From Geek to Star #29 - the Future of Tech Jobs: what is your take on this?

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🗓️ This Week – Episode 29: build up your thoughts on what the future may hold 

This week in Singapore was a Future Skills Forum which brought many leaders across the world to share ideas on what they think will be needed to thrive in tomorrow's world. I had the pleasure to moderate in this Forum a roundtable of senior tech leaders on the topic of “the Future of Tech Jobs”. Spot on with this newsletter topic! 

The roundtable composition was ideal: 10 senior tech leaders from startups to traditional large multinational corporations as well as unicorns. From diverse industries such as Hospitality, Health, Banking, Social Media, E-commerce. From B2B tech giants to B2C as well as IT outsourcing companies. A very diverse panel to bring a variety of perspective on the topic. And it was under Chatham House rules, meaning that outside of the room, participants and the audience are allowed to share / report what was said but not mention who said what. The goal: encouraging open discussions going beyond the corporate “look-good” discussions that you may hear in many open discussion panels. It allows people to not only talk about the “Good", but also about the “Bad” and the “Ugly” to have real conversations which can help move the needle forward in terms of thinking. 

The result of this conversation? I will share in a future newsletter, when the report I am working on with the event organizers will come out (about 20 pages expected) - some time is needed to gather all the thoughts to go beyond just a one minute brief to you. Including also behind the scenes conversations: to prepare this roundtable, I had one to one conversations with each of the participants (takes time yes!), during which they could share their thoughts. 

Interestingly, 2 of the tech leaders told me after the roundtable that they enjoyed the preparation process with me and the roundtable for a reason I did not expect: it helped them to take a step back not only on this topic but also on how they practice their work today with their teams, and even gave them some ideas on how to improve their work. 

For example, one of them was sharing his initiative about having end to end engineers. Capable of interacting with stakeholders to transform that into user stories (with the help of ChatGPT) down to producing code and automated testing (Codex). And how much faster his senior engineers were now shipping working features.

We touched on the topic of tech debt and knowledge management. He had thought already on formalizing and regularly updating guardrails and pattern designs to be respected by everyone in a markdown file in the code repo for engineers and AI to respect when delivering code. As well as regularly reviewing the foundations, to generate user documentation regularly with AI from the code to provide up to date information. But he recognized that shared knowledge management could be a challenge: everybody delivering faster more autonomously but creating knowledge silos which could become a problem in the long run. 

💬 What are your thoughts on the Future of Tech Jobs?

Here are some questions I touched upon during the one to one preparation sessions I had. I invite you to think about them as well: it will help you to structure your thoughts, bring insights around you in your conversations at work but also possibly help you to think about your next steps.

Even better, you can reply to this email with your own thoughts on the questions below - briefly, no fluff. And when the report is available (by the end of 2025 probably), I will run a script to send you back your email with both your answers and the report so that you can also compare your thoughts to what the panel brought up. Like in the roundtable, you can allow yourself to be very honest - I won't feature your answer on social media, no point in this! 

Question 1: In your current work, what is the most impactful change (good or bad) you've seen for yourself with the use of AI you have today against 2 years ago? 

Question 2: with the tech teams (design / product / software development / data / architecture / devops / cybersecurity…) you are working with regularly, what has changed so far due to AI on how the teams are doing Tech? What is the most visible shift (either good or bad) on how tech is delivered now around you?

Question 3: what are the implications of these changes on tech jobs from your point of view? Do you think tech roles will merge? Or will need more specialized expertise? If AI writes code at the speed of light, what should tech teams around you do to have value? 

Question 4: are there some skills you think are not needed anymore for you or tech teams around you? Any skills still important to keep? Any skills important to develop?

Question 5: What is one concrete advice / request you would give to a a young tech graduate today? To a mid-career engineer? To a senior engineer or tech leader? 

🙏 I’d Love to Hear From You

If you've enjoyed this newsletter so far, I’d be super grateful if you take 10 minutes of your time to hit “reply” to this email and share your thoughts on the questions above: don't overthink, just reply what comes to your mind. It will be super insightful for me and I believe for you too!

Follow me on LinkedIn for more reflections and “behind-the-scenes” thinking between newsletters. Don’t hesitate to comment or reshare,  it’s one of the best ways to grow your SHINE 🌟. If you want to know more about how I can support you 1-1 to thrive in your tech career, have a look at my offerings here.  

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✨ May the SHINE be with you!

From Geek to Star by Khang | The Way Forward