The Future Skills People Need to Succeed in Tech

Welcome to the future in tech and the skills needed. I may need some power. I think I'll be all right but either way. My name is Tamika Reed. I am local to the area in terms of living in Saint Pete and Tampa, but I also, I'm originally from Atlanta. So, give you a little background, Women in Linux got started here six years ago. And one of the reasons why it got started, because I got tired of seeing on TV and everything that, hey, you can get into Tech, but the only way you can get into Tech is through coding. That's the only thing I ever saw.

And I've been doing Linux Administration and infrastructure for 22 years. I'm like, why this night? Nobody ever talks about the data center, nobody ever talks about, SAN storage, nobody ever talks about, how you can build infrastructure with Linux, or, or any particular version that it's Red Hat or so forth and so on. I never heard that.

So I started Women in Linux because of that, because I never heard anybody talk about Linux, and that's how I got started. And it has morphed into, we have meetups. I remember us having, I forgot, I need the microphone. My guy. I remember us having, our very first Meetup, we signed up on meetup.com, and it was me and my co-founder under Meetup. And I was just talking to her and showing her Linux and so forth, and she fell asleep on me.Like people tend to do, they fall asleep. And I was like, okay, am I boring? Well, it's not the fact that I'm boring, but to teach Linux is boring, right? It's just a boring thing to teach. But the reward and the outcome is so much greater.

So, we started with just me and her, and we have now more. I think we have on our Meetup, we have I think we just reached 1300 people on our Meetup. We have a YouTube channel as well too. On our YouTube channel, I do lives every week, where I talk about, on Saturdays, it's called, one show is called - I do two shows. One show is called Tech Stocks and Jobs, where I talk about how to get in Tech from not necessarily just looking at Amazon or anything of that nature. But how many people in here, just by short hands, if I say an Aristocrat or a King, you would know what I'm talking about, right? All right, a couple of people. So I talk about, for people that don't know, Aristocrats and Kings. If you look at, if you're doing any investing, Aristocrats, are 25 years consecutive of increasing dividends, and Kings are 50 years of consecutive increase in dividends. So why does that matter to you?

Well, it matters if you're looking for a job, and you're looking for places where they've had increasing dividends for one, for equity, two, you know the company is going to be around because they've been around for 25 years, or they've been around for 50 years. So at least you know that much, right? And the other thing that you know as well too, with those particular companies, is that you know that they have different departments, right?

It's nothing like going to a startup, and a startup is just getting started, and they only have maybe a CTO, or they're looking for a CTO, or if not, they're looking for somebody to come run particular divisions, and so they're really not established. So, I try to push people towards in our group, which is not just women, we have everything in our group. I mean, literally, everything. We have some people that bring their dogs every week. So it is what it is, they learn Linux too.

But I say all that to say, is I am looking to push people in tech to understand that you have an investment in Tech, right? But you also invest in other things, just not just yourself.

So you can give me the number here. If you work in Tech, and you make a hundred thousand dollars for the lab for the next 10 years, how much is that?

A million growth, right? So say, take you, you take that million gross and say you walk away with 500 to 700,000, right? After taxes. You take that, take two or three hundred of that, right, two or three hundred thousand of that, and you invest it into real estate, you invest into a brokerage account, and you have your money make money while you're working. You can see the outcome, right? You can see in 10 years, you could possibly, you could possibly depending on what you invest in, have that million dollars be not just gross, but actually a net.

So that's what I talk about on Women in Linux on Saturdays. On Howie Linux, I talk about where the market is at in terms of tech skills, what people are looking for, how do you get those Tech skills, what investment should you be making in yourself, and why, right? How many people here are millionaires? Got one person. He's like, I don't want, I don't, I'm kind of, I don't know.

Okay, how many people would like to be a millionaire? How many people are going to work to become a millionaire? How many people know how to, what's your establishment in order to do that, right? Do you have a game plan? Got a game plan? Have you, have you executed on the game plan? Yeah? Okay, good job.

