Is there any safe job in the market?

Posted on 10/2/2017 by Ling Tong

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, you’ve probably heard of Flash.

It’s a piece of software that’s used to make web games, animations, and video players. You will essentially use it as long as you watch online videos.

It was one of the hottest Internet technologies seven or eight years ago. Many websites will not load if you do not have Flash installed. It was still popular at the time to use it to create animations, and any work would have hundreds of thousands or millions of views. TV stations even set up columns to broadcast popular Internet Flash animations. Major Internet companies have dedicated Flash engineers, and they are still the type of engineers who are in high demand and earn more money. I recall that there were a lot of Flash training courses in the society at the time, and their recruitment advertisements all said that they would guarantee employment.

Flash will no longer function. Jobs announced in 2010 that Apple phones would not use Flash because it would degrade phone performance. It later began to decline as new technologies emerged. The BBC published a report titled “How Long Can Flash Live?” last month. A week after the words were spoken, Adobe, the owner of this technology, announced that it would drop the name Flash and reposition the software to be used only for animation.

Having said all of this, I am not lamenting the decline of Flash technology, which is also natural, but I am lamenting those engineers who are involved in Flash development and wondering what they should do. You’ve been working in a field for many years and have become an expert, but that field has become obsolete, and what you’ve learned is no longer useful. What exactly is the situation?

I met a friend in Shanghai during those years. He founded a software company that created Flash games for international markets. With only a dozen employees, the company was small. That was the best year of my life. Every month, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of renminbi arrived, and the outlook appeared promising. Who would have predicted that Flash technology would suddenly fail? The company was able to maintain its position at first, but then the mobile game appeared, and the market for Flash games shrank dramatically. I saw his job posting for a mobile game developer. I never heard from him again after that.

Jobs associated with a technology die when it dies. This is especially common in the technology industry due to the rapid advancement of technology.

Let me give you another example. Prior to the introduction of the iPhone, the most popular mobile phones used Nokia’s “Symbian” operating system. Its typical logo is the “nine grid” menu, as you may recall. Saipan engineers were also very popular at the time, and it would take me at least one or two years to fully master its development technology. Later, smartphones became popular, and Saipan was a flop. Nokia announced in 2010 that it would abandon Symbian in favor of Microsoft’s operating system. Later, Nokia went bankrupt, and all of the mobile phone engineers were fired. I know of a senior engineer at Nokia China who re-entered university to pursue an MBA.

Imagine that after years of hard work, unwavering devotion, and practice, you have finally mastered a craft to make a living and have joined the world’s largest multinational communications company. Everything changes just as you begin to feel secure in your life. In a few years, the giants gets disintegrated, not only is your job gone, but even more terrifying, the previous products are no longer used, and the world no longer produces any Saipan-system devices. Your worth is reduced to zero.

Some argue that you can return to school and then find work. You can learn Apple mobile phone development if Saipan is down. Yes, you are correct. However, your previous accumulation is gone, and you must begin again. Standing on the same starting line as the students who have just left school, learning the same things. To be honest, despite your years of development experience, you probably don’t learn as quickly as those 20-year-olds. In a fast-changing industry, experience can be a hindrance rather than a help, because old methods no longer work. Taking a step back, even if you relearn, iPhone development is changing, and you must always be on the lookout for new things. How many times in a person’s life can he start from scratch?

Although the term “lifelong learning” is accurate, I do not believe it is possible to remain professionally competitive through “lifelong learning.”

Programmers, as well as many other technical jobs, are essentially youth meals. Only the underlying technologies and some stability remain. The closer the technology is to the application layer, the faster it evolves. You learn a skill and practice it for thirty years; it becomes rarer and less common. More often than not, what you know becomes obsolete after a few years, and you are forced to relearn something new or re-employ.

Why are there so few programmers in China over the age of 35? Because everything they learned in school is now out of date, and they must learn new technologies alongside young people. It’s difficult to be more competitive than young people, and the most important thing to remember is that hiring students who are just out of school is much cheaper than hiring you.

Other industries’ transformations are not as dramatic and dramatic as the technology industry’s. Occupational security can be maintained for a longer period of time, but it is far from safe. With the rise of electronic payments, industries such as financial accounting will almost certainly not require as many financial staff in the future. In one sense, “Internet +” refers to the use of Internet technology to replace some of the labor force and serve more customers more cheaply.

To return to the title of this article, is there such a thing as a safe job in the world? There should be, but there aren’t many. Civil servants may be safer because their profession evolves at a slower pace and there is no pressure to upgrade skills. Doctors and lawyers are also safer because experience is valued in these fields, but technology is lowering their costs. Cooking and logistics are also relatively safe industries because, no matter how advanced technology becomes, people will always be needed to cook and deliver food, but they are purely manual labor, have no entry barrier, a large supply, and it is difficult to get high wages.

In fact, our society’s employment pattern is changing dramatically, and there are fewer and fewer “lifelong careers.” Everyone should plan ahead of time: what will you do if your job disappears tomorrow?