How to keep your career from getting outdated

We’ve never been good at predicting the nitty gritty of the job market (who could have thought of the term community manager 20 years ago?). But we are pretty good at predicting mega-trends (for example, 20 years ago we knew we’d all be working with computers by 2015).

So what’s the mega-trend for 2030? Robots. They’ll be doing your job. But it’s not all bad news. For one thing, robots might be an improvement; we already know robots are better managers than people, and they will probably be better at plenty of other tasks as well.

A growing workforce of robots leaves people only the most interesting jobs. Those jobs will require people who are cross-disciplinary thinkers and do not need a clear path. For example, dismantlers will be in demand—for dismantling things like healthcare, universities, and the tax code.

Here are ways to start shifting your thinking so you can survive the workforce competition robots will bring.

1. Downplay networking skills.
The Internet democratizes information that used to be under lock and key. It used to be that if you wanted to get access to cutting-edge ideas in technology, you needed an invitation to an exclusive conference like TED, or to attend a university like MIT. Today, TED lectures and MIT courses are available free online. Your access to knowledge only used to be limited by the scope of your network.

In the coming years, Auren Hoffman predicts that who you know will be much less important than what you know. Because you have access to all information—you don’t need to know the gatekeepers. But when you have specialized, deep knowledge, people will seek you out.

2. Seek the deep knowledge that one has to dig to uncover.
But you do need to understand information in terms of fluid intelligence, which is the ability to manipulate information to solve problems and generate ideas.

If you use technology to replace cognitive skills—like, typing into google 6×120= instead of doing it in your head—then technology might actually make you dumber. But if you use technology to make yourself do challenging, difficult things, then you enhance your fluid intelligence.

This is why hard-core gamers do better in adult life than casual gamers. And it’s also why you are better off obsessing over beating a very complicated game than you are reading random articles on Wikipedia, even if they are related to history, sociology, anthropology, or other serious fields. In his book Curious, Ian Leslie argues that we need to cultivate “epistemic curiosity”—not a scattered quest for novelty, but a focused, disciplined commitment to mastering new terrain.

3. Focus on multidisciplinary thinking.
The most significant job growth over the next decade is in big data. We have a lot of data but someone needs to make sense of it. Actually a lot of people need to make sense of it. And there’s a huge shortage of these people. To understand the future of work, you need to understand well what a job like this requires: managing data from disparate sources and drawing new conclusions.

Fast Company explains that this type of thinking is extremely creative: “Your most creative insights are almost always the result of taking an idea that works in one domain and applying it to another.” And this type of thinking feeds on itself:  creative thinking begets more creative thinking.

4. Make your brain more theoretical to keep up with the next generation.
However this is not the thinking you learn when you study subject-by-subject discretely. The best way to learn this sort of thinking is the jumpy, non-linear surfing online.

Another thing: the brain is changing. Scientific American reports that on IQ tests, it looks like we are getting smarter, but actually, our brains are simply getting more theoretical. From being online all day, Generation Z will be great theoretical thinkers. For example if you ask someone the relationship between dog and rabbit 100 years ago, they’d answer the dog chases the rabbit—which is straightforward, concrete thinking. If you ask someone today, they’d likely say both are mammals. The decrease in concrete thinking makes generation Z poised to fill the most challenging (and in-demand) jobs over the next fifteen years.

5. Challenge yourself to get more flexible as you grow older. 

So how do you keep up mentally with generation Z? There’s a lot of advice out there to keep you sharp at work, like saying yes morefocusing on skills rather than jobs, and writing a resume that focuses on your unique way of thinking.

But when it comes to brain plasticity and new ways of synthesizing, one tactic stands above the rest: More screen time. Not passive screen time like a three-hour movie, but the engaged, strategic, deep thinking screen time that comes from hard-core gaming, obsessive research,  and a willingness to read anything trending, with less judgement and more curiosity, and a belief that there’s a better way than the way you already know.