But that's the point though, right? Most people who come into Tech, they see, I get in the tank, I can make 80,000. Oh, I can make a hundred thousand, and then next thing you know, they're like, yeah, that's all I do, I just make a hundred thousand, and then five or six years later, they don't have anything. They haven't invested in anything, they haven't put forth any more skill efforts into investing into themselves, they haven't brought anybody else along with them. It's the, it's the whole thing.

So I try to show from the perspective of Women in Linux, it's a whole ecosystem. It doesn't make sense for you to be wealthy and your friends are broke, because guess who, guess who's going, guess who else is going to be broke over the years? Probably you, right. So I, that's what I talk about for Women in Linux. So if you ever feel the need to, stop by on Saturdays, if you're bored, or you're just taking a stroll, or you just want to comment in, come into the comments and help on me, that's fine. I have, go back, I don't bite. But feel free to drop by. Every Saturday, we go live, and well, she's around 12:30, 1 o'clock, and then we do the next show, and I usually, I'm usually only about two or three hours. I don't expect people to stay that long, but it is what it is. I, all right, so.

So, future intent, so, in the Tech skills, so we have a problem, we have several problems. I'm just gonna throw this out to the audience, and then I'll give you my overall view. Give me at least three things that you see, issues right now going on across the world. But let's stick to the US if we want to, what three issues do you see right now? Just give me three. Inflation, anybody else? In general. Talent shortage, okay, anybody else?

All right, so we got, we have a whole slew of issues. So let's start off with what's one of the things. Well, one of the things that we do have a problem with is there are seven million men that have left the work industry, right. There's two million women that have left the work industry, so there's nine million right there. Gen Z, and I'll pull these articles up too, Gen Z, from the ages of 11 to 28, I believe the article states, doesn't have enough Tech skills to get jobs. The Baby Boomers are leaving, right. So if the Baby Boomers are also leaving the workforce, that means there are jobs there, but what else is there? What else are there? Baby Boomers leaving, deliver businesses. Who has enough money to take over those businesses? Who has enough skill set to take over those businesses, right?

So another thing that we have that's going on, outside of just those things, is we're not dating anymore. So there's a lot of lonely people out there, men and women, right, a lot of lonely people, a lot of mad people.What else do we have? Well, if we have a lot of lonely people, guess what else is low? The birth rate is low, right. The average woman is now only producing, I think it's 1.2 children per person, per woman. It should be 2.1. They're now predicting that Italy is going to be the first to go. So any Italians in here, I'm sorry, but they're predicting that you would be dying off. No, it sounds Doom and Gloom, right.

She was like, 'This what this got to do with tech skills?' A lot. It has a lot to do with tech skills. 'Listen, I didn't come here for this crap, what is this, this is not what I came here for.' But you're here. All right, so the other thing that we're also seeing, outside of the birth rate being low, is now in Japan, they're like, 'Hey, man, women, how about y'all get together and we'll give you money to get together and oh, by the way, our suburbs are dying, so let's give you some money and incentives to move to the suburbs as well too, right?'

So we got internationally, we got low birth rate, we got high inflation, we got lack of tech skills, we also have climate change, right. Some cities are seeing floods and things they've never ever seen before. So amongst all those problems, how does Tech fit into this? Well, one way Tech fits into this, I don't know if you all have been watching when in regards to the birth rate, is now we're making robots that can incubate babies. So do we really need you, man and woman, to have children when you just take your egg and your sperm and reproduce humans ourselves, right? So that's one aspect of it, right.

