Driving Students to Tech Careers

I recently read an interesting interview with three senior executives at Google. The article was about women in technology, but one of their points intrigued me. They hypothesized that the prevalence of technology in our lives (smart phones, Facebook, etc.) will drive more young people to technology careers. They will use it and some will be curious about how you create a smart phone or an application like Facebook.

This sounds likely to me. Recently, I was speaking to a group of girls and shared that I had no idea what Engineering was when I went into college. All I knew was that it used math and science and I could get a good job when I was done. That was enough for me at the time. Fortunately, I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of solving problems and the satisfaction of creating something from scratch.

Now a days, when I describe what Advanced Decisions does, I have plenty of commonly known examples to point to. My typical “definition” of embedded systems programming is “writing software for an electronic device like your phone or your car, or your microwave, or medical equipment.” People usually understand that.

Do you think the prevalence of technology in our lives will generate interest in careers in tech? If not that, then what might? One of the points the women made in this article was that it’s not really about just women in tech. We have a shortage of programmers and engineers and need more regardless of gender.