The phenomenon is sped by automation, which usurps routine tasks, leaving employees to handle the
nonroutine and unanticipated—and the continued advance of which throws the skills employers value
into flux. It would be supremely ironic if the advance of the knowledge economy had the effect of
devaluing knowledge. But that’s what I heard, recurrently, while reporting this story. “The half-life of
skills is getting shorter,” I was told by IBM’s Joanna Daly, who oversaw an apprenticeship program that
trained tech employees for new jobs within the company in as few as six months. By 2020, a 2016
World Economic Forum report predicted, “more than one-third of the desired core skill sets of most
occupations” will not have been seen as crucial to the job when the report was published. If that’s the
case, I asked John Sullivan, a prominent Silicon Valley talent adviser, why should anyone take the time
to master anything at all? “You shouldn’t!” he replied.
“The half-life of skills is getting shorter,” I was told by IBM’s Joanna Daly, who oversaw an apprenticeship program that trained tech employees for new jobs within the company in as few as six months. The half-life of employees is getting shorter too. . .
.
.
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Building a professional identity takes a lot of resources—money, time, energy. After it’s built, we expect
to reap gains from our investment. Are we equipped to continually return to apprentice mode?
It leaves us with lifelong learning, an unavoidably familiar phrase that, before I began this story,
sounded tame to me—a motivational reminder that it’s never too late to learn Spanish or enroll in
nighttime pottery classes. But when Guillermo Miranda, IBM’s former chief learning officer, used the
term in describing to me how employees take advantage of the company’s automated career counselor,
Myca, it started to sound like something new. “You can talk to the chatbot,” Miranda said, “and say,
‘Hey, Myca, how do I get a promotion?’ ”
Myca isn’t programmed to push any fixed career track. It isn’t dumb enough to try to predict the future—
much less plan for it. “There is no master plan,” Miranda said. Myca just crunches data, notices
correlations, and offers suggestions: Take a course on blockchain. Learn quantum computing. “Look,
Jennifer!” it might say. “Three people like you just got promoted because they got these badges.”
Badges = promotion? Really?
The Navy’s USS Gabrielle Giffords and the Future of Work --
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/