The other aspect that we're also seeing, on top of all of this with the robots having baby, we also see now the emergence of ChatGPT. Everybody should be familiar with ChatGPT right now, you should at least have seen the name go across your screen if you look at the news or whatnot. So now, everybody is worried about where do I fit in. One other thing I forgot, does anybody know about the mission to space and the ability to put Wi-Fi on the moon? Has everybody been keeping up with that? Did you also keep up with the fact that they're already in space doing those things and also doing mission launch controls from, that's the plan, from the Moon to Mars? Anybody familiar with Space Perspective? Okay, Space Perspective is a company, right outside of Melbourne on the Space Coast, where they actually are taking people to the stratosphere. So you can get a picture, you can have a party, you can do your Instagram shots, and so forth, and then come back down and get in the water and go to the yacht. However, that particular company, in order to do that, they started off with I think one ride per person was $125,000, and they sold out. Now has moved to $250,000 per person, and they have sold out. So the idea that you are being here on Earth, is no longer what you think it is, totally different.

Has anybody familiar with blockchain and satellites? No? All right, blockchain and satellites is a thing, it is a thing. There are satellites that are launched that use blockchain in order to really pretty much encrypt the data as well too. So that's a, that's a thing. So why did I mention all this stuff? Sounds like it's all over the place. It's Doom and Gloom, right.

So I mentioned all that because you asked, what are your future Tech skills that are needed? And I can rattle off a million and one things, right. But the question is, who's going to execute, right? Everything that I mentioned has to have a business surrounding it.

What's, what's not going to change for people? One thing you're going to do in life, okay, what you do, I don't care how old you get, it's one thing you're gonna do. You're gonna die. You're gonna die.

But I mentioned death because people are looking, going back to, how do we get people to mate, how do we can prevent people from being lonely, how do we increase the birth rate, right. The things that you're starting to see is, we're starting to see there is a need for people to have socialization, and it may not be in the form of marriage, right. It may be in the form of some type of Tech, some type of integration, net. Now I don't know if you've all been keeping up, in Japan and in China, the men are not dating, they're dating AI. You do know that, right? You didn't know that, yeah?

Well, I'm so glad you're so glad you're intrigued. Like I said, I got links for all these things. This is something I find very intriguing. I'm gonna pull these things up, and you can, go off into a tangent on your own. But at least you know that it's out there, and I'll tell you the skills that you need as well too.

So that's the seven million that left, here's the first one with the Baby Boomers, right here. I wanted to find out like, okay, this is a 2016 article but what I wanted to find out was, if the Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce, or are they leaving, right. What skills are they leaving, right. And what skills can we automate, right? We have AI, we have machine learning, we have data. One thing that's constant throughout all of this is data. So anybody looking to know what skills you're going to need in the future, is data, needs something centered around cleansing that data, right. What does AI get this information from? Data.

Who gives that data? Who gives it willingly every single day? Every day, every day. Every time you go through a traffic light, every time you spin up Instagram, every time you send a text, every time that you take a picture and you have your geolocation on. Every single time you go in a store, every route that you take, you're giving it away freely. And so, what can I do with your data? However, I feel like it, because you freely give it to me. So now, the question is, what companies would you make around that data if you know that people are lonely? What company would you make around that data?

And how would you collect that data? So, I want you to think outside the box. This is a think outside the box talk, right. In other words, I want you to start thinking about businesses, what skills you can use, what skills you can buy. Anybody in here familiar with mergers and acquisitions? Right. Why start from nothing when you can go buy something and innovate over that. Think outside the box. What can you use to help people who are maybe want to have a baby, but maybe they don't want to have a full-time father in the house? Maybe you could create something like, maybe like a Boys and Girls Club. You got to just think outside the box. All I'm saying is, people are not doing the traditional things anymore, and we have to be there. So, back to the Baby Boomers.

Alright, so on the Baby Boomer slide, you can see we got Office Clerks, Administrative Support System, Accounting, Bookkeeping which we know Accounting and Bookkeeping can be automated. We also know that Office Clerks, we already see that automation happening there. Manual labor and Construction workers, do you know how many jobs are out there for manufacturing?

Eight hundred thousand, right. 800,000 manufacturing jobs. How many people are there to fill them? None. None. There's a young lady, she was talking about this and she was saying that she only had 25 workers in her manufacturing plant and she needed 45 workers and she couldn't get them in there. The average job in manufacturing pays anywhere from $30 to $32 an hour. So again, when we're talking about at least give or take 10 million people have left the workforce, how we're going to combat that? What position, what type of jobs or what type of companies are you going to create around that? So, Low Code, No Code is another one.

