Even when I am in the same job two years in a row, I find my job is completely different. I’ve been saying that this entire decade; constant change is the one thing that doesn’t change.
The skills and technologies I am compelled through my work to pick up, are often those I never envisaged I would need, and possibly never even heard of the year before.
The very kinds of unique technology skills that can make you indispensible are those that 15 years ago made you un-promotable, in a forgotten era of near-guaranteed employment. As a well meaning manager once explained to me earlier in my career “We’d love to promote you, but you’re the only one who can do the job you are doing today”. That lead me to change modus operandi and work hard to train my successor.
In a hierarchical organization, where promotion is the only path to success and better compensation, finding and training your replacement was central to moving forward, gathering titles and heading towards that gold-watch retirement after untold decades of service to a unitary employer. Today that needs to be supplemented with a near contradiction of ensuring you have highly desirable and even unique skills.
In his book The World is Flat, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman presents a view of the future in which evolving technologies will level the playing field for business owners worldwide. Traditional corporate hierarchies are being replaced by highly specialized online communities sharing similar business interests. This is the people-level view of the disaggregation of the corporate monolith as outsourcing and SAAS hollows out companies creating flexible business shells that internalize their core competencies and outsource everything else possible. Do the jobs disappear? No, but they move around dramatically. There aren’t fewer jobs, but they are eliminated and created at a dramatically increasing rate.
According to Friedman, to survive in this ever-flattening world, individuals must diversify their skills so that they remain viable competitors across many different careers. Those who do, those who attain a level of specialization that cannot be outsourced are, he claims, "untouchable." So if you want job security, join their ranks. Become an “untouchable" now.
And if you don't? The fallout from such dramatic technological change may mean that those who haven't kept pace will lose the race for 21st century jobs.
How do you gain these skills? It’s no longer a 9-5 world. Showing up with a suit, briefcase and sipping your coffee is not just insufficient; it is an anachronism. Those who gain these skills are either lucky, or work hard at it. The later live and breathe their technology skills and accrue them with passion.
Thoughts?
Joel
