[ekianjo]

> Do we send them back to college?

This is a problem because most people thought that they would have a career or a job forever without learning anything for 30 years. If you ask me, this is a crazy thought that we have given them in the first place. We should tell kids that learning is a lifelong journey and that it does not stop once you leave school - if you sleep on your skills you WILL be replaced.

[TeMPOraL]

Assuming this isn't satire: who will pay those people to keep up with alternate career options and continuously retrain themselves in case of being let go? I don't see employers lining up to pay people for what's effectively a second full time job. Hell, I don't think it's a sane expectation to have of people, but if you insist, then I'll be the first to petition and vote for regulation that will squeeze the entrepreneurs dry to fund retraining of the people they tell to eat cake while they automate away their livelihood.

[valval]

Leave the quips out of HN comments as per the commenting guidelines.

As for your actual question, the internet is full of free knowledge. Many employers give employees a budget for self development and learning as well, but honestly, learning new things is an investment made by individuals for individuals.

[tired-turtle]

Not sure what part of GP was a quip.

The post GP is replying to reads as satire unless you hold a Hobbesian view of the social contract. It could be a line from Silicon Valley.

[TeMPOraL]

Sorry for the quip.

My point is that:

> the internet is full of free knowledge

Most of which is not useful for doing a career 180°. Unless you're going into software, putting theory into practice requires access to tools, material, and access to instructors, all of which cost money on an ongoing basis.

> Many employers give employees a budget for self development and learning as well

In tech. And few other career paths where this is something that makes sense. Most people in most jobs don't have this.

> honestly, learning new things is an investment made by individuals for individuals.

Again, only possible in tech and few other career paths. It's particularly easy with software, given that the job is usually... not consistently demanding, and you can get away with a lot of self-investment while on the clock before your boss starts to suspect something. Or you and your team can just start or re-write a project in a technology stack that is a great choice to put on your resume, but not so much for the problem being solved. Again, few other jobs give such opportunities.

The point I'm trying to make is, tech jobs are an outlier. Most other careers don't leave space to learn new trade when your boss isn't looking. Most adults come home exhausted after 8+ hours of work, some amount of commute, and have plenty of time-consuming responsibilities to deal with, which they can't outsource because they're not earning tech salaries. Sure, there are always some people that still manage to re-skill and switch careers. There are also some people who'll risk everything on a new venture and not end up homeless in the process. But it's not what most people can do - not adults, with dependents and costs of living at the level adequate for their current job, not when that job is suddenly taken away from them, while they're being ridiculed by the same people who said and keep saying to everyone else "nah, automation isn't a big deal, it creates new jobs, better jobs, more jobs than it takes away".

EDIT: Also, this is the kind of a problem that we can keep ignoring at our own peril. People who end up having their lives derailed by the "system" or "progress" don't disappear. They're still there, still a part of society - and when there's enough of them and when they all feel that society has screwed them over and left to wither and die, they will rise up and tear the society down. As it happened many times in history. And us tech workers with decent salaries and little responsibility - we aren't the top elite that always manages to buy or talk their way out of trouble. We're the very class that is first to be hanging on trees or lubricating guillotine blades.

[ekianjo]

> who will pay those people to keep up with alternate career options and continuously retrain themselves in case of being let go

You need to be able to read to access most knowledge.

[pixl97]

If we keep jacking up the price of education to insanity levels while demanding ever more education you should expect the average person to embrace fascism. Fascism won't solve the problem, but fascist leaders will tell the people there are simple solutions to the intractable issues they've been presented with. Then all the violence and war that Fascism brings will occur.

I'd rather work towards a more stable future myself, but politically I have no idea how we can get there.

[seer]

Why is university the only place people get educated? I finished a high school that incorporated a few years of the “higher” uni education into our curriculum - like maths and physics and such.

Honestly it was quite nice as by that point most high schoolers are bored out of their minds anyway, sliding down into destructive patterns, and this kept things challenging and interesting.

And also gave me the foundation to more easily learn the uni stuff that I needed on my own.

With the current availability of anything on youtube and such it should be trivial or at least a lot cheaper to learn anything you have the desire to learn. I think schools should be there to instill into us that desire.

Not saying unis are a bad idea - plenty of good things about them too, just I don’t think in our world they are a particular requirement - just make the schools system a few notches more demanding and we should be golden.

[pixl97]

Accreditation.

Simply put I could know everything, the problem is you now have to develop your own series of tests to ensure that I do and that I'm just not lying that I do.

Making schools more demanding on a single path likely doesn't solve this either. You just stress out people that are not going to be academically great no how hard they try.

[ekianjo]

> If we keep jacking up the price of education to insanity levels while demanding ever more education

Education does not mean you have to sit in some school. There are many ways to educate yourself.

[vsareto]

Plenty of jobs don’t work like tech meat grinders

[tcbawo]

What makes you think that a person 30 years into a career hasn’t been learning? The peril of specializing is that some day your field might be rendered obsolete. On the flip side, if you avoid depth of knowledge, you will also be replaceable and never progress in your career.