Director of Academic Programs Parallels Anton Dyaykin shared his opinion on how the increase in the retirement age is connected with additional education and what exactly should be learned in the next few years. What follows is a first-person story.
By the will of fate, I live the third, and maybe the fourth full-fledged professional life. The first is military service, which ended with enrollment in reserve officers and a military pension in the prime of life. Next came the time for self-determination, career guidance and building a career almost from scratch in new areas for me. He taught at school, tried himself in business, but stayed for a long time at the Higher School of Economics to create and develop the School of Oriental Studies. I am a translator-referent of Japanese and English by the first basic education. Having immersed himself in this rather specific topic, he went from senior lecturer to deputy dean of the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics. Having achieved certain goals, I realized that it was time to move on. After some period of searching for ways to apply my strengths and abilities, I ended up at Parallels. In fact, my area of ββresponsibility here is the same thing that I did at the university, albeit with my own specifics: to find and select the most gifted students, organize the process of training talented guys from leading technical universities, participate in the training of highly qualified specialists - future engineers for their seamless and efficient integration into the highly professional international team of our global company. And not only in Russia, but also in the EU.
About pension reform and aging
It has always been said that "it is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick." One more word can be added to this - "young". Indeed, when you are young and hot, your energy can simultaneously heat the North Pole. Doors open, horizons stretch 360 degrees. But is it only a matter of youth itself? In fact, the fact that there are no stereotypes and "blinders" blocking the flow of new information. When you're young and you don't know how to do the right thing, you just try, hitting bumps, but gaining invaluable experience at the same time. With age, many lose this enthusiasm, which leads forward and upward.
What has changed in the 42st century? Everything is true even now, but the average life expectancy has become different. Despite all the upheavals, even in Russia we began to live longer. Have you read "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky? So, the innocently murdered old pawnbroker, the heroine of the novel, was only XNUMX years old.
Gradually, the pattern of aging itself began to change. We are more and more able to maintain physical health and, most importantly, the "mobility" of the mind. If earlier, after an active and busy professional period of life, a short phase of extinction was assumed at a fairly young age from a modern point of view, now the retirement time has noticeably gone up. The authorities have already reacted to this by launching a pension reform that provides for a later retirement. Given the general acceleration of the pace of life, willy-nilly, one has to adapt to changes, learn, acquire and quickly consolidate new skills and abilities. Otherwise, the quality of life can unpredictably decrease at the most unexpected moment. This is true for any spheres and segments of the population. Even older people have to master ordering a taxi through a mobile application or making an appointment with a doctor via the Internet on the website of the district clinic.
What is more significant - it is the period of labor activity that becomes longer. Plus, the requirements for human knowledge and skills are rapidly changing. It is no longer possible, once having mastered the craft, to remain with it unchanged to the grave. In any case, if we are talking about representatives of intellectual labor. Every year, dozens, hundreds of new projects appear that create new jobs and change people's lives and life. They also require new skills and abilities from those who implement them. At the heart of all changes is the desire for comfort and satisfaction of needs, which becomes a prerequisite for success. Today, the winner is obviously the one who is educated, flexible, professional and able to identify these needs and quickly respond to them. Sitting on the stove, chewing rolls, like Ilya Muromets βup to thirty-three years oldβ, and then suddenly you wonβt succeed.
How have I changed and what have I learned
On the one hand, my entire professional career has been connected with personal organization and the ability to work with people. The ability to build relationships at all levels and in any conditions is the foundation of the foundations, the most important superstructure on professional skills. It has always been obvious. However, the requirements that were and are being presented to me are constantly changing. If in the army the charter, unquestioning obedience and the feeling of being part of a large team are the foundation, then in business only concrete results are expected from you personally within a certain period of time. Even working in a team, you are solely responsible for everything you do.
For example, in the service, subordination and the order of a senior in rank determine the course of action, while in ordinary life you are guided only by human relations and the motivation of colleagues and subordinates or interacting employees. It is necessary to determine the forces and means to achieve the set goals, to build optimal algorithms. It is important to understand how you can interest and encourage the often difficult work of the person you need, who will not run to carry out any orders like in the army, but can move mountains if he has motivation, respect for the authority of the leader, and then build the right business relationships that will lead to the desired result.
After joining Parallels, I had to significantly upgrade my communicator skills, which were superimposed on a detailed knowledge of the specifics of the organization of the university educational process and intra-university communications. Sometimes colleagues are surprised by what secret methods they manage to achieve their plans.
In fact, there are no secrets - people decide everything, which means that you need to be able to build communication with them, be purposeful, persistent, active, sometimes even swift in keeping promises, decent with partners and keep your word. Always and everything begins with finding the right professional person for a particular project and building business relationships with him. Such an algorithm works if you yourself are professional, organized, and understand the ways to achieve goals. My partners are extraordinary people, with excellent education, high intelligence. They instantly see who they are dealing with, quickly decide whether to start a joint project. Fortunately, such decisions are usually positive for me.
Now about what I had to learn. Considering that before joining Parallels, I was poorly immersed in the specifics of the work of programmers, I had to master the initial conceptual level of the profession, significantly broaden my horizons in terms of the main programming languages, study professional slang, and try to catch key trends in IT development and related areas. In addition, since I work mainly with young people, I need to understand their level of value. Work at the university with students, social networks, thematic conferences and communities gave knowledge and allowed me to develop the necessary skills.
By the way, do not think that life gives you useless lessons. Any experience is valuable.
For example, I graduated from art school as a child. Since then, my works have not been exhibited at vernissages and exhibitions. Nevertheless, when at Parallels we had to think about the design of the thematic educational space at Moscow State Technical University. Bauman, my artistic skills came in handy. As a result, the images of outstanding figures of science and technology, drawn by me, materialized on the walls of our educational laboratory. Now not only students, but also guests of the university come to this room with excursions, work on the magnificent new Makov equipment and look at the design of its premises.
What to learn?
Today you can read millions of articles about the inevitability of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and, as a result, mass unemployment. It is possible that this will be the case. However, when it comes to relationships between people, it will always be difficult for a machine to cope, which means that this is a niche for the use of human capabilities.
What does it say? The fact that people of creative specialties, experts in the field of human relations will be in demand in the future. Especially those combining high-quality technical training with humanitarian. Even techies increasingly need to develop the notorious soft skills. All these super-professional skills that are not related to job responsibilities, but necessary for successful teamwork, are must-haves. By the way, emotional intelligence is also far from just another whim and a tribute to fashion. The ability to recognize emotions, understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people and your own, as well as the ability to manage your emotions and the emotions of other people in order to solve practical problems, are increasingly gaining value. A creative approach to solving problems in various fields and an effective search for non-standard solutions, for which you need to have a lot of knowledge, skills, and a broad outlook - these are the features of a future successful person.
Such abilities are not given to everyone from birth, but this definitely can and should be learned. Maybe not everyone is ready to perform in front of people and, being a βhardcoreβ developer, someone strives to grow professionalism in the horizon of their work monitor, but even such geeks should understand that if βcodingβ is better than people, machines will most likely learn in the foreseeable future, then they will not be able to build relationships between people for a very long time.
Everything that is aimed at the development of people, that diversifies their lives, adds color, allows them to realize their creative potential, brings pleasure from life, whether it is the pleasure of taste, communication, interesting activities - everything is already in demand and will be in demand as long as humanity exists in its current form. .
In the meantime, programmers-developers rule, because more and more humanity "moves" into the virtual space, where and through which it receives everything that is mentioned above.
Source: habr.com