Unless you are committed to a life of manual labor, you should read this and heed my words.
I'm shocked and a bit appalled at the lack in basic computer skills among my own generation (gen-x), but more-so at generations after mine. Just about every career out there requires at the very minimum some basic computer skills. No matter what you plan to do- accounting, finance, sales, service, management(!!) .. you will need to understand computers and software. I work for a manufacturing and distribution company, and even so, 95% of our workforce has to use computers on some level. 90% of them are at a computer for the majority of the work day.
About half of them (many are young, in their 20's) have almost zero computer skills. This is problematic for many reasons, some of which were fired after doing something incredibly stupid, but easily avoidable.
- Lack of computer skills makes you far more susceptible to falling for phishing and virus attacks (no level of anti-virus and firewalls can stop a user from stupidly giving hackers their credentials).
- Lack of computer skills makes you less hire-able
- Lack of computer skills seriously compromises your expected productivity.
- Lack of computer skills puts an incredible burden on your IT department
- Lack of computer skills can get you fired if you make a big enough mistake, and I've seen many people fired for stupid mistakes.
- Lack of computer skills exposes your ignorance and dishonesty - IT departments see EVERYTHING you do, so when you try to say you didn't delete that really important file on the network, you will be exposed as a liar on top of being illiterate.
- You can negotiate a better hiring salary if you have computer skills, especially software skills like MS Office, Adobe, and other common applications. You will also move up the line for consideration for a job vs. someone without skills.
We no longer hire anyone without moderate computer skills because of past issues.
The most incredible part about this is, you can get these skills for FREE. There's so many free training videos on windows, adobe, MAC, Office, etc.. all those products have free trials or cheap home-user versions that it's just stupid not to invest in yourself and your potential future.
The more you know :)
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Actually, those with the worst computer skills are the elderly (i. e. boomers and older). In the last job I had, just before the zombie-virus ended my employment there, I worked at a visitor information centre, which is just a place where tourists can go to acquire information about the local attractions. Everyone I worked with was older than I, in their 60's or 70's, and whenever any of them had any minor issue at all (like not knowing how to print a document, or even turn the damn machine on), they would ask me and it would take less than 15 seconds to fix their "problem". Truly embarrassing it was to see these grown adults not know how to use a piece of equipment (i. e. the personal computer) that has now been around for 40 years. Some people are just too damned lazy to make the effort to learn anything new, so it will only serve them right if they cannot find employment because of their inexcusable ignorance.
This lack of skills says a lot about our school system here doesn't it.