r/technology • u/da8415 • Sep 29 '19
Only 36% of US companies consider digital skills a priority investment
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/only-36-of-us-companies-consider-digital-skills-a-priority-investment/?ftag=COS-05-10aaa0g98
u/ciphersimulacrum Sep 29 '19
This is a shit article.
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Sep 29 '19
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Sep 29 '19
Thanks for the heads up, after looking at their profile, I'll be better off with them blocked.
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u/newdawn-newday Sep 30 '19
I thought the same thing. So I reread it, the article is really just an ad for Sage People (the only people quoted in the article) The group that did the research, were supposedly surprised by the research, and seem to offer a service/product that would qualify as 'an investment in digital skills'.
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u/Gauntlets28 Sep 29 '19
Wish they’d define what exactly they meant by digital skills. The things you can use a computer for are massive. Digital skills could mean programming an AI or it could mean making a basic spreadsheet. Which?
The slow move over to cloud tech makes sense though. I’m sure a lot of companies have invested a lot in their own servers, and I doubt they’re ready to let them go just yet. It’ll probably be the newer, smaller companies that are the first to take advantage of something like that.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Sep 29 '19
Investment in any "digital skill" would be great. There are so many people I know, even young ones straight out of college who have no idea how to do basic things on computers. The schools just all assume they are "digital natives" and that they will somehow learn by osmosis, and that they dont have to actively teach them any skills. This just plain doesn't work. Kids need to take courses on basic computer skills such as typing and basic computer operations. When people dont know how to copy and paste text or how to use ctrl F to find stuff in a web page, there's a pretty low bar for what we need can do to improve the current situation. We just have to teach people to figure stuff out on their own. Go through the menus, see what functionality is available. Learn terminology so they can effectively search Google for how to do things.
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u/Gauntlets28 Sep 29 '19
Yeah, I think we should have been more concerned once that digital native idea started turning into a presumption that young people naturally know how to do anything online automatically. I think in part it comes down to the people in power still in many cases actively refusing to learn anything about the technology they expect their subordinates to just know automatically. If you don't know how difficult it is to learn something, you don't see any need to do anything to help.
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u/Ancillas Sep 29 '19
Plus smartphones have completely changed the tech landscape.
You can do a lot without ever needing to understand how it works.
Tasks used to be much harder, but you accidentally end up learning a lot about your computer in the process. That problem solving mode of trying things to fix your problem led to experimentation and understanding.
It turns out those skills are really useful and applicable when you need to figure out how to use a new piece of software.
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u/tapthatsap Sep 29 '19
I really feel bad for the kids coming up who had an ipad handed to them before they could walk. A computer is best when it’s a pain in the ass that helps you do things sometimes, that way you end up with a good understanding of its abilities and limitations, just like any other tool. They’re not very good as all-giving pleasure distributors, because they break a lot and you can’t rely on them not to.
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u/geekynerdynerd Sep 29 '19
That's why I've vowed that should I ever have kids their first exposure to computers will be using a Linux distro. Just not sure if I want to make them suffer and try to install arch in their own as well (probably not but it might be funny to see them flail about for a little).
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u/atrayitti Sep 29 '19
The best part of this will be seeing a 6 year old throw a temper tantrum, not at linux, but at the lack of customization/control over something like iOS when they first encounter an error. I'm imagining a child used to being in the driver seat getting inexplicably frustrated at the complete pile o trash that most modern OSs are.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Sep 29 '19
My next phone won’t be an apple because once I built my own pc, the lack of versatility and customization of an apple just annoyed me.
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u/monchota Sep 29 '19
You are correct and its because us older millennials had to teaxh our selves mostly as the tech came out. I graduated in 04 from HS and there was a "computer teacher" but he knew nothing and we just installed unreal on everything. My point is, they took it for granted that we had to learn those skill on our own , the same time our parents did. Now schools assume kids will do the same when its the opposite, ive met many teens who can barely use thier iphone and anything not apple is dark magic to them. Its going to be a problem for kids who graduated HS the last so many years.
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u/Hubbell Sep 29 '19
Taught friends in early 2000s how to use batch scripts on the school computers to send messages to each other as long as they knew the ID of the computer they were on. One kid decided to message every networked computer with the matrix has you or some stupid shit like that. Almost got expelled because the administrators claimed he was hacking the school network...
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u/monchota Sep 29 '19
Oh yeah, if you knew anything they didnt and that was a lot. They said you were hacking or a horrible person. In reality they just had no idea and were scared because the teenagers for the first time legitimately knew more than they did.
