Fear! Excitement! Trends disrupting your career in the 2020s!
Do you feel left behind? If you are witnessing today’s unprecedented speed of technological change, a sense of apprehension would not be surprising.
In a hyperspeed environment, individuals cannot gain expertise quickly enough. By the time you learn and master a topic, that expertise already seems obsolete. From a corporate perspective, a lack of technology talent pushes companies toward other options, one of which is automation to reduce reliance upon human workers.
Our current automation trend will eliminate a large chunk of today’s jobs. However, that same disruption causes many more opportunities to emerge for the right individuals. Do not be careless and allow your career to be destroyed in the 2020s. Be aware of technology trends, prepare, and pivot to a new place of success.
Here are five areas you should watch in the next few years.
CLOUD
Motivated by competitive and cost-saving reasons, companies are migrating on-premise applications and data onto cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Companies benefit by eliminating the significant overhead private data centers, hardware, and support services. Plus, they gain market agility by being able to scale digital assets almost immediately.
Companies will eliminate the jobs associated with legacy, on-premise support. With talent at a premium, companies may retrain these individuals for other roles, but the cold reality is most management might instead eliminate long-time legacy employees and replace them with new talent.
Software vendors will reduce costs by moving to cloud-only solutions, eliminating the need to install and support on-premise applications. Field technical staff who performed these roles will no longer be needed; only a smaller core group for the centralized cloud support will remain.
AUTOMATION
Companies will continue automation, combining software with artificial intelligence and machine learning, to reduce costs, gain competitive advantages, and increase revenue. With smart automation, firms will replace many individuals who perform repeatable tasks in controlled environments. It’s a simple decision: automated work can be performed 24×7 without stoppage and at lower costs than humans.
Vendors will provide automated tools to accelerate the movement from on-premise applications to the cloud platforms. During the next few years, you will see a mad rush to push business applications onto cloud platforms.
NEW COMPETITORS
New endeavors with new technology will emerge and disrupt legacy businesses. One advantage is they do not have the baggage of legacy platforms, bureaucracy, and long-time employees. These nimble barbarians will attack the fortresses of established empires, speeding the decline of well-known companies.
DISPOSABLE TECHNOLOGY
Rapid technological improvements mean that older technology needs to be thrown away sooner. Ongoing changes, new competition, along with lack of talent pushes companies to speed their elimination of legacy applications and old ways of doing business.
When everything becomes a paid cloud service, companies need fewer technical support employees. However, individuals who can train others in emerging technology will be important. Because modern tools change quickly these tech trainers must quickly pivot and learn. Instead of working for one company, these individuals may provide global online services, generating both active and passive income. To meet demand, online courses and certifications will grow.
CELEBRITY TALENT
While automation will eliminate many legacy jobs, rapidly changing technologies and lack of resources will provide a Wild West goldrush for savvy individuals in the 2020s. Some will become solopreneurs with a strong social media presence, causing firms to find a new HR model, other than their legacy comand-and-control methods designed to restrict employee behaviors.
Instead of dependency upon full-time employees, companies will leverage project-based, remote talent who can be shuffled in and out as needed. Firms will need to develop the culture and skills for working with free agents. A corporate initiative will begin to resemble the effort of producing a blockbuster movie using contracted talent during development.
As a result of a smaller talent base, corporate work conditions will change. Work-from-home will gain even more acceptance and individuals will not need to live within an hour commute of a downtown office building. Instead, technology will be securely available from cloud platforms and workers will spread out, with less clustering in mega-urban centers. Headquarters will become occasional convention sites for talent community-building, celebration, and edification events.
Depending on your worldview, the technology trends of the 2020s are either fear-inducing dangers or exciting opportunities. Make sure you wield this double-edge sword properly. Contact me at Doug@kencura.com.