The Myth of Retraining: Joe and Matilda Fuzzypants

One of the oft-cited "solutions" to the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs is "re-training". It sounds helpful and hopeful. If you can't do "A" anymore, we'll just teach you to do "B" and Bob's your uncle. Unfortunately it is not enough to simply teach someone to do something different. They also must be have ability and desire. I want to tread lightly here. I'm a believer in hard work and self-improvement. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from going back to the drawing board and reinventing themselves. As a re-inventor myself I know it can be rewarding! The problem with many folks however, is the technology curve and the speed of adaptation.

Joe's Saga

To illustrate let's talk about Joe. Joe's coming out of high school with ok grades and he wants to do something to "make good money" so he can feed his video game addiction and marry his cat (don't judge). Joe decides to become a computer programmer. Programming seems like a good choice. He can certainly make a living doing it. Even though Joe has little to no experience with programming, he did take a class in High School. Although he wasn't an "enthusiastic" student, he did eke out a B.

Joe enrolls in the local university as a CS major. Along with everything else Joe learns the basics of programming from three classes in Java. His classes prepare him to build software objects and classes, work with UI's, compile and jar up his code and work with a group. He scrapes by, graduates (Thank God - no more school!), finds a job doing java and marries Matilda Fuzzypants (don't judge).

A few weeks into his job he comes to a startling realization. Only 60 percent of what he learned about Java in school is useful (I'm being generous). His new job consists of "figuring things out", implementing new frameworks, and preparing for the massive changes that are coming with the next version of Java. Far from being done with school he is embroiled in an entirely new learning experience and his job is on the line. He decides programming is too much like being a student, so he and Matilda move back in with Mom and he takes a job at the local Petsmart where his dalliance with a calico is a source of constant domestic tension.

Muse pro-tip: If you are a CS major, by the time you take a job using Java, much of what you have learned will be deprecated (that's how programmers say "useless and out of date").  The next version of Java will be on the horizon. Six months later and you will need to be learning Java 9 (or whatever) in preparation for the upgrade. The next buzz-worthy framework will be peculating through the blogosphere and your manager will ask you "what do you think about retrofitting application A to this new approach?" This is simply what tech jobs are like. In my company we call this the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the time you are working on something and 20 percent you are preparing for the next thing by learning something new.

Lessons Learned

So in the new economy it's not enough to know something - to have been taught a skill. You must also have the aptitude for change. The most important aspect of this aptitude is curiosity. The best employees of my consulting company are those who are learning because they can't help it. They are just naturally interested. The second most important aspect is "speed leaping" - the ability to grasp a new paradigm, metaphor, approach etc. and know without a book or a seminar how to take advantage of it.

I'm not sure anyone can "train" a worker to succeed at high levels in the new economy without these qualities - at least not at wage levels previously provided by manufacturing (although there are certainly exceptions). Workers have to be equipped to quickly grasp and master new technologies on an ongoing basis. New technologies drive changes in software, systems and management processes. The days are gone when mastering 6 or 7 skills was enough to keep a worker employed. Instead, he or she will need to devote some portion of their time to "staying current".

What happens if you are not personally wired to be curious and make mental leaps? What if you don't pick up a new phone or tablet or laptop and intuitively grasp how it works and the ways you could use it? You end up taking a service job.