co-authored partnership with Laura Goodrich and Artur Meyster
Technology is changing the way humans live, interact, and communicate. We are on the verge of the fourth industrial revolution. Every year, more and more jobs are automated and the fear of being left behind is something many people have. However, the real situation is that technology exists to complement the lives of humans and that includes our work environment. We need to start seeing technology as our co-worker of the future.
There are already machines taking on many of the jobs that humans used to do, and they do them better and faster. Professionals have to see this as a good thing. Instead of being afraid of their professions disappearing in the future, they should take steps to make sure they are on the right path towards a better tomorrow. In fact, some of the skills we are sure technology is not going to replace any time soon include creativity, emotional intelligence, people management, critical thinking, and adaptability.
Adaptability will probably be the most important skill to have, considering most of the “IT” skills in the tech industry change very fast. Some might even consider being out of the tech loop for roughly a year is already equivalent to career suicide. Because of this, the skills needed to adapt to the constant changes will keep you in business. If you are still concerned, these are some of the tech job fields that will see more growth in the next few years. There are already many courses and bootcamps that can teach you these abilities without demanding years of commitment like a traditional college degree would.
Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Data Analysis and AI are two areas expected to see more growth in the next few years. A sure way to ensure a job in the future is to follow this career path. The skills that will be more needed are data science, data storage technologies, development tools, software development life cycle, management consulting, web development, digital literacy, competence with AI technologies, and scientific computing.
Engineering and Cloud Computing
With the growth of technology, more than 50% of the world population now has access to the internet—and these digits are only growing. Because of this, cloud computing is now a necessity. Jobs that will be needed in the future include site software engineering roles like reliability engineer, Python developer, full stack engineer, JavaScript developer, back end developer, platform engineer, cloud engineer, and cloud consultant.
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Positions Regarding People and Culture
Even though many people are afraid that machines are going to take over, one thing about technology is that humans are still at the center of it all. For this reason, people and culture are still going to be the core of businesses. If anything, the way we work is going to change, with more flexible jobs and remote working positions available. And the same rules of engagement at a distance are simply not enough. At the core, empowering other people to transform their underlying assumptions of organizations and work is critical. Some emerging jobs in this category are IT recruiters, teachers, nursing, talent acquisition specialist, business partner, and any type of job that’s related to creativity. Even if a profession isn’t tech per se, being digitally literate will only work in your favor.
Product Development
At the rate of which the world is going, companies are going to need to keep up. Society is getting used to constant change, which means they somewhat expect a constant stream of new products to have their attention. Therefore, product development will be at the center of everything. In this area, some roles that will likely see the biggest growth in demand are product owner, quality assurance tester, agile coach, software quality assurance engineer, product analyst, scrum master, digital product manager, and delivery lead.
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Artur Meyster is the CTO of Career Karma (YC W19), an online marketplace that matches career switchers with coding bootcamps. He is also the host of the Breaking Into Startups podcast, which features people with non-traditional backgrounds who broke into tech.
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