#### [The World in Numbers: Jobs | Davos 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjm5zU9nINM) – YouTube | World Economic Forum - Artificial intelligence, sustainability / green revolution, the current economic environment and how that has an impact on jobs - Future of Jobs Report in mid-2023, projects to about 2027 - Surveyed more than 800 firms and covers about 11 million employees, covering 40 economies. This covers about 673 million jobs. - Green transition is likely to be positive. Net positive jobs created. - Technology is more mixed. Roles will be created but many jobs will be displaced. - Economic outlook, the uncertainty and lack of investment that currently exists is probably the biggest risk in terms of creating net negative number of jobs. - About 23% of today's jobs will change. - There will be a massive change to skills. 44% of workers' core skills are expected to change in the next five years. - Top upskilling priorities for 2027: 1) Analytical thinking 2) Creative thinking 3) AI and big data - Key tasks impacted by adoption of large language models - High potential for automation: administrative or clerical tasks, design databases, analyze data to improve operations - High potential for augmentation: Evaluate personnel capabilities or performance, collect data about consumer thoughts, read documents or materials - Lower potential for exposure: Negotiate contracts, advocate for individual or community needs, collaborate in the development of educational programs - 2024 is the year where we'll start reaping AI productivity gains - All jobs are a *bundle of tasks*. Each task has a certain level of exposure to AI. - e.g. A marketing specialist does: 1) marketing copy (100/100 exposure), 2) analyzes market research (100/100), 3) trains new employees (33/100). - Jobs with high potential for *augmentation*: Insurance underwriters, editors, biomedical engineers, mathematicians. - Jobs with high potential for *automation*: Checkers and clerks, management analysts, telemarketers, tellers, statistical assistants. - Jobs emerging from the adoption of LLMs: AI model and prompt engineers, interface and interaction designers, AI content creators, ethics and governance specialists. - Is AI going to eat all the jobs? No. AI can often be used to augment workers. Companies should introduce AI by positioning it as an augmentation tool to improve adoption. - There's so much low hanging fruit in terms of AI adoption. If AI advancement were to pause, we'd still have ten years worth of implementation and adoption. - We've reporting "The Future of Jobs" every two years since 2016. When we started, we were concerned about automation in manufacturing and factories. However, adoption and disruption has been much less impactful than we thought. It takes time. - There's a huge potential in AI to personalize learning and education to help people move into new roles. - Research shows that when you get personalized education you get two-deviations faster learning progress. - AI tech is advancing faster and people are going to have to re-skill faster. - We need to transition people into upgraded roles, rather than training from scratch. Something that will help with that is predictive AI and generative AI. - How does a student even know what to study? By the time they graduate, the required job skills have changed. - Education has to change. - Coursera is an example of a tool that helps people learn faster, be lifelong faster, and learn smaller skills. - The model of learning has to change. No longer do you just go to university and you're done. People need to be constantly learning. Online courses are part of this. - As a company, look at your organization and do analysis now on how you can harvest productivity gains from AI and tech. #### [The Brutal Truth Behind Tech Layoffs | Prime Reacts ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdIWtHSJsZI) – YouTube | ThePrimeTime The key takeaway for software engineers: Don't focus too narrowly. Be a generalist. [**Pandemic drove tech revenues and therefore hiring**](https://youtu.be/bdIWtHSJsZI?si=p-aLHPuA0ixfH63N&t=648) - Between 2020-2022 tech companies made more revenues because of the pandemic— everyone was stuck at home and spending money online. - Employee head count rose with this as well. - 2022-2023, revenue fell as people returned to their regular pre-Covid routine. - There was a "correction." Employee head count fell or stagnated. - Now in 2024, revenue is returning to back where it was in 2022 and things are normalizing. [**Tech roles are becoming more specialized as tech becomes specialized**](https://youtu.be/bdIWtHSJsZI?si=XwKRsZ2I92hI2KXr&t=920) - Tech roles are becoming more specialized as tech becomes more specialized. - 20-30 years ago, companies hired if you generally understood how computer science and programming work. - Now we have billion-people websites. That didn't exist before. [**Most tech companies could run on a much smaller fraction of engineers**](**https://youtu.be/bdIWtHSJsZI?si=avpdS0E1CX6bvY-_&t=1090**) - Tech companies have over-hired. An app such as Instagram can be made and maintained by a surprisingly small group of people. - Elon Musk laid off many people and yet, after initial troubles, Twitter is largely fine. - Expands on this point [later.](https://youtu.be/bdIWtHSJsZI?si=N2HGqck9HH0emeIf&t=3230) [**For job safety, be a generalist engineer**](https://youtu.be/bdIWtHSJsZI?si=lqpxKFwFwLapt1Gk&t=2496) - Good programmers, _generally_, are not getting laid off. There's tons of companies who need programmers. - Be a generalist. You bring lots of value this way. You'll always be able to find work. - Don't be a hyper-compartmentalized programmer. Broaden your focus. #### [Why We Will Never Have Enough Software Developers](https://whoisnnamdi.com/never-enough-developers/) – whoisnnamdi.com >To conclude, I emphasize: **highly skilled people prefer highly stable careers in the long-run**. This lets their relative ability and human capital advantage compound over time. Rapid deterioration of skills continuously levels the playing field, preventing the best from separating themselves from the pack. In such a situation, **it makes more sense to quit the race early than get caught in the pile up**. ###### Computer Science Students Face a Shrinking Big Tech Job Market – New York Times, December 6, 2022 >Between 2021 and 2031, employment for software developers and testers is expected to grow 25 percent, amounting to more than 411,000 new jobs, according to projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But many of those jobs are in areas like finance and the automotive industry. >“Students are still getting multiple job offers,” said Brent Winkelman, chief of staff for the computer science department at the University of Texas at Austin. “They just may not come from Meta, from Twitter or from Amazon. They’re going to come from places like G.M., Toyota or Lockheed.” #### [The $8.5 Trillion Talent Shortage](https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/talent-crunch-future-of-work) – Korn Ferry >Left unchecked, in 2030 that talent shortage could result in about $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues. >Much of the shortage is based on simple demography. Japan and many European nations, for instance, have had low birth rates for decades. In the United States, the majority of baby boomers will have moved out of the workforce by 2030, but younger generations will not have had the time or training to take many of the high-skilled jobs left behind. >Indeed, India could become the next tech leader; the study suggest that the country could have a surplus of more than 1 million high-skilled tech workers by 2030. >“As with many economies, the onus falls on companies to train workers, and also to encourage governments to rethink education programs to generate the talent pipelines the industry will require,” >But by 2030, Russia could have a shortage of up to 6 million people, and China could be facing a shortage twice as large. The United States could also be facing a deficit of more than 6 million workers, and it’s worse in Japan, Indonesia, and Brazil, each of which could have shortages of up to 18 million skilled workers.  > >The impact of the talent crunch is so significant that the continued predominance of sector powerhouses is in question. For instance, the United States is the undisputed leader in tech, but the talent shortage could erode that lead fast. In tech alone, the US could lose out on $162 billion worth of revenues annually unless it finds more high-tech workers. - How to learn more effectively based off education science - How to be more productive and focused - How the tech industry works and how to navigate it - How to get, and succeed in, a tech interview