The End Of Work — 2020
The Tech industry is divided into 3 different groups, it became impossible to move up the ladder. If you’re not at the tip of the pyramid, then you might lose your job in the near future. We’re facing the inevitable, the rise of unemployment in Silicon Valley.
Let’s dive into more details.
A vast majority of employees in the Valley, are at the bottom of the pyramid. They work for public companies like Microsoft, eBay, Salesforce, Apple and all the other big names. Their mission is to add small features here and there, or to maintain existing software while acquiring new customers. If you graduated from college 15 years ago, then you might be working for one of these public companies. You’re located at the bottom of the chain.
Moving up the ladder, we have the unicorns — Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefits, etc. Big startups that haven’t left the private market yet. Only 5 years ago, they were the next big thing, attracting new talents and driving the future of Tech. But today, they’re about to become the next public companies. They will be joining the Dinosaur’s Club… If you’re graduating now, you will most likely apply for a job at a big startup. They’re looking for young talent in exchange for a job in a cool environment with nice perks. It’s very attractive for smart college kids.
Finally, at the tip of the pyramid, we have the unemployment turbo-booster. It’s a small group of people who work on AI, biotech and self-driven cars. Their skills are so rare and specific, the education world can’t even catch up. Unlike becoming an iOS developer, there’s no clear path on how to become an AI expert, we don’t have enough data. These few lucky people are building the next “nuclear bomb”, something that will destroy millions of jobs around the world. From taxi drivers, to software developers, our jobs will become replaceable. Robots and AI will master programming languages, cracking puzzles like nobody else has ever done before. Productivity will go from 1 to infinite and people will become obsolete.
So, how are we going to adapt? We started teaching young kids how to code at school. Initiatives like Apple’s Swift Playgrounds will help the world catch up with Silicon Valley. But guess what — it’s already out-dated… When those kids will graduate from college 10 years from now, robots will already be releasing iOS 21223. Actually, there will be a new iOS release every day! Maybe a new iPhone every week… We won’t have any money to buy these products anyway.
So, the question of the day is — what should we teach our kids today?
PS: Coding isn’t the right answer.
F.
