Uber drivers have five years tops. I used to work in Pharma, 95% of the High paying R&D jobs really aren’t much more secure than the uber drivers. IMHO.
Tech R&D? Think about how many junior roles have already been displaced by automation just extrapolate that out.
So far the demand for anew flappy bird has outpaced automation, but automation is gaining fast.[/quote]
Most junior engineers are not really doing the R&D, they are usually being mentored by someone that is. There are exceptions…Some really brilliant people that have no formal education, but those are really the exception to the rule.
Tech R&D will never be replaced. Because there is always something else to invent.
We haven’t AI or self writing software (yet), so expecting a system to self-write is ways out. Probably another 10 years.
Software tech is cyclical, typically lasting a decade. It’s been like this for a long time, and will continue to be this way. During each cycle, there is always 1 trend that is “hot”. When a new software trend/technology happens, it takes about 5 years for the top 10% to get really good at it, and then they end up building all the plumbing, libraries, etc for next 40-50% of the reasonable developers, which then ends up building tools/libraries/etc for the majority of the not-so-talented “programmers” and IT shops. Right now in the “mobile app” decade… I’d give it about another 1-2 years before we saturate, and then you’ll have all the hourly consultants start doing it, because by that time, it will be stale technology that almost everyone can do. About the same time, there will be some other software problem to solve, and that will occupy the industry for the next 10 years. I’m thinking that tread will be wrto connectivity from low power devices..And eventually someone will end up creating a platform for such low power devices that will become the industry standard. We aren’t there yet.
So there’s always a new tech/challenge to solve and get yourself wrapped around. The only question is, if you want to. Want to be at the top of the game? Change your focus when the trend changes. I use to be a backend developer when folks were building J2EE and all this EAI/B2B integration…And when that saturated and became boring, I switched to mobile architecture. And I’m gradually switching to connectivity, again because not many people can do it right (right now)….If you’re still stuck doing J2EE on the backend and that’s all you know, your days are limited (if not already)….
Like I said, if this was really a widespread problem, you wouldn’t still have so many people in this business and still doing very well in 2016. In fact, most of the folks that are up to date with their skills , are seeing a very health demand, per market comp packages. And unless you work in the industry, you really wouldn’t understand what’s really happening. You can hear all the negatives of it from the small percentage of the population that washed out, for whatever reasons..that also tend to be the most vocal in voicing their discontent.
