted to kill SQL, but it lives on. The level of survivorship bias SQL has achieved is only matched by C.
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