Business America is failing to prepare Gen Z to enter the workforce due to a ‘glaring’ gap in tech skills - GenZ's face when a job is more than taking selfies and attending mid morning pilates?

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Computer classes for Gen Z aren't cutting it anymore.

Many new digital tools entered the workforce recently, and while there is yet to be something as futuristic as flying cars or self-lacing shoes (as predicted in Back to the Future's depiction of 2015), there are still some new-fangled inventions that have been implemented. As remote work took the nation by storm during the early pandemic, digital tools like Zoom and Teams were used more frequently. And with investments pouring into artificial intelligence, the world of A.I. is also seeping into the workforce as automated programs like ChatGPT take off.

Less invested in than weird A.I. portraits or automated messaging systems that tell you everything is subjective: Gen Zers. While companies are rapidly changing to become more digitized and automated, the youngest working generation isn’t being trained adequately to deal with this new reality.


More than a third (37%) of Gen Zers feel their school education didn't prepare them with the digital skills they need to propel their career, according to Dell Technologies' international survey of more than 15,000 adults ages 18 to 26 across 15 countries. A majority (56%) of this generation added that they had very basic to no digital skills education.

It’s all led to some warranted skepticism regarding the future of work: Many Gen Zers are unsure what the digital economy will look like, and 33% have little to no confidence that the government’s investments in a digital future will be successful in 10 years. Forty-four percent think that schools and businesses should work together to address the digital skills gap.

Gen Z's skills gap could be why they feel 'tech shame' at work​

The findings back up past research that found nearly half of the Class of 2022 felt the top skill they were underprepared for was technical skills.

It may all come as a surprise considering that Gen Z are digital natives. That means they’re often assumed to be the most technologically proficient in the workplace and assigned the work of explaining new tools to their colleagues, which stresses Gen Z out. As many as 1 in 5 young workers feel judged for having tech issues, whereas only 1 in 25 of their older peers report feeling similarly, according to a survey from HP. These tech snafus have created feelings of “tech shame” among the generation, which sometimes stops them from participating in meetings.

What little training that’s being provided is not being distributed equitably. “There’s a glaring gap in accessibility and application of tech education resources between lower-income and affluent students—a gap that was widened by the pandemic,” Rose Stuckey Kirk, chief corporate social responsibility officer, wrote for Fortune. “And we know this gap is more than an academic or social justice issue.”

It’s evidence of the broader skills gap prevalent in the workforce right now. The problem for Gen Z is that digital communication skills are most high in-demand. But a large portion of them are taking it upon themselves to learn more; 36% plan on acquiring digital skills in order to get a new job or keep their job, Dell finds.

Considering that many companies aren’t equipped with the resources to handle the skills gap, the Gen Zers who do teach themselves digital skills will likely have a leg up in the job search over those who don’t.

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From personal interaction with young folks (early 20s) in my job it's less about lack of education but simply about "don't care" when it isn't a smartphone with TikTok on it...

 

[HarblMcDavid]

This is a complaint I've had for a couple of decades now; tech is replacing what used to be a bit of a life skill (and I hate to say it like that). I grew up in the golden spot to where I had to learn to do things the old way, but was young enough for the tech boom to be with it and competent when it happened.

I don't want to say "same" because I didn't really learn the wonders of the command line until I was into highschool, but learning about computers on something just barely better equipped than a PS2 running Windows 95 back when it was possible to break hardware by making settings changes taught me all the basics and the skills needed to figure out the more advanced stuff in a way that the rounded edges of current current devices and operating systems make much more difficult to learn.

I suspect the damn things never working quite right for YEARS probably gave the better part of a generation a better tech problem solving education than any college course could hope to furnish.

Ironic, but that combined with walled gardens known as Phones being the worst possible thing to learn tech with is probably a big part of what we see as the skills gap.

 

[seri0us]

All those complicated formulas, I have completely and utterly forgotten, and why wouldn't I? Where in my daily life would I use the Pythagorean Theorem?

While I understood how to use the Pythagorean Theorem, I didn't exactly get it. All the sides are adjacent, they're all touching ffs!

 

[Starved Artist]

Another generation fucked by boomers.

At this rate, the only people who will be qualified to run the country are the children of the real elites.... Almost sounds like they're planning on bringing back serfdom.

Note real elites, not hollywood elites.

 

[Aidan]

Another generation fucked by boomers.

At this rate, the only people who will be qualified to run the country are the children of the real elites.... Almost sounds like they're planning on bringing back serfdom.