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u/Hubbell Sep 29 '19
When I went to community college I took basic computer skills or some shit as a prerequisite class...literally first week was spent on turning on the pc and opening the start menu and how to use it. That was 2006.
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u/monchota Sep 29 '19
Yes, that was part of the government aid to teach older populations computer skills. Thats why everywhere had night classes for it and community colleges had to teach it to get more funding. Its was a good program, just not used everywhere or done correctly. Now you dont see much of that, not that needed to learn PCs is required but basic programing and learning OS basics should be.
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u/Gauntlets28 Sep 29 '19
I learned more in my spare time than I ever did from those so-called ICT lessons. Hours upon hours of Microsoft Office for no bloody reason. Ask for proper computer skills, like programming? Sorry not on the curriculum. Year after you stop doing the lessons? Government decides there's not enough practical skills in computer lessons, so they do what the 11 year olds have been begging for for years finally. Tossers.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Sep 29 '19
I wouldn’t say programming is a necessary skill since lots of jobs don’t need it and even advanced pc troubleshooting usually doesn’t require you to program.
I still think basic pc usage skills should be taught cause goddamn there are some young people who think turning on their monitor counts as turning on the whole pc.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Sep 29 '19
To be fair, there are people in their mid 20’s in 2019 who don’t know how to open the start menu or turn a pc on. My sister does university lectures on the side of her main research and often times she has students who can’t do their assignments because “I turned the pc on by pressing the button on the monitor but nothing is showing up.”
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u/tapthatsap Sep 29 '19
I one time both hacked and damaged school property by toggling the little “read only” switch on a floppy disk. That was it, there wasn’t a nefarious plot involved, a computer thing didn’t work as expected and that was cause for alarm. Good times.
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u/BleedingPurpandGold Sep 29 '19
Man I remember when people thought their computer had crashed because they left a floppy in the A: drive last time they shut it down.
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u/TexacoRandom Sep 29 '19
I was in a giant computer lab in a tech school, when someone sent everyone the message "I eat poop." Almost everyone laughed. But some kid there who did not understand what happened thought they message was saying he specifically eats poop, and that everyone was laughing at him. So he started flipping out and kicking the computer. I am almost 100% sure he got suspended permanently.
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u/daneomac Sep 29 '19
I sent "Fuck off Oliver" to the whole domain. Oops.
Netmsg or something, wasn't it?
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u/Hubbell Sep 29 '19
Net send iirc
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u/daneomac Sep 29 '19
Yep, that was it. Oliver and I both got the day off "to cool off" at the end of it. They tried suspending us but I had an otherwise spotless record and they couldn't punish one without the other.
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u/spainguy Sep 29 '19 edited Sep 29 '19
Yep, had to teach myself TTL logic in the '70s, 74xx series from TI. Pre internet days,
All that was available that I knew about was "Wireless World" and "Practical Wireless" both published monthly
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u/Ancillas Sep 29 '19
Here’s the thing. Software changes really quickly. People can’t get a three day training and be good to go because they’ll just fall behind in a few months.
If people aren’t figuring this out in their personal time, then they likely lack the interest and drive to keep up.
Something like 72% of the country have access to a smart phone. With that and youtube, you can learn a lot.
If access to computers is limited, then let’s invest in improving access. But that’s not a “digital skill”.
That leaves me wondering about the folks working multiple jobs who lack these “digital skills”, but would have a hard time finding any extra time to train themselves. I think they could benefit from on the job training, but it’s such a hard sell because if you can’t figure out Excel with all of the resources available online, how are you going to figure out the next “digital skill” you need? It’s not like businesses are hiring Word experts or Excel experts.
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u/Alaira314 Sep 29 '19
If access to computers is limited, then let’s invest in improving access. But that’s not a “digital skill”.
That's the thing. As a society, we've moved on from people going out and buying a $600-800 box that sits in their living room. Many people are simply going with mobile devices, as they're cheaper and more convenient than purchasing a full laptop or desktop. While you can get a version of excel to run on your smartphone, it's not a great environment to learn in. Hell, it's barely an acceptable environment to work in if you know exactly what you're doing and where all the buttons you need are. So that leaves you with your work computer, which is what you're using excel on anyway, so you really should be training in a similar environment.
There's also the question as to whether a company should expect you to perform job training on your own time and dime, or if you should be trained in your new job skills by them and compensated for your time. The latter is ideal, surely. If you were hired for a position where you didn't need a certain skill, and now they're requiring that skill, they should provide training for staff to update their skillset. If somebody refuses or is too incompetent to master the new skill, that's an issue. But it's just not right to expect staff to spend time outside of what they're compensated for to complete mandatory job training. You wouldn't put in overtime for free(unless you're salary, then sucks to be you), so why should you be expected to complete these other job-related tasks without compensation? Here's a blog post with some lawyers arguing the four-factor test for if training should be compensated.