Whenever someone new comes to our house, my kids show them videos about older people reacting to the top YouTube videos. Like How to Basic and Llamas with Hats. What my kids like is seeing adults looking disoriented and lost. What I like is watching adults actively trying to figure out the language of the millionaire YouTube celebrities. If you want to know what staying relevant looks like, check out those videos. And hope you are like the adults in these videos:  brave enough to let millions of people see you while you struggle to find your place in the world of Generation Z.

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32 replies
  1. MBL
    MBL says:

    I have recently become obsessed with youtuber boyinaband (yes he knows the name sucks and he has outgrown it feels regret.) His Don’t Stay in School youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0 has gone viral and has been featured on the parents react site and he has a video of him reacting to parents react–so meta. His video is about the need for things in the syllabus to not “stay in school” (but I wish he meant drop out and unschool.) It is sooooo sad to see some if the other reactions of adults who don’t understand that he is talking about the syllabus and think he is saying to drop out. That is such sad commentary upon the critical thinking skills of many people.

    FYI, he is not typically angry like he is in the original SDIS video. His videos that are in reference to this one show his goofiness.

    He has other hilarious videos of a rap battle between Gollum and Smeagol youtube.com/watch?v=JLX7rrObmyA and one about the FPS game Trouble in Terrorist Town youtube.com/watch?v=lSf_J5wS5lU

    Through comments to his videos I heard about pewdiepie and the only video of his that I watched was him defending his $7,000,000 per year (and growing) earnings from talking about playing video games.

  2. LPR
    LPR says:

    I wonder if specific generations are more likely to suit certain personality types. It sounds like the near future is tailored for introverted N over S types. I am a gen-x INFP and my husband is an INFJ, and your prediction for the future is one we’d feel very comfortable in. We have a two year old daughter and I’m so curious what she will turn out to be.

  3. Jim Grey
    Jim Grey says:

    Well this post has just flattened me today.

    I read it with great struggle right up until this line: “…and a willingness to read anything trending, with less judgement and more curiosity, and a belief that there’s a better way than the way you already know.”

    Ah. Ok. I get it now. I can do that. But I’m going to level with you, this picture you paint of the future frightens me a little, because I know my way in the current world and can only hope I can figure out my way in the new one.

  4. Mathias
    Mathias says:

    This always strikes me as a “scary” subject – the robot uprising putting us all out of work!

    I find that the best way to combat this is to specialize in ways that computers and robots could never do (or at least have a hard time doing). Developing a heavily specialized and flexible skill-set seems like the best way to go!

    Thanks for sharing this!

  5. mg
    mg says:

    I know you don’t have much patience for those of us who made the mistake of pursuing PhDs in the humanities or social sciences, but I do think that some of us, especially those in interdisciplinary fields (comparative literature in my case), are quite good at identifying interesting problems, synthesizing data to come up with original solutions for them, and presenting our findings clearly and persuasively. Moreover, those of us who are successful at teaching students to do the same habitually “dismantle” or deconstruct that process (I find it particularly effective to so by analogizing to familiar contexts, whether popular or academic), making complex analysis as stimulating and enjoyable as a game of chess (or Minecraft). We are constantly transferring these problem-solving and project management skills from one subject, field, or audience to another.

    My question is how to convince companies that we could use our training and experience to serve them if we haven’t worked in their field before, or have only dabbled in it. When I was in school in the 90s and early 00s, during the dot-com boom, I managed to qualify for jobs simply by demonstrating that I was a quick thinker; everyone was making it up as they went along (and ignoring child labor laws), anyway, as you know. By the time I graduated from high school, I’d spent summers working in business development, graphic design, project management, and marketing. But in college, I was restricted to work-study jobs, though I did my best to find interesting, technology-based ones. And in graduate school, I was generally restricted to teaching classes, though I did also work on creating an interdisciplinary online platform for the humanities division, which flopped, as academic technology initiatives often do, and briefly served as a consultant for the legal department of a major software company, designing an effective data collection system for contracts and analyzing data from thousands of them to identify discrepancies and propose a set of terms that would best serve the company while accommodating a range of products and clients. The problem is that all of these were short-term and/or part-time positions, ancillary to my academic ones, and companies seem to be looking for people with more experience.

