85% of Jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't been invented yet

According to a report published by Dell Technologies and authored by the Institute For The Future (IFTF) and a panel of 20 tech, business and academic experts from around the world, states that 85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't even been invented yet.

"The pace of change will be so rapid that people will learn 'in the moment' using new technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality. The ability to gain new knowledge will be more valuable than the knowledge itself," Dell Technologies said in the report. In other words the message is loud and clear … get ready for a lifetime of skills training and retraining, but not in the ‘institutional’ sense as we as we know it now, but in real time and on a need to know basis that is driven by a Cloud Based Learning Platform.

An interesting point I thought to myself, so I did a bit of my own research to put things in perspective and searched for jobs that are here today but didn’t exist 12 years ago, and to my surprise I came across a few that I’m sure didn’t show up on anybody’s radar back in 2006. Not even the experts from back then could have imagined that jobs like Mobile App Developers, VDC Consultants, Cloud Computing Specialists and Blockchain Engineers would be in demand today. For your amusement I compiled the table below which lists some of the past, present and future positions and hope it stimulates some discussion to answer the question, how do we prepare for jobs that don’t exist yet? Especially when things are changing so fast.

Preparing for a job that doesn’t exist yet is compounded by the fact that students entering a 4 year engineering program in 2018 may not have the skills that industry is looking for when they graduate in 2022. For example, how many students who started in 2014 chose a career path that would train them to become a Blockchain Engineer today? The demand for Blockchain Engineers has increased by 400 percent since late 2017 according to Hired, a firm that helps clients recruit tech candidates. They also claim that the salary for a Blockchain Engineer is in the range of $150,000 to $175,000 per year, the same as what an AI/Data Scientists earns today.

So what skills does a Blockchain Engineer need and where does one go to learn them? According to the experts in this space the Blockchain Engineer needs to be comfortable with learning as they go since this is a new and emerging field with very little formal training around; they must have the ability of ‘adopting a new mindset’ which focuses on efficiency, scalability, and distributed computing; and they must understand that there is more to just learning another programming language. A Blockchain Engineer will need to be a hybrid of a junior economist, an API developer, a data geek and auditor. The experts also point out that people who consider entering this space must have good problem solving skills and the ability to discover and process information on the fly as the pace of change in Blockchain technologies is really fast and one has to be agile and quick to adapt.

Blockchain is very new, there are no formal degree programs (yet) and by 2030 I am quite sure this field alone will create many of the jobs we have yet to imagine. Recognizing the rapid change and digital disruption that Blockchain is causing, George Brown College's School of Computer Technology is the first Canadian college to offer a certificate in Blockchain Development. This unique program focuses on designing and implementing decentralized applications by leveraging Blockchain Technology. The three-semester program is designed to also thoroughly cover full stack development to give students all the tools they need to succeed in this emerging and exciting field. More information can be found on the George Brown website.

“Where is the puck going to be?” is the expression I like to use when I give my students a few tips on how to deal with our rapidly changing Building Automation industry. I tell them the story about Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest player in the game of Hockey. He wasn’t the biggest and fastest in the game and unlike many of the other hockey players who chased the puck all game Wayne knew where it was going to be and knew what to do with it when he got it. So how do we know where the puck is going to be in the new API based economy created by the Digital Transformation? Can a Blockchain Engineer figure it out? I think so.

The Blockchain Engineer is what is needed in this rapidly changing API driven economy. In the short term we will need people that can integrate anything with everything and make the human-to-machine and the machine-to-human digital experience transparent; and in the long term we will need visionaries that can carve the path into the brave new world and make this a truly connected planet. Alexa are you ready?

You can’t teach about things that don’t exist yet, but you can teach someone to learn how to learn. - Leo SaLemi