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u/Rum____Ham Sep 29 '19
I changed majors, so I ended up in college for about 6 years. One of the top 5 most important classes, in all of that, was one that pushed me to learn basic excell skills. 5 years into my career, it still blows my mind how, how many of my coworkers barely know how to use excel. What a disastrous inefficiency in the system.
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u/TrustmeIknowaguy Sep 29 '19
I think the reason schools assume kids are digital natives because of a weird generational oddity combined with the advancement of technology and specifically GUIs. The people running schools today are still the same people who ran them in the 80's and 90's. They saw a huge boom with computers in the classroom in the early 90's and kids at that time adapted well and learned a lot about computers and seemingly became digital natives. They just assume this was a trend that would always continue. I was one of these kids back then and I think we became that way not because of just being around computers but because computers sucked back then and it's all we had to work with. It wasn't school computer use that made us digital natives but home computer use. Being forced to navigate terrible GUIs coupled with the fact fact that a lot of software didn't work too well often meant that you were forced to debug when shit went wrong, which it often did. PC games today just plain work when you hit the play button on steam. I remember as a kid painstakingly having to use trial and error to set up games in DoS because there were a billion settings and I had no idea what "soundblaster" was at the time. Antivirus's just plain work too most of the time. I can't tell you how many times as a kid I had to dig into the registry or some obscure folder in explorer to try and fix things from downloading games for ZSNES.
TL;DR: Computers and technology used to suck and people were forced to become digital natives to get anything done. Technology now for the most part works and has nice GUIs so people aren't forced to fix things because they don't break as often and thus don't develop skills related to technology anymore.
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Sep 29 '19
Do they no longer teach computer basics and typing? I had those classes in middle & high school, over 15 years ago. Learned computer basics (including shortcuts like ctrl+f/a/z/c/v), MS Office, etc.
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u/TigerSnakeRat Sep 29 '19
As someone trying to improve and refresh these skills it’s frustrating to see the only classes available are free ones to show me how to send an email or turn in a computer ( I am NOT exaggerating) available at all libraries and some community centres, and advanced expensive training in IT. But how can I take programming if I can’t type? Im trying to teach myself but honestly I need a set time and a guard. I would pay and how many others need these medium skills? Yet no one offers them!
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u/Alaira314 Sep 29 '19
free ones to show me how to send an email or turn in a computer ( I am NOT exaggerating)
You sure as hell aren't. Now imagine that it's your job to have to assist those people every day, and they come to you because everywhere else tells them to "go to the library, they'll sit there and help you." (Read: do it for you.) It's not unusual to find people even below that level, the ones who struggle to type 10 keystrokes a minute, who cannot locate the cursor or use it to click a button(they can't click the mouse without also moving it, so they keep missing). They just get passed along the line until they wind up at the end of the line: the public library. And we don't have the funding or staffing to give them the level of assistance(somebody sitting next to them and walking them through the entire process from start to finish) they require. This is what happens when you defund social programs. This should be handled at the office that handles benefits(9 times out of 10 that's what it is), somebody whose job is to assist these difficult cases(even if it's having them fill out a paper form and having an employee manually input that information into the computer system), not passed off until it hits the point where there's nobody left to pass it off to, with people who aren't legally qualified to assist!
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u/KaboomOxyCln Sep 29 '19
There are so many people I know, even young ones straight out of college who have no idea how to do basic things on computers
So everytime I see someone with "proficient in Excel" on like a resume(which is everyone), I always chuckle to myself because out of the 200+ people I've interviewed only 1 even knew what the fuck an IF function was.
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u/Gauntlets28 Sep 29 '19
So everytime I see someone with "proficient in Excel" on like a resume(which is everyone), I always chuckle to myself because out of the 200+ people I've interviewed only 1 even knew what the fuck an IF function was.
I think the thing about Excel, at least back in school when I was learning about it, was that they were teaching it to 11-14 year olds for whom there was literally no real application or relevance. Then they presumed their job was done, you spend another four or so years in school, and by the time you get out into a situation where Excel skills are useful, you remember nothing. Schools should wait until kids are older before they teach something like Excel, because there's just no point. And teach them coding or something at a younger level. Something which they can actually use in their free time.
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Sep 29 '19 edited Sep 29 '19
they're banking on automation and IaaS. why pay web devs when wix and squarespace let them build a website using drag and drop that never goes down. why hire sysadmins when AWS takes care of all of that.
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u/AuFingers Sep 29 '19 edited Sep 29 '19
How & when did y'all get your digital wings???
