All posts tagged: careers

‘I am never off the clock’: inside the booming world of gen Z side hustles | US work & careers

‘I am never off the clock’: inside the booming world of gen Z side hustles | US work & careers

Published by Sam Flores

Aashna Doshi, a software engineer at Google, is constantly monitoring her headspace. “This way I don’t burn myself out,” she said. “And I stay a lot more consistent with my podcast and content creation work.” On top of her day job in the tech giant’s security and artificial intelligence department, Doshi also publishes social media content about working in tech and her life in New York City, and records podcasts – sometimes all three in a day. She is part of a seismic generational shift: 57% of gen Z Americans have a side hustle, according to recent Harris Poll research, compared with 21% among boomers. Rather than throwing everything into a single career, many young adults are now spinning plates – using their main job as financial bedrock while directing their passion, and ambition, elsewhere. “In my side hustles I can finally offer myself an outlet to be creative and express myself without any constraints,” said Doshi, 23. “This is probably the biggest thing: I can represent myself as an individual with all these ambitions, …

UKSA internships launch young people into space careers

UKSA internships launch young people into space careers

Published by skeptic

The UK Space Agency is launching Skills for Space, a new internship programme offering 50 paid placements to give young people hands-on experience in space careers. The new programme is a UK-wide initiative designed to give students their launchpad into space careers through structured internships with the space industry. Skills for Space will offer placements across a range of disciplines and locations, providing participants with practical experience in one of the UK’s fastest-growing industries. Dr Paul Bate, CEO of the UK Space Agency, commented: “The UK space sector is growing rapidly, and we need talented, diverse people to help us seize the opportunities ahead. “Skills for Space will give young people from all backgrounds the chance to gain real-world experience and develop the skills our industry needs.” Industry faces difficulties with new recruits in space careers The initiative comes as the sector faces significant recruitment challenges and struggles to bring new faces into space careers. According to the most recent Space Skills Survey, 80% of space organisations faced recruitment difficulties – up from 61% in …

The big AI job swap: why white-collar workers are ditching their careers | AI (artificial intelligence)

The big AI job swap: why white-collar workers are ditching their careers | AI (artificial intelligence)

Published by Sam Flores

California-based Jacqueline Bowman had been dead set on becoming a writer since she was a child. At 14 she got her first internship at her local newspaper, and later she studied journalism at university. Though she hadn’t been able to make a full-time living from her favourite pastime – fiction writing – post-university, she consistently got writing work (mostly content marketing, some journalism) and went freelance full-time when she was 26. Sure, content marketing wasn’t exactly the dream, but she was writing every day, and it was paying the bills – she was happy enough. “But something really switched in 2024,” Bowman, now 30, says. Layoffs and publication closures meant that much of her work “kind of dried up. I started to get clients coming to me and talking about AI,” she says – some even brazen enough to tell her how “great” it was “that we don’t need writers any more”. She was offered work as an editor – checking and altering work produced by artificial intelligence. The idea was that polishing up already-written …

AI-powered course design is helping adult students build real job skills

AI-powered course design is helping adult students build real job skills

Published by Jenni Sidey

University of Phoenix has published a research study in Industry and Higher Education that examined how to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the learning experience of returning adult learners who have jobs, families, and are pursuing an education. Researchers found that designing specific types of AI-based activities can improve learning and job-readiness skills of undergraduate students enrolled in an Introduction to Environmental Science course. Researchers included Jacquelyn Kelly, Ph.D., Associate Dean, College of General Studies; Dianna Gielstra, Ph.D.; Tomáš J. Oberding, Ph.D.; Jim Bruno, MBA, Associate Dean, College of Business and Information Technology; and Stephanie Cosentino, MAEd, Senior Instructional Designer. The goal of this initiative was to close the gap between what is learnt at school and what is expected by the workforce today. Introductory Environmental Science Course The research team designed an introductory environmental science course over five weeks for nontraditional adult learners who have been out of the classroom for several years and have work and family responsibilities. Researchers found that designing specific types of AI-based activities can improve learning and job-readiness …

Polygamous working: why are people secretly doing two or three full-time jobs at once? | Work & careers

Polygamous working: why are people secretly doing two or three full-time jobs at once? | Work & careers

Published by Sam Flores

Name: Polygamous working. Age: It’s really a post-pandemic phenomenon. Appearance: A Zoom meeting window, with video disabled. I’ve heard of polygamy, but I didn’t know you could make money from it. This has nothing to do with polygamy; it’s a term for having more than one job. You mean like moonlighting? Moonlighting refers to someone taking on a secondary job to make ends meet, usually at night. Like a side hustle, then? A side hustle generally involves freelance work undertaken in your own time, as an additional income stream. What if you don’t make any money doing it? Then it’s a hobby. So what’s the polygamy thing? Polygamous working is holding two or more full-time jobs simultaneously, without an employer knowing. Presumably they figure it out when they notice you’re only there half the time. In the old days maybe, but with the rise of hybrid and remote working, polygamous employment can easily go undetected. If no one can tell, then what’s wrong with it? There’s no law against having two jobs, but in some …

