Geeks On a Plane Proposed To Solve Global Tech Skills Crisis

judgecorp writes "British Airways' Ungrounded project proposes to shut 100 Silicon Valley 'gamechangers' in a trans-Atlantic plane and ask them to solve the world's tech skills crisis during a 12-hour flight to London. On arrival, the passengers will head into a conference where they will present their ideas to, among others, the UN. From the article: 'Ungrounded, as the project is called, will bring 100 “innovators” (Silicon Valley CEOs, thinkers and venture capitalists) on a private BA flight from San Francisco to London. During the flight, they will take part in a “global hack” run by Ideo, a design firm which has made mice for Microsoft and Apple.'"

Re:Don't forget the free and open source people to

[TheRaven64]

When were these 'good old days'? There's a story from shortly after the founding of Sun. They got a visit from IBM with a set of patents that they claimed Sun infringed. They sat the patent lawyers down and explained why for each patent it was either invalid or didn't apply. The Nazgul replied that they were probably right, but they could come back with another seven patents that Sun did infringe, and fighting them in court would be far more expensive than Sun could afford. Sun signed a cross-licensing agreement with IBM. This was the early '80s.

Re:no tech skills crisis

[jythie]

Well put. The crisis seems to be deeply rooted in HR practices from the 90s designed to remove as many people from the running as possible.

A few weeks ago I had been applying for a job that I was well qualified for except that I had not used their development language in something like 6 years. I explained that and the people I was talking to had no problem with that, in fact they had two groups and I might work with the one that was using a language I had never used.

However, as part of HR, I had to take an online exam in the language I had not used in half a decade... with a timer on each question, going over gritty little syntax details of the language. Naturally I did poorly and that was the end of the process. Another job I was doing well at applying for the HR person (final stage) decided I just didn't think in the 'XYZ way', so even though the local VP wanted to hire me, HR nixed it. Both were cases where the people actually thinking about the work felt I would be a good fit, but HR filters said no.