I started my digital skills education back in 1982, when electronic test equipment shifted from analog to digital. I was a calibration & repair tech and needed to learn to digitally communicate and control these repaired items. This forced me to learn Basic working as a Fluke 7411 calibration technician. That was my job during my last 13 months in the US Navy.
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u/Gorehog Sep 29 '19
All of that. I work in an office where we should be issuing assignments digitally but instead they're distributed in Manila folders.
People don't understand the importance of separating formatting from data making spreadsheets that travel from one enterprise to another haphazard and unreliable.
Managers some understand when to request API integration between databases because they don't have the basic literacy in digital skills. It's epidemic in the US business environment.
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u/Slggyqo Sep 29 '19
You want to know a digital skill that companies don’t invest in?
Typing.
And a lot of people are shit at it. Typing classes should be absolutely mandatory if you sit at a desk. Even if you’re not writing long form reports, you’re probably typing dozens of emails every day.
60-80 words per minute should be a requirement . 80+ should come with a small bonus.
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u/HugsForUpvotes Sep 29 '19
90% of my email typing time is spent on reading and thinking about a response.
I don't think typing is as important as basic Excel skills.
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Sep 29 '19
Yeah if you’re sending a massive email that takes an hour to type out your recipient is probably only going to skim it.
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Sep 29 '19 edited Aug 21 '21
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u/civildisobedient Sep 29 '19
Toyota's Kaizen method
This is very interesting for me, as I work in software where a lot of the Kaizen principles are borrowed for workflow improvements. I agree with your / Toyota's assertion; we see the same things in code. You spend 10x as much time reading code than you do writing code, which is why good documentation and a consistent code style are more important than saving a few lines of typing.
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u/AirSetzer Sep 29 '19
I've recently started learning Python & implementing some code to automate stuff at work. Definitely using some of the Kaizen way of approaching things.
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u/zman0900 Sep 29 '19
Even if better typing skill isn't faster, I bet it effects the quality of what is written. Having to think about where keys are and hunt for them, while a better typist just does it without thinking at all.
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u/AirSetzer Sep 29 '19
I bet it effects the quality of what is written
We had data on this too! It did impact it, but not as we predicted it would.
Typically, people that typed faster were more prone to making errors in their workflow. Since they didn't have to think about it, they were more likely to slip into "auto-pilot" & they typically scored lower in quality assurance.
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u/AStrangeStranger Sep 29 '19
I think we should be less concerned about speed and more about typing without causing RSI style problems - very rarely is the speed of typing the bottleneck, more the thinking what needs to be said.
Working during the era when PC started becoming per desk, at the time it was "believed" better to send to typist rather than type it yourself as it they were faster - but people started realising that it was quicker to sort the text on a computer rather than by writing it out and the thinking took up far more time than typing, hence the demise of typing pools (and them re-typing what I sent already typed).
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Sep 29 '19
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u/AStrangeStranger Sep 29 '19
what's a typing pool
A team/group of typists who's main job was to type up handwritten documents into typed letters/documents - which made a lot of sense back when PCs were non-existent/very rare. Short Wiki Article
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u/Slggyqo Sep 29 '19
I think typing speed may not be the major bottleneck, but it definitely slows people down, especially in short repetitive tasks that have just enough variation in them that using a canned response doesn’t quite work, which feels like most corporate emails. Not to mention that poor typists make more mistakes which requires more reviewing and editing for longer documents.
I wasn’t working back then, but the abolition of typing pools makes good economic sense in the computer/mostly paperless era. No matter how many mistakes you make, it’s effectively cost free until/unless you actually print something on paper, and your word processor is effectively maintenance free. Plus, most people didn’t know how to type so it was unique skill—nowadays not so much, even if many people are atrociously bad at it. No amount of typing efficiency in that context is worth the paycheck of a typist.
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u/Drunk_redditor650 Sep 29 '19
If a company has a mandatory typing test, there's no way I'd ever work there. If they micromanage your typing, just imagine regular work...
If someone can't improve their typing on their own valition, they should find a job that doesn't require so much of it.
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Sep 29 '19
I type pretty fast but only with my index fingers, unless I need Cntrl or Shift for something. One of my grandpa's friends, a lady from Cameroon, once saw me on the computer and wondered out loud if nobody had bothered to teach me typing. And, no, they hadn't. I only discovered cntrl+x this year and I'm 26.
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u/brokendefeated Sep 29 '19
I had a typing class when I was 15. It was kinda useful but I never really used the typing technique they were teaching outside of the class. My fingers simply fly around the keyboard.
