People Are Revealing Skills That Are Dying Faster Than My Career Prospects And I’m Honestly Feeling Very Attacked
Reddit user u/ContractNational4149 recently asked, “What’s a skill that’s becoming useless faster than people realize?” Thousands of people discussed a wide range of skills – everything from industry-specific qualifications to general life skills – and I feel personally attacked after reading some of these.
Here’s what 18 people said:
1.
“Graphic design.”
2.
“Debate. It hardly matters anymore. Very hard to change somebody’s mind when they have a hundred TikToks and YouTube video essays that ‘prove’ them right.”
–WhichWayDo
3.
“Basic navigation, like reading a map. Now they’re digital, and point the way with colored paths and pins, not to mention voice navigation.”
4.
“Tree cutting, like lumberjack stuff. Machines doing the job have actually made it safer for workers and reduced the number of deaths caused by accidents in the profession.”
–SuppressiveFire
6.
“Writing well. People just don’t care. Many don’t even bother to punctuate or capitalize.”
–Creepy_Ad_9229
7.
“Being able to handwork stuff. With how much yarn costs and the price of labor, it’s way too expensive to make basic things that a machine can print out for dirt cheap.”
–AlassePrince
8.
“I don’t know why, but reading an analog clock comes to mind. I know many young people who don’t know how. They just pull out their phone.”
9.
“Memorizing phone numbers or addresses. I call my wife by clicking on her picture. When the doctor wanted her phone number for emergency contact, I had to open her entry in my contacts. By comparison, my phone number in 1956 was 3-1990.”
–cwsjr2323
10.
“Resume writing. With the application process being the way it is, I find it pretty hard to believe people are going to put that much thought and effort into their resumes for much longer.”
11.
“Having nice handwriting. Really, these days, kids get handed a computer the day they are born.”
“There is actually very little need to develop handwriting skills except for recreation. Everything is a touchscreen now. Schools still try to teach handwriting, but the kids have already realised it is much faster and easier to convey information digitally.”
–Raychao
13.
“Reverse parallel parking without a camera and guides.”
14.
“Typing speed (in the traditional sense). While ‘touch-typing’ used to be a hard skill in the workplace, voice input and AI writing assistants are becoming increasingly common. Simply typing fast is no longer an advantage.”
–No_Collection_2077
15.
“Truckers will be replaced by self-driving trucks soon, and in the U.S., it’s one of the better high-paying jobs an uneducated person can get – and there’s a ton of them! When trucking goes away, there’s going to be a massive wave of unemployed people with little or no education or marketable skills in other fields.”
–arcintuition
16.
“Serious take: Coding. Since coding is similar enough to languages and maths, AI will sooner or later excel in it similar to human language and make coding skills almost redundant.”
–sadtimes12
17.
“I’m going to go with an outside the box one: knowing how to tie things. Specifically, sneakers, and neck ties.”
“Sneakers are shifting to quick laces and heel drop mechanisms to keep a tight fit but still be slip-on/off (think Kizik). And Neck ties are being reserved for stuffy suit jobs or funerals. More weddings are featuring casual suits or bow ties these days, it seems. Hardly anyone knows how to tie anything past a basic Windsor knot, and even those are sloppy. Also, lots of rope systems have been replaced with ratchet straps and pulley locks.”
–FiveAlarmDogParty
18.
“Cursive.”
What else belongs on this list? Let me know in the comments!