    If you have any advice on how academics can market themselves, I’d love to hear it.

    • Aneta
      Aneta says:

      All NTs, particularly NTJs, have the skillset you described, and technology companies are full of them. So there is no benefit to hiring someone with the same skills who doesn’t even know the industry. Also, academia is rigid, slow moving and as dull as dishwater, which is the polar opposite of what technology companies are. I work in software, and just can’t see anyone believing a comparative literature PhD has anything to offer.

      So, I suggest you list all your technology clients, what you did for them, and if it’s not enough do some voluntary work for startups, and list it as well. Then you can say you’re a strategy consultant or coach or whatever you want to be. And do not mention your PhD or working in academia. It doesn’t help you.

      • MBL
        MBL says:

        I think your response is an excellent example as to what an F (assuming mg is one) or any humanities major can bring to an organization populated by NTs. Finesse. You have responded in a manner that appears to be what you would want to hear. That doesn’t mean it is the best method of delivery. A vital element of communication is the ability to translate a position into one that can be heard and related to.
        Being able to understand various analogies is one thing. Being able to come up with ones tailored to a particular audience is another. Maybe your organization doesn’t need that. But some do.

        See Forbes article That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-degree-tech/

        • Aneta
          Aneta says:

          mg didn’t ask “what job can I do that leverages my skills and experience”. He/she asked specifically about working with / teaching systems (so NT jobs), and how to get a job like this in a tech company with little industry experience, marketing him/herself as an academic, because academics also do systems. At least this is what inferred from his/her post.

          And I think he/she can’t for the reasons I mentioned. I think they’re true, even if I didn’t sugarcoat them enough to your liking. For the record, I don’t think mg is an F. His/her post screams INTJ to me. But whatever. I guess I could use a course on finesse but it wasn’t offered when I did my major in humanities.

          The article is about people with liberal arts degrees moving into tech companies. This is not news. But they generally don’t do NT jobs, and when they do, it’s not because of their background, it’s because they’re NTs. Also, they aren’t academics and aren’t trying to say academia totally prepared them for working in a fast paced, innovative industry like tech. Maybe it did that, maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. It matters what people think. And people will think you’re saying, this Oldsmobile is not your father’s Oldsmobile. We all know how well it did. (Was that lacking finesse again? I can’t tell.)

          As to your suggestions, in case mg actually wants to do any job in tech. Nowadays most companies know how important UX is (thanks Apple) and have an inhouse UX person. So I don’t think this will work. The “tech to client translator” suggestion is fine, but any smart person with good social skills can do that job, even fresh out of university. And he/she can’t do project management with little industry experience, I think.

          • MBL
            MBL says:

            Hi Aneta, I hear ya’ about how hard it is to get the classes you want in undergrad. All of the Candor 101 classes started before 10am and I CLEPed out of Pussyfooting 220 and went straight into Affirmative Glossing Over in Corporate America.

            I understand and appreciate your experience, but don’t think that every organization behaves in exactly the same way. It just takes one outside the norm approach to land a job. I think your point about companies already having inhouse UX people is a great point. Companies have them and still their sites suck. If someone were to come up with a better option, then it is possible they might get offered a job. Sure the company might think the ideas are great and then go looking for a cheap replacement, but they might be willing to pay for the one with proven initiative. Or, perhaps this could be a way to incorporate your suggestion to get current info for a resume.

            What is your experience with resumes vs knowing someone? Do you see strict adherence to resume keywords or are there other channels. I know some people who can get interviews but not jobs and others who have trouble getting in the door, but once they get past the front desk…

            Cheers

          • mg
            mg says:

            I guess the question is whether to focus on creating an NT (systems) or NJ (UX) impression, then, since it seems I may be able to get away with either one. If, as Aneta claims, it’s true that people get those systems-related tech jobs simply for being NTs, could it be that I have a shot? Or is the NJ skill set more useful/in demand, anyway? Or should I just focus on taking the copywriter/editor route? Aneta, I’ve been meaning to ask how it is you got your start in tech, and what you do now, given that you were a humanities major. I’m sure I could learn from your experience.