Note real elites, not hollywood elites.

I can't find fault with boomers on this one. My view is that it is just a natural result from focusing on accessibility which leads to more adoption which leads to more money.

 

[Grub]

Where in my daily life would I use the Pythagorean Theorem?

I agree with everything you say except for this. I had to use this along with all that circle formula stuff almost every day for years at a fabrication job in a machine shop I had. There's a lot of math related stuff at my current job. Electrical calculations, pressure, velocity, flow rates, all kinds of shit like that.

I used to be terrible at math all through high school. Later on I had a teacher who taught by making us use math the way we'd actually use it for work. I did well after that and then after that the more theoretical stuff started to make sense. It was the same way with programming. I learned by first fucking around and making things, then slowly over time learning the more theoretical stuff behind what was going on. I never would have been able to learn the other way around.

 

[Neurotypical Mantis]

It doesn't really matter. Most Zoomers will never encounter any of this tech just like most Millennials never had to use any kind of new tech at work. I know I sure as hell didn't. You don't really need tech skills to stock shelves load a delivery truck or deliver packages. This where most of the Gen Z that are old enough to work are going to end up. The same way it was for millennials and the Gen X people before us. College enrollments are in decline. Even most people with college degrees end up in jobs they didn't go to school for.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. If I was a Zoomer I would start looking at ways I can survive without having to work as hard. Corporate America will work you into an early grave and they don't care. When you are all used up, they will throw you aside. You will also have to compete with shit skins which lowers the wages of jobs that already pay like shit.

No one taught me how to use a computer. Well, that's not entirely true. When I was in my early teens and late teens, I had a friend whose father worked on PC's to make money. So they always had computers around. He explained some stuff to me. He is the one who taught me how to use DOS well sort of. Other than that I taught myself and read books. My parents were Boomers, and my family was lower middle class. I didn't get my first PC till 2000. Even then it was an old 486 that my dad got from work when they were giving away the old PC's that were in storage. Being a Boomer and not knowing about computers he didn't get the best stuff. I used it a while and my friends dad did some upgrades for it and helped me out. I used this PC till the power supply went up. After that I didn't have a PC for a while. If it was up to my Boomer parents, I would have never had a PC. As far as they were concerned if it wasn't for work, or you were using it to make money it was a waste of time and money. I had to get my own computers anyway I could. Being a poor high school student in the early 2000's it wasn't easy. I went to the local library and took a bunch of books out on computers. I went around looking for old computers people were giving away or throwing away. Having to hear my mother bitch about how I wasn't going turn her basement into a computer garage. That my father wasn't allowed to collect junk down there and neither could I. If I had a little money I might be able to find a decent computer at a Good Will or thrift store. Working with old motherboards CPU's and other hardware. Some it from the mid and late 90's.

But I managed and I learned how to use a computer. I learned sort of how they work and how to use file systems. In 2016 I built my first PC myself and in 2020 I did a CPU and motherboard upgrade with an Arctic Freezer 34 Esports Duo cooler. I watched videos on how to build computer on YouTube. I am going to take it that since you're a Zoomer you have access to a phone and YouTube. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that will teach you how to build and use a computer. Probably other stuff as well. You can learn anything on YouTube.

You lazy Zoomer shits have no excuse though. When I was the age of the youngest Zoomers there was no YouTube or smartphones. We had to read books or be taught by actual people.

i'll take powerlevel for $300

 

[The Foxtrot]

I agree with everything you say except for this. I had to use this along with all that circle formula stuff almost every day for years at a fabrication job in a machine shop I had. There's a lot of math related stuff at my current job. Electrical calculations, pressure, velocity, flow rates, all kinds of shit like that.

I used to be terrible at math all through high school. Later on I had a teacher who taught by making us use math the way we'd actually use it for work. I did well after that and then after that the more theoretical stuff started to make sense. It was the same way with programming. I learned by first fucking around and making things, then slowly over time learning the more theoretical stuff behind what was going on. I never would have been able to learn the other way around.

Well, fair enough. I was only speaking for myself, specifically. That being said, I believe my overall point still stands, we are taught a whole lot of useless crap in school that is just "information in a vacuum", told it's totally super important, and 99% of it is forgotten once we get out in the world.

