Employ the Kids!

I recently came across Raspberry Pi. It was recommended to me as a birthday present for my nephew – he’s a budding techie, pictured below setting up my new MacBook Pro and smiling from ear to ear…

I had no idea what a Raspberry Pi was. I read the Amazon description and still didn’t. Figuring there must be something in it, I asked around. Apparently most people know already, however if you don’t, it’s a kind of ‘trainer computer’ for potential developers. It’s basic computer parts you put together yourself, install an operating system of your choice and go develop code which can be pretty cool. Who knew?

The kind of technology jobs that exist now, and I suspect will continue, include Product Management, Technical architecture, Development and Design. But what new roles will appear and how on earth do we know what to prepare our kids for?

Already, we have up and coming areas like Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Big Data, Robotics and who knows what else will be invented with the growing desire to travel in space…

As many people likely know, recently Dyson has founded The Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, focussed around innovation. It’s affiliated to Warwick University. Among it’s other aims:

“…Dyson covers all your tuition fees, you could graduate debt-free.”

http://www.dysoninstitute.com

That’s got to be attractive and you would hope, encourage the engineers of the future. In light of Brexit, the UK will need to maintain our edge to remain competitive globally. We need to offer something over and above others to encourage buyers to pay the inevitable duty charges that will be introduced. And as Dyson says:

“Britain’s great strength is its innovative, design and engineering natural ability and we’re not using it.”

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/james_dyson_509705

Recently, I spoke to Arm Limited (https://www.arm.com) at UKSG, who now have a publishing arm. It’s intent is to educate and prepare future employees, to essentially ensure Arm have a ready made skill base to draw from. As this company make the foundations of the processors for pretty much every gadget – Apple, Samsung etc – I figure they’ll need help from the kids for the next generation of development. At the moment there seems to be a lag in the level of education they see in the graduates, whatever the reason. I suspect this is true for other companies too.

These are two examples of how companies are addressing the skills gap, so I wondered how companies in engineering and other sectors are thinking of addressing this too. Wouldn’t it be great if our children were actually prepared for their future possible careers…

Regards (an ambitious, for her child, parent of one),

Ruth