Competency porn: is there any greater escapism than watching a capable person on TV? | Work & careers

Competency porn: is there any greater escapism than watching a capable person on TV? | Work & careers

Published by Sam Flores

Name: Competency porn. Age: Relatively new. Appearance: Just unbelievably sexy. No thanks, porn isn’t really my kind of thing. No, I agree. But what I’m offering you is something far more desirable. I’m listening. How would you like to come to mine and watch a two-hour supercut of people being really good at their jobs? Oh God, you’re really speaking my language. Of course I am. I’m speaking everyone’s language. Because, in 2026, when it feels like the entire world is being run by people who wouldn’t be able to successfully locate their own bottoms with their hands tied behind their backs, nothing is hotter than basic competency. How competent are we talking? It depends. We could watch The Paper, the sitcom about a struggling local newspaper fighting to maintain journalistic integrity in a world more interested in short-term clickbait. Bestill my beating heart. Or The Pitt, the hospital drama that keeps winning awards purely because it’s about doctors in Pennsylvania doing their jobs to a high degree of success. This is really working for …

Climate education proposals will prepare young people in England for changing careers and society

Climate education proposals will prepare young people in England for changing careers and society

Published by skeptic

The review of the national curriculum and assessment in England has proposed three big sets of changes for climate education. First, to prepare learners for a changing world, it suggests that climate education should be one of five big “applied knowledge areas”: key points of focus that cut across all subject disciplines within the curriculum. Second, as part of making citizenship teaching compulsory for all key stages, it proposes that age-appropriate climate education should be part of primary teaching. Third, it proposes that climate education is expanded and modernised within specific subjects: geography, science and design and technology. If implemented together, these changes would bring education in England closer to the comprehensive coverage of climate, sustainability and nature that many people in the sector, including ourselves, have long recommended. It would begin to align education in England with countries around the world, such as Lebanon and Argentina that are seeking to bring climate education into their curricula. Young people have also long been clear about their ambitions for climate education. The review focuses on the …

Tell us: have you changed your career plans because of the risk of an AI takeover? | Work & careers

Tell us: have you changed your career plans because of the risk of an AI takeover? | Work & careers

Published by Sam Flores

AI will affect 40% of jobs and probably worsen inequality, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said. What has your experience been of trying to future-proof your career? Have you retrained or moved jobs because your previous career path is at risk of an artificial intelligence takeover? Did you have a dream profession that you decided not to pursue because of fears it could be thwarted by AI? What did you do instead? Did you have to retrain? How did this affect your life and career? We would like to hear from you. Share your experience If you’ve altered your career plans because of AI, tell us about it in the form below.  Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. For alternative ways to get in touch …

High-achieving adults rarely began as child prodigies

High-achieving adults rarely began as child prodigies

Published by skeptic

Award-winning athletes may have been late bloomers when it came to developing their skills Michael Steele/Getty Images International chess masters, Olympic gold medallists and Nobel prize-winning scientists were rarely child prodigies, a review reveals. Likewise, early childhood successes and intense training programmes have rarely led to top achievement at a global level in the adult world. The analysis – based on 19 studies involving nearly 35,000 high-performing people – shows that the vast majority of adults who lead worldwide rankings in their field of expertise grew up participating in a broad range of activities, only gradually developing their most proficient skill. The findings contradict popular beliefs that achieving top international performance levels requires intensive, highly focused training during childhood, says Arne Güllich at RPTU Kaiserslautern in Germany. “If we understand that most world-class performers were not that remarkable or exceptional in their early years, this implies that early exceptional performance is not a prerequisite for long-term, world-class performance.” Much research has strongly linked the intensity of a child’s training programme in specific activities – like …

‘Hallucinated’ cases are affecting lawyers’ careers – they need to be trained to use AI

‘Hallucinated’ cases are affecting lawyers’ careers – they need to be trained to use AI

Published by skeptic

Generative artificial intelligence, which produces original content by drawing on large existing datasets, has been hailed as a revolutionary tool for lawyers. From drafting contracts to summarising case law, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Lexis+ AI promise speed and efficiency. But the English courts are now seeing a darker side of generative AI. This includes fabricated cases, invented quotations, and misleading citations entering court documents. As someone who studies how technology and the law interact, I argue it is vital that lawyers are taught how, and how not, to use generative AI. Lawyers need to be able to avoid the risk of sanctions for breaking the rules, but also the development of a legal system that risks deciding questions of justice based on fabricated case law. On 6 June 2025, the high court handed down a landmark judgment on two separate cases: Frederick Ayinde v The London Borough of Haringey and Hamad Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank QPSC and QNB Capital LLC. The court reprimanded a pupil barrister (a trainee) and a solicitor …