            It does seem like tweaking resumes and cover letters is a futile enterprise, MBL. I often wonder whether it’s even worth the time and effort of submitting an application, or if the employer already has a specific candidate or type of candidate in mind. I wish I knew more insiders.

            Thanks for chiming in, PT. Is “fun” an acceptable reason to give in an interview?

        • mg
          mg says:

          Aneta and MBL, thank you both for your thoughtful replies.

          Aneta, I’m familiar with the advice to leave the PhD and the related academic experience off my resume, but given that my tech gigs have been so brief, and the dot-com ones are from roughly 15 years ago, I think it would be immediately apparent that there’s an elephant in the room. And while you may be right that, on an institutional level, academia and the software industry have little in common, I disagree that what happens inside the classroom, especially in small seminars like mine, is of no relevance or value outside the ivory tower. True, academic research, forced into the straightjacket of a conservative academic administration, is a lumbering and curmudgeonly beast, but classes tend to be more dynamic. After all, the students constantly change, the material – even if it’s not cutting-edge – varies, and the methods evolve; moreover, every class meeting takes its own unique course. While the texts or topics will ideally spark students’ interest and may even strike them as particularly memorable or important, practically speaking, they function as the data on which to project the transferrable skills of complex, clear, and persuasive writing and analysis. I have no interest in producing any more experts in a dying field like mine, nor is that field what drew me away from the colorless STEM courses I intended to focus on in college so much as the intellectual debate and originality that galvanized my humanities courses. (It’s a shame STEM courses aren’t offered in small seminar format starting in the lower division.) I’d like to believe the same bent sets the creative innovator or the successful start-up founder from the rank-and-file software developer, but maybe I’m just flattering myself.

          MBL, I’ve read that article, and it’s certainly uplifting, though its evidence suggests that if one is a humanities major, it’s much easier to transition into the tech sector straight out of college than after graduate school. To be honest, I appreciate your encouragement and concrete advice far more. Is there a common term for “tech-to-client translator” (though that would be a fabulous job title)? Would that be the same thing as tech support or QA [insert jargony role here] or a less entry-level position? And how does one go about identifying and approaching companies with crappy user experience? If a candidate working in their industry could afford, and may even be expected, to be upfront, wouldn’t someone outside it risk alienating them?

          PS. I used to test as an INTJ, but Quistic has consistently categorized me as an INFJ.

          • Aneta
            Aneta says:

            I addressed most of what you said in my comment above, but I just want to say, I love your writing style. I’m noting down the word “curmudgeon”.

          • Aneta
            Aneta says:

            Also, the comments I made about academia are not necessary what I think, it’s what tech people will think just before your resume lands in garbage. I majored in humanities, and I know some courses are gems much unlike the rest, which is, well, outdated and stultifying. But your job will be to convince people your academic experience means what you say it does, and I don’t think you can do that in under 10 seconds.

            I mean, you could probably land an entry level job of the kind MBL suggested and start over, but the truth is these jobs can be done by people straight out of school. So, for these jobs, your experience is neither good not bad, it’s irrelevant. You just need a particular set of skills. And there will be people 15 years younger who have that. And obviously, these jobs don’t pay that well.

            I still stand by my advice of doing unpaid work and putting it on your resume. If you don’t want to leave off your academic experience, write that it was all about systems / problem solving, and then have the unpaid job on the top of your resume. So that people think, the person landed this systems job, I guess comparative literature is really about systems. That might work. But maybe Penelope will have better suggestions.

            I’m sorry I can’t be more encouraging. It’s not my strong suit, obviously. But hey, if you ever end up working in tech, it’s likely your boss will be a jerk like me. So it’s like a sneak peak.

          • mg
            mg says:

            Thanks, Aneta. I’m not trying to deny that your response is the one most people would have – and probably already have had – to my resume; you’re only being realistic. And your writing style – piercing, unvarnished, and economical – is no doubt better suited to your industry than mine is, though I appreciate the compliment, nonetheless. I’m grateful that you gave my question the time of day rather than dismissing it out of hand and are helping me strategize how to present myself more effectively. (And I’m grateful to PT for providing a forum in which that could happen.)