A lot of people create No Code, Low Code in order to automate things. Everybody has seen McDonald's, right? The automation at McDonald's, the Automation at Chipotle. So, that need for having somebody to do that manual work, to flip a burger, now I have my own thing. I talked about this on Saturday, I said to myself, how does the robot know if it's a roach on my burger? While it's up there pressing the meat, I said that. I was like, does it know to throw the meat away or flick it off? I just, I have questions. I have a question.

Law enforcement, we've seen the increase in drones. Elementary School teachers, I have a problem with this one because if you go look up ChatGPT and what AI is talking about replacing, he's talking about replacing school teachers. I'm still thinking there's a human element that we need when we're talking about how we raise our children and how we interact with our children. But then the other side of me is like, we're already there where we don't interact. There's still a lack of humanness there, so maybe we don't need that.

Maybe we don't need that human element, but you all tell me. Would you like to drop your child off at school and it's a robot that greets your child and walks into the class and teaches your student? You tell me how you feel, you tell me what that looks like. Out of all of this, I have not heard anybody say anything about security. Would you say backup? Yep, backups, Disaster Recovery. How do we secure our information? How do we bring forth in terms of all this data that we're already seeing where they're actually putting implants. I think one country has implants already into your skin.

So now, I know the one guy, he can actually can open up his house, his door, his Tesla with an implant, with just scanning. Are we ready for implants? No? No, no, no. It's here already. It's too late. You've already signed up for it. You didn't read the disclosure, you just said 'yes' because you wanted to use the tool. And it's in that disclosure, they said we would, we got buy your house to drop an implant off. You signed up for it. You cannot deny my love.

Alright, so these are things that I'm saying not to scare anybody. Where Tech is at right now, I was listening to a talk with Robert Smith and anybody who comes to my Women in Linux show, I've been pushing that we need skills for the next 10 to 20 years. And I was wrong. We need people to have skills and talent for the next 50 years. So, what does that mean? I had to think about what he was saying and what he was saying was, the people that are coming behind you are in succession to you. So what skills you have now, you're creating that wealth, you're creating those skills in them as well too, to keep also working but also to start creating businesses as well. So, how do you do that for the next 50 years? Any suggestions, anybody?

Better education programs. What does that look like? Well, if we have what we already have, better education, free education. You just don't take it, you just don't take usage of it. What kind of incentives? Tax write-offs, okay.

Why do you need a loan when it's free? You can go through the SBA, you can go buy a business, you can revamp that business, take a loan from the SBA, pay it back because the business is generating income, and now you got a free business. Anybody know about how to look at businesses and look at assets and tax write-offs and any type of assets from that company and break them up and sell them? Those are the things that I'm talking about. Those are the things I'm talking about. Go ahead.

And he passed it on to you, you took over the accounting firm for him, you know when he got to retire it like that. Or you're building the next step for your kids, you know hopefully they'll take them but 'I don't care about accounting, but I don't want to do accounting, I want a model, screw your accounting, that does nothing for me, don't you see I'm Vulcan.' But that's where we're at though, right. People build businesses but the kids don't want that afterwards. So, you have to be able to say, okay, what about the business or that business acumen does that person like? Even though you have bookkeeping, maybe they are good at promotions. You have to kind of speak to who we have in our family.

So, what are we gonna do? Well, and I don't know how much time I got left. Oh my bad, I'm out. Do I need to stop? Because you know I can stop. He knows, look, he's so busy, he's so busy.

Okay, if not, I can finish outside.

Online, meetup.com, Women in Linux. We meet online, make it real simple. You can be anywhere. We get people from Nigeria, from Argentina, from Africa that join us. And so, no, no, alright. So, I'll finish up outside because I got a whole lot to share and I'll follow you. Thank you, I'll finish up right here. I appreciate you, and those.