Working in the Metaverse

The digital gap is now more about skills and mindset in the context of the workplace than it is about having access to devices and the internet. Many seasoned professionals are only familiar with the very fundamentals of email, web searching, and Microsoft Office. When something goes wrong, they heavily rely on close coworkers or the IT help desk.

Young people, however, have already shown that they can compete favorably in the virtual workplace. They have a more intuitive understanding of modern technology and take an effort to research solutions via subreddits, social media, and YouTube lessons.

Additionally, as a generation, they play more games. Being familiar with massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) like Fortnite and Roblox, as well as the ability to manage multiple digital identities, is going to give you an edge as more and more work moves into virtual reality (VR) - and one does not have to share Mark Zuckerberg's somewhat eccentric vision of the metaverse to believe that it will.

There is still plenty of the metaverse to construct. Of course, VR has long been used to teach people physically demanding vocations, like law enforcement, surgery, and manufacturing, as well as for astronauts and pilots. Virtual training has clear advantages in terms of cost and relative safety when it comes to specialized equipment or complex settings. However, the changes will be most noticeable in knowledge-based jobs, such as software engineering, law, and design.