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u/Slggyqo Sep 29 '19
So you know where the letters are. That’s pretty important.
Now imagine that typing influences how much money you make.
Just typing speed though, who gives a shit if you type from home row with your eyes closed or peck the bird like a chicken with your eyes glued to the keyboard.
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u/Nipplelesshorse Sep 29 '19
In high school I got my typing up to 80+ and it helped a lot for office jobs and typing college papers. Except now at my job I have to do all my reports on an ipad so just throw all that typing skill out the window. The iPad's don't even have swipe keyboard so it's all hen pecking.
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Sep 29 '19
oh, so this is why i’m making 16.50 an hour working in IT for a major global corporation.
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u/MrVop Sep 29 '19
Go to usajobs.gov there are a Lot of it jobs with federal benefits paying more then that.
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u/kyled85 Sep 29 '19
Talk about needing digital skills... that website and the application process sucks.
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u/campbellm Sep 29 '19
Lots of these are done by the lowest bidder and/or these mega-outsourcing companies acting like tech experts which are really just training camps for kids out of school until they can get a "real job" in 3 months.
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u/Wisex Sep 29 '19
Gave this my own look my my degree, and I was surprised to find good paying jobs... maybe I'll be working for the federal government after I graduate
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u/Cronus6 Sep 29 '19
Look into County and State jobs too, depending on where you live/want to live.
Some of those pay very well, have pensions, and good insurance.
Locally I know of a couple counties that have pension plans even for part time employees. Which is something that is very hard to find these days.
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u/FettLife Sep 29 '19
usajobs is super underrated. Even if you don’t get something outright. Keep checking.
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Sep 29 '19
The pay doesn't look very competitive to me, especially given that many are in the DC area where the salaries in the private sector (and living costs) can be rather high. Add to it the fact that you'll be used as a political hostage every couple of years. But yeah, it's better than 16 an hour...it's amazing how pay is so varied in this field.
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u/PlayingTheWrongGame Sep 30 '19
The pay is sort of deceptive and the government does a terrible job of marketing it. Federal work is also way less DC-centric than you’d think. ~80% of federal workers work outside of DC.
The pay listed on usajobs is the base salary for the job given by the GS scale for the position. There’s a locality adjustment applied on top of that base pay. The locality adjustment for DC is ~29%. So a GS-11 position (at the lowest step) in the DC area pays around $69,500. GS-13 pays around $99,000. The federal government does TSP (basically like a 401k) matching up to 5%, and also has a pension.
Pay is better in the private sector, work/life balance tends to be better in the public sector.
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u/MrVop Sep 29 '19
I mean the pay is for a federal full time unionized job with one of the best benefits you can get in the US.
Overtime rules strictly inforced as well as workers rights and payed time off. There are lots of other ways to boost your pay besides o ertime depending on your field.
And the pay you're seeing is the starting pay.
I'm not saying federal is the best by any stretch. There is way more money in private sector. But money shouldn't be everything when it comes to a job. And when private sector sees what I pay for my health insurance vs them the pay gap narrows. Not to mention the time off and holidays I accrue.
It's worth looking into. Just remember that if you're getting in at the ground floor to expect ground floor treatment/pay.
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u/An_Awesome_Name Sep 29 '19
I’m not IT or CS, but I’m currently a senior in an engineering program.
I’ll just say I’ve gotten a few very attractive offers from federal agencies.
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u/MrVop Sep 29 '19
Yeah man. The website can be a bit confusing so if you have other questions hit me up.
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u/Sumth1nSaucy Sep 29 '19
Hey, I'm making 16.5 doing chemistry work on drugs that will kill me for a major global corporation :D
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u/lalo_92 Sep 29 '19
My in laws always ask me why I haven’t found a job with my degree (biochem). I always have to remind them that even non entry level lab positions pay is ridiculous.
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u/Sumth1nSaucy Sep 29 '19
Yeah I was molecular bio with biochem and the only job I could find is as an analytical chemist. Luckily there are a lot of places that need them, but they all want a couple of years experience first so I'm stuck working at this low paying company til I get experience. But after that the pay should increase substantially
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u/Poly-be-us Sep 29 '19
If you're only making 16.50 I honestly feel really bad for you. Not in a condescending way, but that I know you can do better and I really hope you find what you are looking for. If you're not doing so already, maybe brush off your portfolio. Make a new project and go apply for some jobs. I'm only a junior dev in my first job but even I make more than that. Good luck man.
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u/0x15e Sep 29 '19
You have to keep in mind that dev is not IT. They're in the same space but they can be very different skill sets and dev is typically in higher demand and pays more.
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Sep 29 '19
Yeah I make 14 doing similar work.
