What the death of Adobe Flash a decade ago tells freelancers today about the need to develop new skills

Readers of a certain age may remember Adobe Flash, the multimedia software platform that for the first decade of this century was the go-to format for video games, animation, desktop apps, etc. Then, as suddenly as it had taken over the internet, it disappeared, impacting workers, labor markets, and even supply and demand dynamics.

In April 2010, Steve Jobs published “Thoughts on Flash”, a short but extremely forceful article in which he announced that Apple would stop supporting Flash on its mobile devices (iPhone, iPod and iPad). The announcement was not only the death knell for the technology, it created a fascinating work dynamic, which has recently been analyzed in a great article called “The Death of a Technical Skill”, published in one of the best journals in my area, Information Systems Research (ISR).

In an increasingly active online job market worth around a trillion dollars (A new McKinsey survey estimates more than a third of Americans define themselves as independent workers, dependent on tech platforms, with 68%) technical skills are crucial not only for immediate salary, but also for their future value. Developers not only get paid for what they do today, but they consider how well what they learn will serve them for future…