Unfortunately it seems we’ve chosen to get into a technological race with our own destruction, now that we’ve successfully insulated ourselves from most natural cycles. Maybe we will win and find solutions that successfully avoid our doom as a species. Maybe we won’t, and our version of intelligence is an evolutionary dead end.
I agree with this. This is my primary use as a new analyst. Weird things that would take lots of time to dig through stack overflow to find, I can find pretty quickly if I feed it the parameters I’m working within, and what I’m trying to get to. Usually it just fills in the gap that Google was doing before, but much better in my opinion.
I read your article this morning before coming across this post. I really enjoy the economist and thought your article was well-written. I think many folks, including myself, have become very cynical about content that isn’t overtly anti-industry.
I appreciate that you’ve come to this post to respond, especially in light of the mixed reviews your article seems to be receiving here. I also appreciate that you linked your sources here upon request.
Checking the chat, it appears it is filled with a lot of low-effort type stuff, something akin to a twitch chat. Are these personal friends or something? I like the idea but that chat ruins it a bit.
I feel a little scared to even answer this question because I’m a “self-taught” dev in a Junior Analyst role at a small cap firm. Sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting for the other foot to drop.
Realistically, I think a lot of development outside of the really slick software stuff is happening in industries that require some other knowledge base outside of development. I went to school for an unrelated field, I learned some computational stats as part of my program but that’s about it. Everything else I learned in my down time. I eventually found a team at my company (I started in an unrelated role) to bring me on as a junior and since then it has been full-steam ahead, learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible, on the job.
My advice would be to find a field that you are interested in and try to find dev needs there. For me, it was data analysis/data science. I’m fortunate that my formal education lends itself to those fields. Were I try to my luck somewhere else I’m not sure how it would go.
Other than that, build a portfolio. Start your own website and start filling it with content (personal projects to show off your skills). Find a way to prove to potential employers that you know your stuff.