Jobs are the new Gold in this day and age. If you find a job and actually landing then you get a feeling of being rich. Probably like the gold prospectors of the various gold rushes in the 1800’s. People were in the river or stream looking for gold nuggets, and when they did find gold they rushed to stake their claim. Kind of hard to stake a claim to a job when you finally get one, but the feeling is the same. The job is mine! A little like Golem from the Lord of The Rings. “My precious! My precious!” But rather than some ring your thinking my precious job. So here you are in this mass of humanity prospecting for a job, and to find one is like finding that gold nugget. But there are any number of variables that might go into you landing that job. Among the chief variables is your skill set. We live in a knowledge based economy in which what you know how to do will determine which job you might land. News broke over the weekend that there are software developer's who write programs of the Windows platform, who are now concerned that their skills might now be obsolete with the new Windows OS8. MS has indicated that it’s to be HTML5 and Java script based. So all those developers who invested time and perhaps even money to learn the various languages of the MS OS platform are upset about the proposed change. But this is only natural on two accounts of the nature of things. On the first account it is only natural that MS might want to change the programming language of the OS, and base it on the newest web protocol HTML5 so as to incorporate some rich content. They must also have some reasoning for Javascript as well. On the second account it’s only reasonable in a knowledge based economy that skills are going to either be in demand or obsolete depending on market demands. We have moved into a new era. In this knowledge economy you are only as valuable, or even relevant to the needs of a company as long as you have the skills, or even the expertise that a company needs to make a profit. If you don’t in some way contribute to a companies bottom line then you are expendable.
What does this knowledge based economy mean for the average worker? It means that our economy of today is based less on manufacturing more on what people know and how to do it. It also means that people who just want a job, to do something day in and day out, the same old, same old will not get very far. Manufacturing might seem appealing to the average worker, but the day’s when manufacturing was 25% of the US economy are over, and might never return in part thanks to technology. Companies, corporations today want aggressive workers. People who are not afraid of change, and who are willing to continuously reinvent themselves. Those in the corporate world hear words or phrases like “you have make your own job with the company” or “you have to become billable”. Meaning you provide a service to a companies clients, there-by justifying your salary. For those in IT it’s the same thing as it is for those in other parts of the company. Are you support? Do you manage the servers and data centers or do you do face time with customers? The difference is for those that are in support IT then your job can be outsourced to any third party vendor. But if you get face time with a client then you are billable, and therefor contribute to your companies bottom line.
For the average worker what all of this means is that, they, you, or I have to be willing to do two things. The first is to continuously seek new job skills because as technology changes, and it will all the faster in the years to come, the skills of today will be obsolete tomorrow. That four bachelors degree is already obsolete in two years unless new skills are not added to it. The second thing that person must be willing to do in this new knowledge economy is to willing, and able to live beneath your means. What I mean by this is people must learn to be frugal, and save like crazy because in this new era everyone gets laid off at least once or even twice in their lives, and they are going to need their savings until they find the next gold nugget, not to mention the need to save for retirement. One last point. The economy of today is not like the economy of our parents or even grandparents. They held jobs for years, even decades. In this new era of the knowledge economy that is no longer the case nor should we expect to go into work day in, day out doing the same thing. That is no longer the case. Because of this wonderful world of tech that we live in our workplace environment is , and always will be in a state of flux.
Surfs up!.............................Eric
What does this knowledge based economy mean for the average worker? It means that our economy of today is based less on manufacturing more on what people know and how to do it. It also means that people who just want a job, to do something day in and day out, the same old, same old will not get very far. Manufacturing might seem appealing to the average worker, but the day’s when manufacturing was 25% of the US economy are over, and might never return in part thanks to technology. Companies, corporations today want aggressive workers. People who are not afraid of change, and who are willing to continuously reinvent themselves. Those in the corporate world hear words or phrases like “you have make your own job with the company” or “you have to become billable”. Meaning you provide a service to a companies clients, there-by justifying your salary. For those in IT it’s the same thing as it is for those in other parts of the company. Are you support? Do you manage the servers and data centers or do you do face time with customers? The difference is for those that are in support IT then your job can be outsourced to any third party vendor. But if you get face time with a client then you are billable, and therefor contribute to your companies bottom line.
For the average worker what all of this means is that, they, you, or I have to be willing to do two things. The first is to continuously seek new job skills because as technology changes, and it will all the faster in the years to come, the skills of today will be obsolete tomorrow. That four bachelors degree is already obsolete in two years unless new skills are not added to it. The second thing that person must be willing to do in this new knowledge economy is to willing, and able to live beneath your means. What I mean by this is people must learn to be frugal, and save like crazy because in this new era everyone gets laid off at least once or even twice in their lives, and they are going to need their savings until they find the next gold nugget, not to mention the need to save for retirement. One last point. The economy of today is not like the economy of our parents or even grandparents. They held jobs for years, even decades. In this new era of the knowledge economy that is no longer the case nor should we expect to go into work day in, day out doing the same thing. That is no longer the case. Because of this wonderful world of tech that we live in our workplace environment is , and always will be in a state of flux.
Surfs up!.............................Eric
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