4 ms·

It seems to me the title would have been better named "Why reskilling will probably not guarantee you a new job". The first two thirds of the article about how

It seems to me the title would have been better named "Why reskilling will probably not guarantee you a new job". The first two thirds of the article about how and why this doesn't happen, and it sums up with what appears to be the exception. That said, I couldn't agree with the closing more: "You've got to work so hard at it and do all these extra activities and just immerse yourself fully. Without that passion, I can't see them getting anywhere." Trying to gain new skills with the mindset that it's a burden does not pan out. Instead, finding a topic that has lots of natural interest yields the best results, and is way more fun!

bluedays 6y ago
Agreed. Transitioning into tech for this very reason has yielding amazing results for me.
- kaloy 6y ago
  Same here, its going to be the same overall if you found something that you are passionate and really spend your time immersing yourself in it(and of course talent in that field counts). Find that and you will probably succeed
- _they 6y ago
  Same. In three years of immersing myself in my passion (pentesting/vuln research), I've tripled my income and vastly improved my quality of life. A lot of it was just going after my area of interest vs listening to other people tell me what I "need" to do before I go there. Again, probably not the route if you aren't interested in it though... Not saying you need to wake up, hack, sleep, repeat, but you probably won't be able to "tough it out for a paycheck"... There needs to be a substantial level of passion/interest in the subject for it to work. IMO, that's where it goes wrong for a lot of people. They get excited about buying a bootcamp or whatever, but then quickly find out that it isn't for them and lose interest, or worse, go through the motions and then wonder why it isn't working...
i_haz_rabies 6y ago
I find this passion argument accurate, yet distasteful. We as a society should not expect adults with dependents to do the "passionate, young, single developer" grind just to get a steady job because their old one is automated or outsourced. This is not healthy even for the stereotypical CS grad, much less your average out-of-work auto plant worker.
- unishark 6y ago
  I think it's more about the energy level needed to get over the learning curve. Like learning a new language, if you aren't really serious it isn't going to happen, and going at it slower makes it take disproportionately longer, making it disproportionately more likely you'll get frustrated and give up before you succeed at it. As for younger versus older, I'd say this is a screening process that filters young people out even more if anything. When it comes to students in a MS program, older students are much more able to handle it in my experience.
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    This is why I think on-the-job training is important. I know there isn't much of an economic argument for a company to take on older candidates and teach them how to be a productive developer, but maybe subsidies would help? I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already.
    - unishark 6y ago
      > I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already. Many govt programs criticized in the article do support people through the training. It was more about people being encouraged to reskill into the wrong fields when it comes to programming (which I didn't agree with, by the way). A "pull based" system where companies recruit people to train based on their needs does have benefits over letting people guess and run up debt on their own (the current system, which crashes and burns when people make bad predictions). The govt does this, e.g. where the military will pay for your education in return for service. But do we really want people deeply indebted to private employers? Otherwise they'd only be willing to risk training people a limited amount, since trained employees will subsequently only stay a limited duration on average. The is how it more or less already is.

bluedays 6y ago

Agreed. Transitioning into tech for this very reason has yielding amazing results for me.

kaloy 6y ago
Same here, its going to be the same overall if you found something that you are passionate and really spend your time immersing yourself in it(and of course talent in that field counts). Find that and you will probably succeed
_they 6y ago
Same. In three years of immersing myself in my passion (pentesting/vuln research), I've tripled my income and vastly improved my quality of life. A lot of it was just going after my area of interest vs listening to other people tell me what I "need" to do before I go there. Again, probably not the route if you aren't interested in it though... Not saying you need to wake up, hack, sleep, repeat, but you probably won't be able to "tough it out for a paycheck"... There needs to be a substantial level of passion/interest in the subject for it to work. IMO, that's where it goes wrong for a lot of people. They get excited about buying a bootcamp or whatever, but then quickly find out that it isn't for them and lose interest, or worse, go through the motions and then wonder why it isn't working...

i_haz_rabies 6y ago

I find this passion argument accurate, yet distasteful. We as a society should not expect adults with dependents to do the "passionate, young, single developer" grind just to get a steady job because their old one is automated or outsourced. This is not healthy even for the stereotypical CS grad, much less your average out-of-work auto plant worker.

unishark 6y ago
I think it's more about the energy level needed to get over the learning curve. Like learning a new language, if you aren't really serious it isn't going to happen, and going at it slower makes it take disproportionately longer, making it disproportionately more likely you'll get frustrated and give up before you succeed at it. As for younger versus older, I'd say this is a screening process that filters young people out even more if anything. When it comes to students in a MS program, older students are much more able to handle it in my experience.
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  This is why I think on-the-job training is important. I know there isn't much of an economic argument for a company to take on older candidates and teach them how to be a productive developer, but maybe subsidies would help? I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already.
  - unishark 6y ago
    > I don't know, I just don't think we can reasonably expect people to retrain on their own time... especially if they're dealing with financial stress already. Many govt programs criticized in the article do support people through the training. It was more about people being encouraged to reskill into the wrong fields when it comes to programming (which I didn't agree with, by the way). A "pull based" system where companies recruit people to train based on their needs does have benefits over letting people guess and run up debt on their own (the current system, which crashes and burns when people make bad predictions). The govt does this, e.g. where the military will pay for your education in return for service. But do we really want people deeply indebted to private employers? Otherwise they'd only be willing to risk training people a limited amount, since trained employees will subsequently only stay a limited duration on average. The is how it more or less already is.