Obsolete Skills for Web Workers
Blogger-about-town Robert Scoble recently kicked off an online discussion (and now a wiki) about obsolete skills: “things we used to know that no longer are very useful to us.” Scoble’s list covers a variety of things overtaken by technology: dialing a rotary phone, changing tracks on an eight-track tape, using a slide rule, adjusting a carburetor, and so on.
This got me to thinking: what are the equivalent obsolete skills for web workers? Of course detractors of telecommuting will be quick to put “maintaining personal hygiene” and “changing out of pajamas” on the list, but on a more serious note, here are a few of the skills from earlier jobs that I haven’t needed since becoming a full-time web worker:
- Punching a timeclock (though I still track my own time)
- Transferring phone calls by punching buttons on the phone
- Wearing a tie every day
- Arguing about where to eat lunch
- Using a ten-key calculator
- Drinking from a water cooler
- Fighting for parking space every day
How about you? Has web work made any of your hard-earned skills completely obsolete?
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It has also made the art of filling out holiday forms obsolete for me as well as arguing with the IT people about why I want to use a Mac for my work :-)
Drinking from a water cooler isn’t obsolete. It’s actally more eco-friendly than everyone having plastic bottles. Cheaper, too.
Arguing about lunch will never die. People will always differ on what they want. I bring my own lunch and save thousands a year doing it.
Wearing a tie everyday, thankfully, has largely gone away. A tie is nothing but an inverted noose IMO. Lawyers even rarely even wear them anymore.
Ever seen the movie ‘Office Space’? So many things about cubicle culture are eliminated by the Web Worker community.
Traffic jams in rush hour, office politics, having to report to a boss…
Going through the chain of command for raise.
Going through “procedures” if your paycheck was short for the month.
Having your creativity cut off by upper management because they didn’t want to get involved in another long-term project before retirement.
Being “green” (from a corporate mindset).
Politics.
Just because you don’t do them anymore doesn’t make them an obsolete “skill”.
Is there really any skill involved in punching a time sheet?
Wearing a tie every day isn’t a skill either, nor is drinking from a water cooler.
The author of the post isn’t the only person who made this mistake, so did some of you responders. Come on, is sitting in rush hour a skill?
Ten-keying is still a very valuable skill, depending on what you do as a web worker. Define a domain to define obsolete.
Actually I still have a rotary phone and I am glad I still do! When the Northeast blackout of 2003 happened I was still able to make phone calls where everyone with a cell or digital phone was not. So there are still some times when having old technology is still worth it!
Funny thing is almost everything you listed on your list for full-time web workers I still do to this day. I hate it yes, but it is not something you can mark off the list just yet for everyone. I think we should list the type of browsers version we don’t have to support anymore, or other older coding languages we have improved from. That would probably be better from the Web Developers agenda.
I’ve forgotten more about Visual Basic than most people will ever know.
Widely, but incorrectly, believed to be obsolete: Reasonably readable, adult looking, cursive handwriting.
And the social skills mentioned are not obsolete for anyone who wants a good chance of getting anywhere. You need to regularly speak with people on the phone and meet them from time to time. E-mail alone doesn’t do it. And you still need to be able to get up in front of people and talk, as well as appear in the media. Being a Web worker makes it possible to delude yourself into thinking this is not necessary, but you won’t realize your potential.
Showering on a daily basis?
I’m kidding!
… mostly.
One thing I’ve definitely dropped in the pursuit (of happiness) of a successful web-worker career – climbing the corporate ladder. If I want a new title now, I’ll just give it to myself.