I wrote a post recently about the importance of learning software development at an early age.
I realize, however, that a common reaction is “sure, there are lots of jobs RIGHT NOW, but what about in X years, after I’ve gone through the process of learning all this stuff…won’t the world have changed by then?”
My answer to this is “Yes, the world will change, and the demand for these technical skills will only INCREASE.”
However…it’s one thing for ME to believe this, and another thing for everyone else to believe this…so I’m always on the lookout for evidence.
Well…I found some. This came from a presentation by McKinsey today at Stanford GSB (sorry for the lousy picture quality from my camera phone). They were talking about the rise of “Big Data”. Lots of cool stuff, like grocery stores better knowing where to place things by using the kind of multivariate analysis that web folks have been doing for years.
But anyway, check out what McKinsey says will be the potential Talent Gap in 2018, JUST in the field of “Big Data”. They think that in 7 years, there will be 300,000 more jobs available than people capable of filling those jobs, just in the area of software engineers who can do things with “Big Data”…not counting statistically-adept business managers (~1.5 M more jobs than people).
So if you don’t believe me, then believe McKinsey & start by learning how to do MySQL queries :)