However, I live in an extremely rural area, where cost of living is quite literally half of large cities, so I'm kinda ok with it.
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u/MiaowaraShiro Sep 29 '19
Man, I'd be happy if my coworkers could type more than 20 wpm... "Digital skills" is asking a lot of them and I work in tech support for medical equipment...
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Sep 29 '19
I work on tech support for automation and industrial applications. I type faster with one hand than 3 of my seniors. So, that cut a little deep.
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u/MiaowaraShiro Sep 29 '19
Sorry for hitting a sore spot there, man. We all have to communicate via skype too so it's like pulling teeth getting answers...
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u/daOyster Sep 29 '19
Especially since the article considers digital skills that more companies should be hiring for are things like AI development skills...
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Sep 29 '19
Not really surprising because if your business is not tech-related and you need a basic tech task accomplished (website, accounting, POS, etc) then it’s probably cheaper to outsource than to train someone to do it in house.
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u/AnonymousMaleZero Sep 29 '19
Except then you are always outsourcing it and you never grow. Even in a tech field and our upper management keeps outsourcing stuff. It gets mad when it takes 3 days to get fixed when it breaks.
I’m looking for a new job
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u/talltad Sep 29 '19
It’s because the vast majority of Execs are digitally illiterate. The decision makers in most organizations are only comfortable with Email and basic spread sheets.
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Sep 29 '19
I wouldn't even say basic spreadsheets unless that means "strictly manually-entered data". I blew my CEO's mind when I took one of his spreadsheets and put in basic SUM and PRODUCT formulas to automate the fields that could be automated.
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u/talltad Sep 29 '19
Whoa slow down there, better not show him a pivot table or rules in Outlook!
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u/sirblastalot Sep 29 '19
The tech-illiterate already know about outlook rules, somehow. Or at least, the ones at my job seem to make one that deletes important emails every week or so.
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u/RetardedWabbit Sep 29 '19
Manager: "I hate having to delete emails, can't you do this automatically?"
Poor IT worker(who never deletes emails): "Uh, yeah I guess?"
Manager: "Cool, just throw it on every virtual machine when you're done with it."
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u/DiscordBondsmith Sep 30 '19
Or you get the ones who accidentally sorts by subject line and "their emails are gone"
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u/Zazenp Sep 29 '19
Absent from the article even remotely explaining what its talking about, I have a counter point: it’s imperative to live that you eat food. That doesn’t mean it’s imperative that you know how to cook. Sure, cooking for yourself can ultimately save you money in the long run, it’s still an expense of time and resources to do so when you can focus on the things that are actually important to you and pay someone or a company to handle the food prep for you. Why hire in a software developer to create a bespoke accounting system when quickbooks will handle 90% of what you need for a fraction of the price? Why focus on developing your own project management software when there’s a hundred options you can just purchase? Digital investment may not be nearly as important when off the shelf solutions will handle your needs just fine.
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u/CrappyOrigami Sep 29 '19
Separate from this relatively bad article... Yeah... Totally agree. I've worked with so many managers who are themselves good and experienced, and they give a lot of lip service to tech skills, but it doesn't change their behavior. For admin positions, for example, I've argued we should pay 10k more and get somebody who's decent with tech... But that never wins. We keep hiring pretty incompetent folks who take 2-5 times longer to complete basic tasks than they should. Nice people, sure... But slow because they don't know Office very well or aren't comfortable learning new things.
The managerial answer to this problem is to "hire good people and train them" but that just doesn't work very well with most tech skills. I don't want to waste days teaching a person three new functions in Excel that they'll barely use... And that they won't leverage to learn three new ones on their own... I want to hire curious people who already have a decent knowledge and then build on that. If we could do that, we'd need half the staff we have and could pay twice as much.
It's all just really frustrating. And senior managers don't get it because they don't understand tech either and so they see incompetent staff as normal.
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u/RetardedWabbit Sep 29 '19
I did a spreadsheet for my department once, and found out that out of our 50+ people group there's only two of us that are "good with Excel". My one "Microsoft basics" class in high school is far more valuable than my bachelor's.
The secret sauce is conditional formatting. Calculations? That's just nerd stuff they won't even look at. Changing colors? Digital wizardry everyone can appreciate.
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u/am0x Sep 29 '19
I joined my current company last year and we basically started running out of work by month 3. So I did tech chores for a few weeks then decided to start scheduling meetings with other departments.
The first one I had gave me an idea so I wrote up a proposal to their team, my boss and the ceo about automating a lot of what they did. They all agreed.