            I hope you don’t mind if I impose on your generosity by asking some follow-up questions. An unpaid job is a tricky proposition, as my income, measly though it is, does support my family, and I happen to live in the ludicrously expensive Bay Area (which at least has the advantage of being the epicenter of the tech industry). How long of a commitment are we talking about? Would it be acceptable for it to be part-time? How would I go about securing it, seeing as such jobs aren’t generally advertised (unless you are suggesting that I apply to one of the myriad unpaid internships whose target audience is not a BA but a BA-in-progress)? Is there any point in trying to get my foot in the door via informational interviews or by approaching companies out of the blue with proposals on how to improve their B2C profile (along the lines of what MBL was describing)? Would I be a kook for pitching them a pro bono critique or revision of their web copy, as I often restrain myself from doing? (I’m pretty good at taking on and perfecting whatever style they’re trying to adopt.) In short, knowing that most of your colleagues will be inclined to unceremoniously shred my application without even reading it, how can stay their hands long enough to give it the same consideration you have?

          • MBL
            MBL says:

            mg, I call it AspieSpeak to NF translation. I have many years of experience via trying to figure out what my husband meant to convey vs how most people, especially I, would initially hear it. When I break it down for him his response is often “Oh! Well if you put it like that!” And I’m thinking “Actually, that is pretty much how YOU put it.”

            I’m not sure what you would have to lose by offering free solutions to problems a company might not know they have. I mean, you are going to be doing it in your head anyway and you are probably a wicked fast typist… Whereas someone within the company may not see it and even if they do they have a LOT more to lose than you do. Also, if you are looking for a company that welcomes good ideas, even if they don’t seem obvious to everyone else or come from expected channels, then this could be stealth screening.

            I doubt you are going to get a reputation in tech circles as “that rogue comp lit wacko who offers unsolicited advice.” But if you were to, then it would only take one person hearing about you to say “hmmmm, can I have their contact info?”

            Have you seen actual job listings that seem applicable to which you have sent your resume? I really think you need to focus on figuring out what you can offer and then finding an insider to get you in the door. I suspect that if you can get an interview then the job is yours. However, I wouldn’t concentrate on tweaking your resume to get you in there. Again, offering unsolicited solutions to problems that they don’t even know they have could look pretty intriguing. If it were a webpage copy/user tweak you could start with “I heard someone complaining that your site was so confusing that they just gave up. Out of curiosity, I looked it up and immediately saw the problem. I think if you…” But of course in whatever language you think they would be most receptive to.

            You might get some good feedback or you might get nada, but I don’t think it could hurt.

    • MBL
      MBL says:

      Oops. My link got put in timeout. I haven’t finished the article so I don’t know if it will have particulars, but it seems applicable. You may need to find someone on the inside. I think project management or “tech to client translator,” if you will, may be your best bet. Or you may need to find a company with a crappy user experience and convince them that they need your skills.

      Best of luck!!

      That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket (hopefully the link will sneak through this time)
      forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-degree-tech/

    • Penelope Trunk
      Penelope Trunk says:

      I just started reading this book about graduate school, and the introduction (and some subsequent chapters) eloquently make the argument for the value of Phds in the non-academic workplace. The title of the book is The Graduate School Mess: What Caused it and How We Can Fix It. Here it is on Amazon

      http://www.amazon.com/dp/067472898X/?tag=ptrunk-20+Cassuto

      That said, I think the big problem is that employers wonder, if you are good at that line of reasoning, good at investigation, good at asking questions, why did you need to go to graduate school? It’s probably a skill you were born with. You could have been honing it in corporate America instead of academia.

      Of course, the obvious answer is that academia is more fun. But that’s not a good thing to say on your resume. And it’s hard to not say that.

      But I do actually mean to be positive in this comment – so read Leonard Cassuto’s book about graduate school. I think it’ll make you more able to convey why you are valuable for having gone.

