Google CEO Sundar Pichai: Coding alone can’t save us from the skills gap

Too much importance put on the writing of code has created a skills gap in America's technology industry and much of its workforce, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a Jan 18 op-ed in which he called for accessible, continuous medium-level tech training – and touted Google-grown examples.

"The focus on code has left a potentially bigger opportunity largely unexplored," Pichai wrote in an article larded heavily with descriptions of Google's own explorations into said opportunity.

Flexible, ongoing educational options must be available if people are going to "thrive in the digital world," Pichai said.

"Rather than thinking of education as the opening act, we need to make sure it's a constant, natural and simple act across life."

An office administrator, for example, needs to use online programs for budgeting, scheduling and accounting, and could become alienated by the technology, Pichai suggested.

At the same time, 150,000 IT-support positions stand wanting and such jobs are expected to increase by 10% by 2026 from 2016 numbers, he wrote in the "Think" section of NBC News online.

"We have a huge opportunity to rethink training for jobs that are core to the digital economy, but that don't require coding. IT support is a clear opportunity," Pichai wrote.

Pichai devoted close to a third of the article to showcasing Google's work on lower- and medium-level training, from its free "Grow with Google" online courses in basic digital skills to an IT-support apprenticeship program that he said showed young IT workers didn't need expensive two-year computer science degrees to embark on their careers.

One of Google's solutions for training up more IT-support workers has taken the shape of a partnership with Mountain View online-education giant Coursera, announced Jan 16, to create an 8-12 month online certificate program that, Pichai wrote, "teaches everything you need to be an IT-support technician."

Google is giving 10,000 people free access to the course, and is subsidising it to keep the monthly cost to US$49 (RM192), he wrote.

The course "will connect graduates to job opportunities at places like Bank of America, Walmart, Sprint, GE Digital, Infosys, TEKSystems, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre – as well as Google," according to Pichai.

"You can imagine this lightweight, focused model being applied to other tech-related jobs of the future: robust certification programs for project management, delivery fleet operation, and other jobs no one can imagine today, but that will be obvious – and ubiquitous – in five years' time." — San Jose Mercury News/Tribune News Service