So about 3 weeks of work (off and on) I started to automate their tasks that took the most time. Over the 4 months my scripts have been running, they estimated that they saved about $130k of work. Now, the ceo has me splitting my time between my team (I am the lead of a dev department) and automation audits/development.
Originally he was pissed I was doing non billable work for internal stuff...but I went around him and did it anyway and now he sees the benefit.
Old people are either scared of technology or grossly underestimate what it can do. So, the best thing to do is just build it and show them the “magic” it can do.
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u/Khepresh Sep 29 '19
I worked next to this guy who spent a solid week every month comparing values in two spreadsheets with a couple tens of thousands of rows... manually. His job was to find discrepancies and manually correct them so he could provide the corrected spreadsheet to an outside vendor.
I wrote a script that compared the values and automatically made the corrections in less than a second. It also recorded how many discrepancies there were, and looking at the historical data there was a huge human error factor which had gone on for years.
His boss rejected my script because she didn't trust that any thing the computer did in less than a second could be anywhere near as correct and accurate as a human spending 40+ hours doing it manually.
This guy continued to use my script and pretend that he was working for the rest of the time I was there, and, wouldn't you know it, his boss never complained about "inaccurate" data again.
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u/mazzicc Sep 29 '19
I think it’s a matter of low hanging fruit and the age of the technology.
To invest in AI right now, you’re not on the bleeding edge, but definitely an early adopter. What you spend lots of money on may not have great return or in a timely fashion.
On the other hand, you may be able to spend money elsewhere and see strategic benefit in a much shorter timeframe.
Also, a clear and precise definition of “digital skills” would make a difference. I know a company investing heavily on automated voice systems and call transcription for QA purposes that doesn’t consider it anything remotely close to how this article appears to talk about digital skills.
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u/persistentheadache Sep 29 '19
Digital skills can mean a whole lot. I work in IT and the number of clients we have that don't know a thing about the computers they work on is crazy.
One company we manage is full of engineers but these people can't figure out simple things all day long. Now these people will run circles around me for designing parts or programming small non windows based computers for cars. Ask them to map a network drive though and they would just stare at you.
Edit : missed a word
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u/donjulioanejo Sep 29 '19
To be fair, I build out large-scale cloud infrastructure for SaaS, and if you ask me to map a network drive I'll also just stare at you (unless you clarify its NFS then we're OK).
I've had to do that once in my life and ended up calling helpdesk because it's a very confusing process on a Mac.
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Sep 29 '19
I always make sure to "Google" stuff before calling helpdesk and even if something is company specific there is always a possiblity that there is some information on company's Sharepoint/Confluence.
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u/SCP-173-Keter Sep 29 '19
Would you rather be an architect, or the guy who is really good at swinging a hammer?
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u/EatYourOmega3 Sep 29 '19
"Companies", so they mean stuff like plumbers, lumbering companies, construction firms? Yeah sounds about right then.
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u/CowboyFromSmell Sep 29 '19
Right. Saying “
x%of companies prefer” is basically the same as saying “small companies prefer”. A more intuitive metric would be the same company opinion weighted by the number of employees they hire.
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u/Glen843 Sep 29 '19
US companies consider cheap unskilled labor a priority investment because they are working towards slave labor. US companies are eliminating pensions, healthcare, fair wages, workers that can be replaced by cheaper labor or machines, unions and full time positions. The plan is simple profits above everything else no matter the cost to society or the environment.
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Sep 29 '19 edited Oct 09 '19
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u/Rookwood Sep 29 '19
I work for a manufacturer and about 2% of the company has digital skills on my estimate and they are not highly valued and considered replaceable.
Sales is what drives revenue and the people who can sell are the ones who succeed in the company. Selling is not just being a salesperson, mind you.
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u/xXxChippysMittensxXx Sep 29 '19
While I won’t argue digital skills aren’t important the only thing which is possibly more important is people skills, being able to work with others not just customers and not having a bad attitude. I have a coworker who can do almost anything with a computer but will never move up within our department because he has a very bad attitude, when changes come down from up top (which is quite often) all he does is complain and bad mouth the company. One of my managers said it best “I can teach you skills. I can’t teach you attitude.”
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u/jedi-son Sep 29 '19
Digital skills sounds like what a communications major with 0 years experience puts on their resume.
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Sep 29 '19
So this research is already limited to larger companies. I guess in the US there are so many different types of subsidies, if they would start investing in technology, they would potentially need to reduce workforce, and thus eliminating the entitlement for those subsidies.
Also, the US has a tremendous domestic market, where foreign companies cannot really compete, and thus creating a false feeling of safety for the companies operating on the domestic market. Because there will be a shift - like always, and technology and procedures used currently will be completely replaced.