      Penelope

    • Aneta
      Aneta says:

      I’ll just answer everything here because the multiple comment streaks are making my head spin.

      I think, if I were you, I’d make a website kind of like Penelope’s “1-to-1 coaching” section (go look at it). Then I’d just slap customer testimonials on the page along with what I did for them. So it won’t matter that your chronology sucks or that the projects weren’t that long or whatever. This is kind of what I had in mind in my first comment. (And I would still leave academia off. But maybe Penelope’s book has some good suggestions on how to spin it.)

      Then I’d try reaching companies just like MBL suggested. (And no, nobody will think you’re a whackjob for giving unsolicited advice.) Or take Penelope’s freelancing course and see what else you can do to get hired. Sorry, I’ve never tried to get a job this way, and I don’t know a lot about American job market. I can’t really give you more helpful suggestions.

      As to what your job should be, just pick one. Both are in demand. I guess copywriting jobs would be easier to get given your background.

      I got into tech because I taught myself how to code. My first job was, believe it or not, a “tech-to-client translator” as well as a programmer. (The term is Consultant, by the way.) Also, my major was linguistics, and I did some computational linguistics, so it was way easier to spin. And I was in my early 20s, and the company was all men. Every tech company likes to hire young women.

      • Aneta
        Aneta says:

        Also, I don’t think you’d like doing UX. It’s actually a very detail oriented job, with rules you have to adhere to and metrics to track.

        Alternatively, if you want to work with systems, the two jobs you should look at are business analyst and systems analyst. The former translates customer-to-requirement. For example, a customer may say “I want to be able to print stuff without clicking bazillion times”, and you come up with a button that does that. Then the systems analyst translates requirement-to-tech, like “you have to make a button that takes X and does Y and this change will influence the A, B and C parts of our product so fix that”. Sometimes one person does both jobs, if it’s a small system.

        I think you’d like doing that. These are very NJ jobs and pay very well. The problem is, you can’t get them “the wacko way”, just by emailing a company or as a freelancer. It has to be your resume. Also, you absolutely need industry knowledge (whatever industry the company is in), as well as some technical skills (especially for the latter job), and most likely some experience. So your industry could be teaching or writing or something like that, then your academic background may be fine. For example, check out Grammarly. They are in SF. Or go to angel.co and find similar startups.

        So, you should go to Monster and read some job descriptions for business analysts and systems analysts. If you like either of the two, and would rather do that than freelance or whatever, let me know. I actually may be able to help you out a little.

        • mg
          mg says:

          Thank you for taking the time to give me all this advice, Aneta. I do think I would enjoy one of those analyst jobs; multivariable formulas appeal to me. Do you mind if I ask PT for your contact info, or do you have a nifty website of your own? (I should’ve guessed you were a linguistics major, by the way. My useless dissertation happens to be about tense/aspect in the novel, though it’s a far cry from something as hard core as the computational stuff.)

  6. marisa
    marisa says:

    Heh.

    The part that caught my attention was, “…kids like seeing adults disoriented and lost..” And I got to thinking about why that is. And about parent/child relationships, what we teach our children to expect from adults, & how children differentiate from parents.

    And how these youtube videos may be doing that.

    Which reminded me of the interview with Franz Lebowitz in which she said, “What’s the point of being young if you’re not going to make new things, I wonder? … I think someone my age should look at what young people are wearing and think, ‘What the hell is that?’ ” Replace “wearing” with “watching on youtube”.

    As though there’s a sort of contract between young and old. If the young will do their part and invent, the old will do their part and be properly impressed &/or horrified, emphasizing the separate identity of each generation.

    And this is how an INFJ enjoys reading an ENTJ’s post about competition in the marketplace.

  7. Patricia Taylor
    Patricia Taylor says:

    Great Article! In the ever-changing workforce landscape, one thing remains a constant: You can’t stop progress. Personally, I think everyone should always be learning something. Thanks for sharing.