 

[WelperHelper99]

The inventor of the television wanted it to be a tool for education. We all know how it ended up. The same thing for the internet. While it still can be a tool for education it's also become kind of a normie shit show with all kinds of distractions and idiot tier entertainment. Just look at TikTok. Unfortunately, people would rather engage with the spectacle side of the internet than the educational side.

Young zoomies not knowing what folders are.

Did none of you young niggers ever have any interest in computers and keeping shit separate? Im a fucking welder, what you would think of as a literal ape, but guess what bitch, i like writing, Microsoft Word 2016 ftw. Keeping chapters organized is a necessity. It's like the autism with keeping the peas from touching the turkey, but it actually makes sense this time. And I know I'm a zoomer saying this, but once again, my theory of pre covid graduate zoomers and these post covid zoomies with the nig-nog haircuts, and them being significantly dumber than those who came before (99'-01') seems to be true.

 

[Staffy]

including the full suite of Microsoft Office programs (as they were called in those days, before the fucking term "app" took over)

Blame apple and the modern big tech for this one.

 

[Gottahavemysips]

I ended up accidentally taking one of these literacy courses in college because I fucked up a course number. Ended up sticking with it, because it was an easy credit, and I figured I could use a refresher on Access, just in case I ever needed it. There were a few older people in there, but I was more shocked at the amount of zoomers and the quality of their work. In elementary school, in the early 2000s our computer classes were pretty shit, just typing on some shitty typing game (and our progress reset every year, so good luck ever learning anything beyond the homerow) with some brief instruction on pre ribbon MS Office (outdated for the time). For the most part, zoomers didn't know how to type, they got overwhelmed by the ribbon interface that literally shows you what's going to happen before you even click it, and that's just talking about the section for Word. To be fair, this was a remedial course that was only required for people who really needed it, but it did really say a lot more about the state of whatever computing knowledge they received to that point.
Not even the tech literate ones are immune to the kind of retardation that's been pressed into their brains by iPads and the like. I got into an argument with another CompSci major about the tree directory/file structure. He was arguing it was unnecessary abstraction. His solution? Make the whole damn thing a map, generating a UUID as the key to prevent collision. I'd like to believe this was merely a thought experiment, but based on how defensive he got when I said that idea was retarded, I'm pretty sure he actually thought it was a great idea.
It's really weird to me, because when I was a kid and was put in front of a computer, I ended up fucking around. I never had to "learn" how the file structure system worked, I intuitively figured it out by clicking on Windows Explorer and clicking on shit. I had an old desktop computer that my dad took the wifi card out of, so without internet access I actually spent my time fucking around with the thing, like finding config files for games and fucking with the values in those files to see what happens. Zoomers don't even have the option to do that when they are handed an iPad where everything's already locked down. Even if they were interested in doing things like that, they'll just spend their time on a locked down internet following tutorials without any kind of risk involved. It's really sad.

 

[ShitLurker]

I'm not surprised. They only know how to tap quickly, once tapping doesn't work, they are mpre fucked than your standard granny since the granny can at least admit she knows fuck all.

Aside from people just not having computers anymore, Windows being a lot less likely to shit itself removes another big part of a learning experience. I remember during the Vista days DREADING any sort of windows update. Since half the time it would break something hard and I'd either have to fuck around in the registry in safe mode, try any random solution I could find in a dodgy website or what ended up happening, format and reinstall. After a few of those I went with a standard master slave setup where I could quickly reinstall in the slave, set as primary, move files from old primary and be done with it.

Basically, like so many have said, there is an inheret lack of curiosity, and those that do suddenly find that these black boxes are very hard to do something outside of their main scope.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

Well, fair enough. I was only speaking for myself, specifically. That being said, I believe my overall point still stands, we are taught a whole lot of useless crap in school that is just "information in a vacuum", told it's totally super important, and 99% of it is forgotten once we get out in the world.

i like how you get told all these various math formulas that you NEED to remember forever but now we live in a time where you can just use a calculator for everything.

I'm not surprised. They only know how to tap quickly, once tapping doesn't work, they are mpre fucked than your standard granny since the granny can at least admit she knows fuck all.

Aside from people just not having computers anymore, Windows being a lot less likely to shit itself removes another big part of a learning experience. I remember during the Vista days DREADING any sort of windows update. Since half the time it would break something hard and I'd either have to fuck around in the registry in safe mode, try any random solution I could find in a dodgy website or what ended up happening, format and reinstall. After a few of those I went with a standard master slave setup where I could quickly reinstall in the slave, set as primary, move files from old primary and be done with it.

