Careers in the times of perpetual beta
In the tech industry the people who have started a product line have rarely been the ones who have won the race. Archie was the first search engine but they lost the race to Google. Kodak invented the digital camera but had to make way for more nimble competitors who saw the digital camera as the future. The leaders of Kodak looked at the resolution of the awkward contraption called the digital camera and said that while the resolution was terrific (it was all of 0.01 megapixels) but it was a bit slow since it took 23 seconds to record the digital photograph. The company whose name was synonymous with photography went bankrupt in January 2012. Nokia and Blackberry bowed out of the mobile handset race. They could not visualize a phone without a keyboard – Apple could.
Life spans of firms are getting shorter
The wisdom of all the management consultants and thinkers has not been able to increase the longevity of firms. The average lifespan of an S&P company dropped by almost 50 years in the last hundred years. Firms lived for almost seven decades in the 1920s. Today the firms die before they complete their second decade. On an average a S&P company is now being replaced every two weeks. Richard Foster, an economist from Yale estimates that 75 percent of the S&P 500 firms will be replaced by new firms by 2027.
We are living longer
Humans on the other hand are living longer thanks to advances in medicine. The apps on your smartphone will remind you to exercise, drink water and stay healthier. Those who are in now their twenties will have a 50% chance of living to be hundred. People will have to work for almost seven decades on an average.
The fastest growing digital companies employ very few
One Facebook engineer manages 26,000 servers (as compared to 300-500 servers managed by most other companies). The overall employment (and entry level salaries) in Indian IT firms has remained constant over the last few years.These changes will need us to view work, leisure and retirement in new ways. As routine work gets outsourced to machines, humans will have a chance to do work that will be creative and deal with situations that have no precedence.
Durable to Consumable Careers
Careers used to be like consumer durables. People learned for twenty to twenty-five years and then used the education over a thirty to forty years. Doing the odd training program once every few years was good enough to stay current. Doing a training program was like getting the fridge or washing machine serviced occasionally. Degrees ensured employment for a lifetime. The employee’s identity was defined by the employer’s brand.In the digital world, careers will be more like consumables. Rapid obsolescence of knowledge is drastically lowering the shelf life of a degree. Employment is getting replaced by employability. That means staying current. In one of the conferences where I was speaking I met several participants who had spent their own money to attend the conference. They did not want to depend on their employer.When degrees no longer assure the employer of the proficiency and employability of a fresh graduate, they have no choice but to look for expertise and not degrees. In the digital world every skill or talent will be available for hire by the hour. From drivers and maids (check out Babajobs.com and housejoy.com) to top notch consultants (check out hourlynerds.com) all kinds of expertise is available from a global pool of In a pay-per-use model for talent. LinkedIn has anyway created a boundaryless marketplace for talent.The opportunities for the expert are limitless. No wonder people are investing in staying current without waiting for the training department to send them to a course once every few years. A participant summarised it for me. He said, “Only the top leaders are nominated to attend courses on strategic thinking. I do not want to depend on the training department to be nominated. I am paying for it myself.”
Perpetual Beta careers have new rules
The past will no longer be a guide to the future. Educational institutes are not changing fast enough to keep pace. It will need people who have the curiosity to stay tuned to “weak signals” and the humility to learn anything from anyone. The future belongs to the curious learner.Do you believe that careers will be managed like consumables and not like durables? I would love to know what you have seen happening in your part of the world. Tell me about it by leaving a comment. Thanks for helping me learn.--------------LinkedIn published its annual list of 15 Must Know Writers From India. <click here to see the list>