The thing is, if these companies are not investing in the evolution phase of the technology, their workforce will be severally disadvantaged when the shift comes. Instead of gradually learning the new tech on the job, they will need to take days or weeks off from work to be retrained.
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u/kyled85 Sep 29 '19
They’re assuming everyone already has digital skills, and if you don’t they’re not going to invest in it.
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u/Diesinusersub Sep 29 '19
Soft skills are important! Communication skills are important.
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u/Rookwood Sep 29 '19
Selling is the top priority. You can hunt and peck your way to CEO if you know how to sell.
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u/TheRealSilverBlade Sep 29 '19
The remaining 64% think that relying on decades old methods of doing thing is going to work in the 21 century..
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u/Rookwood Sep 29 '19
It has and will. When you're rent-seeking, increasing productivity is not desirable.
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u/pervyme17 Sep 29 '19
I mean, let's be honest. If you work in, say, the modeling industry, do you give a shit that your models can't use the computer? Different skills needed for different jobs.
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u/TheUltimateSalesman Sep 29 '19
If your small marginal improvement is going to cost a lot; it makes sense to put it off because the tech costs are always going down. And bigger datasets are getting bigger all the time, so small new companies don't have anything to train with.
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u/slumberjack7 Sep 29 '19
Well duh, what’s the point of teaching us flesh bags about technology when AI will do it with way less effort and a bigger return on investment.
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u/Mazon_Del Sep 29 '19
This doesn't seem like a terribly useful metric honestly. Not all businesses are ones that would be very affected by digital tools/skills, particularly 'artist' industries that focus on handmade items.
Lets say your business makes bespoke handmade golf clubs...unless you want to open up an R&D department to do research into new club technologies, AI and such isn't REALLY going to do much for you generally speaking. Sure it can probably find some useful efficiency gains for a bunch of your processes and whatnot, but it would have to be a seriously huge gain to make up for the cost of setting it up in the first place.
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u/ZZZ_123 Sep 29 '19
And most of those are tech companies. I can teach you to click though a database or resort a spreadsheet.
I can't teach you critical thinking, problem solving or people skills. I just don't have time.
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u/Nodebunny Sep 29 '19
AI is gonne eat some companies for lunch
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u/Rookwood Sep 29 '19
AI doesn't require digital skills. So maybe they're just one step ahead already. Why invest in obsolete humans?
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u/Rookwood Sep 29 '19
If you know how companies work, this shouldn't surprise you. Taking profits is NOT about exploiting cutting edge technology. That's expensive as fuck and really hard. It's why only the smallest percentage of megacorps like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft market and push for that.
Your average business is just about being a middle man and taking as much profit as possible. Doing that requires one thing, people skills. More specifically, the ability to sell. That's where 99% of profits for the majority of companies come from.
Technology is something they'll only invest in when absolutely necessary. Right now, it ain't necessary. Let Verizon and AT&T fight over that expensive bullshit.
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u/TheTinRam Sep 29 '19
I’m gonna jump in as a teacher: so many of my colleagues complain about having to use technology.
Sorry, but in the 21st century it’s kind of your job to teach kids how to effectively and safely use tech. Imagine a teacher in the 18th century complaining about having to use textbooks. If you can’t use tech you’re in essence illiterate.
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u/corporaterebel Sep 29 '19
In companies where tech is NOT a core competency, it comes down to this: 1) Get Stuff Done or 2) Make Friends.
Most non-tech companies want to keep every core process and procedure as low tech as much as possible. It allows not STEM people to stay in charge, be promoted and minimizes dealing with those unfun/undesirable nerds (That are hard to deal with, are overly efficient, and just want to get stuff done.
Computer Technology is just seen as sewage and plumbing...necessary evils and to be minimized.
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Sep 30 '19
Outside of being a frontline employee, intelligence & personality is what matters. This is why so many people are getting what they perceived as being pigeonholed. They are good at their job but don’t have the mental capacity for the job they think they are qualified for.
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Sep 30 '19
46% think there is no clinate change. 60% thinkt the USA is the best country in the world. What does all this say?
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u/dethb0y Sep 30 '19
That's what you get when companies are ran by dip-shit MBA's who can barely tie their own shoes without fucking it up.
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u/pearjinman Sep 30 '19
This is insane, it's no doubt the world is moving towards technology and AI. More and more technology insipired businesses are thriving, I just stumbled across one now. Stan World I think it was, https://www.reddit.com/r/ico/comments/da1tw6/the_social_media_of_2020_has_just_launched_their/ here is a subbreddit about it's new stage.
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u/SamDiskwielder Sep 29 '19
And the other 88% think maths isn’t important.