  8. Cathie Dunklee-Donnell
    Cathie Dunklee-Donnell says:

    Thank you for the thought-provoking post. I don’t see any robots about to apply for my job. But I like the idea of openness to new ideas that are trending. Hard core gamers I have among my employees and they seem to be spending more time gaming than learning new stuff for work. It is their time off but until there more balance between gaming and other learning I wonder how much they will learn to improve their job knowledge.

  9. Tracy
    Tracy says:

    I really like this post. I was nodding along to most of it although I’m not convinced on the screen time/hard-core gaming bit shoe-horned in at the end. But overall love the train of thought and the links are glorious (esp. the fast company one) – will keep coming back to revel in them later.

  10. Hunky Dory
    Hunky Dory says:

    Interesting post….some good value and food for thought there.

    From #5 – What my kids like is seeing adults looking disoriented and lost. What I like is watching adults actively trying to figure out the language of the millionaire YouTube celebrities. If you want to know what staying relevant looks like, check out those videos.

    Ok gee, I really disagree with your conclusion.
    1 – The videos were mildly amusing and also stupid.
    2 – I thought the elders were keeping up quite well with the silliness of it it. (they probably all have grandchildren, so….)
    3 – Your kids can laugh all they want, and they will, cuz they’re kids and don’t have much of a clue about the real world. Same as it ever was.

    I contend it’s a false premise to infer that people 50+ years old should try to dial in to immaturity. First, it won’t work..it’ll come off ridiculously and second, it really ought to be the other way around. The breadth and depth of life and work experience at 45+ is worth it’s weight in gold. The young ones should be paying attention to those ahead of them.

    • jessica
      jessica says:

      That, and, YouTube has what over a billion users, 500 million unique posts? More? It’s not at all surprising that a few are wealthy from it considering the curvature of actual consumed content. Most content won’t be watched by anyone but relatives and close friends. That’s fact.

      I think it’s silly to look at that as a model, or something important or relative when it’s a complete lottery without a quick effective growth strategy. (As for the kids watching the gamers it’s content by kids for kids)

      Plus I’m pretty sure YouTube operates at a loss within Google. The search and organization of YouTube is terrible.

      Anyway I’m going on a tangent, but I think it’s interesting in the context.

      I was surprised to hear that you tell the kids not to say where they live. I think the odds of something terrible happening from online gaming are extremely low. If anyone has info on this, I’d be interested.

      • YesMyKidsAreSocialized
        YesMyKidsAreSocialized says:

        The question I have is regarding kids, and the content by kids for kids example. Youtube is how kids are communicating and doing things now, as well as video chats and multiplayer online gaming, and I imagine this will more than likely play a huge part in how things are done 20 years from now. Isn’t what Penelope is saying sort of true? (except that I don’t think everyone will be able to stay relevant.)

        We just don’t know now what it will be like then. Gen Z will be playing by their own rules, and the 45+ years of golden experience, while great now, may not be so relevant when that day arrives. It is starting now with my kids’ generation.

        Gen Y cares about getting along, collaboration, and flexibility at work, Gen Z will get the benefits that Gen Y will have put in place and will more than likely benefit from being digital natives 20-30 years from now, making the rest of us irrelevant in the working sense.

  11. Jean
    Jean says:

    Obsessing about making money and climbing the corporate ladder is so 2014. Now it’s all about finding a career that you flow in.

  12. Richard Yadon
    Richard Yadon says:

    This information has started me to think in a few different ways and I need to incorporate this into the advice I give to job seekers.

    One of the ways that should be explored bit more is “Downplay networking skills”. I’m not sure I am ready for this one. I think the role networking plays is different in “job searching” than in “career management”. While both are certainly inter-related, when someone is searching for a job they can have all the knowledge in the world, but if no one knows them they need to ramp up the networking.

    One is not exclusive of the other, just the emphasis of “what you know” over “who you know” changes.

    Richard Yadon

  13. Tressie @job coaching
    Tressie @job coaching says:

    Impressive tips! I agree here with each point, it’s important for a person to never let himself become outdated. The best way to keep yourself updated is by challenging yourself with the things you are generally afraid of.

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