Basically, like so many have said, there is an inheret lack of curiosity, and those that do suddenly find that these black boxes are very hard to do something outside of their main scope.

i still remember the time the home computer got some virus on it that banned me from shutting it down or opening the task manager so i had to find a way to open the registry and mess with the registry values the virus changed. back in the day you either learned how to fix stuff yourself or you would just give up and get a new computer.

i think that mentality is even stronger now because not many people actually have the patience or interest in fixing stuff themselves. they are just so used to taking their phone back to the store and getting a new one that the idea of actually doing things yourself is crazy.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

Ahem. Tech jobs nowadays require 5 years of experience minimum plus all types of certifications.

Near impossible for everyone else to get in, very easy for Rajeesh and his fellow H1bs... until they got shitcanned that is.

 

[WelperHelper99]

i like how you get told all these various math formulas that you NEED to remember forever but now we live in a time where you can just use a calculator for everything.

The math formula shit was the stupidest thing in the world. Look up what formula you need, take measurements of the object, and plug and chug. Simple as.

Ahem. Tech jobs nowadays require 5 years of experience minimum plus all types of certifications.

Near impossible for everyone else to get in, very easy for Rajeesh and his fellow H1bs... until they got shitcanned that is.

I'm glad I'm a welder and they're still relying on 60 year Olds that want to retire. If you got your certifications from trade school, relatively cheap compared to college, you're fucking set. When they're asking foe experience means you're working on some big shit.

 

[Grub]

Well, fair enough. I was only speaking for myself, specifically. That being said, I believe my overall point still stands, we are taught a whole lot of useless crap in school that is just "information in a vacuum", told it's totally super important, and 99% of it is forgotten once we get out in the world.

I agree. School should exist for those who want to learn things like that but it shouldn't be expected to train people to be ready for life and work. It's not good at that.

 

[Mr. Bung]

Lmfao, zoomers don't know how to use big boy computers.

I'm surprised, but at the same time it totally makes sense because I've only really ever seen them with phones.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

All you niggas talking about Windows XP.

Windows ME. I got that shit to run SMOOTH after about a month.

Before that, it was MSDOS. Before that it was opening up the hard-drive to cut the jumper to change the drive number on a C-64 drive.

I think a lot of it is that they didn't want to pay attention or don't care to learn it.

But this article reads like justification to bring in more poo in the loos.

 

[WelperHelper99]

I agree. School should exist for those who want to learn things like that but it shouldn't be expected to train people to be ready for life and work. It's not good at that.

I did enjoy school for one thing (which even now looking back has had less of a impact on my life than initially thought): finding friends and socializing. It was fun to play Yugioh at lunch, to collectively groan at the dumb assemblies, to go on some dates where the price of failure wasn't really very high.

That said in terms of actual learning, it was what you chose to get out of it. If you didn't want to learn, you wouldn't.

 

[Starved Artist]

I'm not surprised. They only know how to tap quickly, once tapping doesn't work, they are mpre fucked than your standard granny since the granny can at least admit she knows fuck all.

Aside from people just not having computers anymore, Windows being a lot less likely to shit itself removes another big part of a learning experience. I remember during the Vista days DREADING any sort of windows update. Since half the time it would break something hard and I'd either have to fuck around in the registry in safe mode, try any random solution I could find in a dodgy website or what ended up happening, format and reinstall. After a few of those I went with a standard master slave setup where I could quickly reinstall in the slave, set as primary, move files from old primary and be done with it.

Basically, like so many have said, there is an inheret lack of curiosity, and those that do suddenly find that these black boxes are very hard to do something outside of their main scope.

I miss the old days.

I couldn't afford to get my computer fixed, so I had to learn every step of de-virusing and fixing those odd sounds myself. and like you said.
There's fucking black boxes everywhere. Even in consoles.

When I was a teen, my ps2 fucked up, I learned how to repair fucking lasers.
Then my PS3 fucks up and I learn that I can't swap the fucking harddrive /remove the saves without the encyrption key.

 

[Aidan]

All you niggas talking about Windows XP.

Windows ME. I got that shit to run SMOOTH after about a month.

Before that, it was MSDOS. Before that it was opening up the hard-drive to cut the jumper to change the drive number on a C-64 drive.

I think a lot of it is that they didn't want to pay attention or don't care to learn it.

But this article reads like justification to bring in more poo in the loos.

You just contributed to explaining why zoomers are tech dummies and then say it's because they just don't pay attention or care to learn.