Paths — A way into the future for everybody.
Disclaimer : This website does not exist, I just think it will be really cool if it does.
Have you ever wondered how humankind is going to manage this super fast transition into the future.
In the my last post I had emphasized on what is gonna happen, but I didn’t really give you my thoughts on what has to be done for us to make this a fruitful transition?
When it comes to transitioning, the first and the foremost system that we must mend is how we gain knowledge.
After some deep thinking and a lot of googling, I found out, that
- Certificates are super costly!!
- College is Costlier.
- Everyone’s primary source of knowledge is ultimately YouTube.
So, there we have it, the answer, YouTube, or in a wider context, free resources available on the Internet. Yes, we do have to pay for the internet, but it is comparatively cheap when compared to the millions draining out of parent’s pockets!
Woah, wait up! What are you saying Saai? You are asking us to dropout of college and study stuff off the Internet!!!
Well, not exactly my friends, let me explain, or rather, let me pitch an idea here, right on medium,
Paths — A Way into the Future :
There are tonnes of learning material on the Internet. Don’t lie, you use them more often than you know!
Aside from the expense part, finding your niche is also becoming more and more difficult as jobs have become more intricate.
All of a sudden you realise all your friends are doing something and you want to gain some skills apart from what college teaches you. After lots of asking around and being convincing by your friends and parents, you want to learn Data Science, all right,
Step 1: Go to any Ed Tech Platform, find a course that has the words “Complete”, “Full” or “End to End”.
Step 2: Finish their course and add the certificate they give on your resume.
Step 3: Try making projects and fail miserably a few times, before getting it right the 100th time after helping yourself with 100’s of google searches and stack overflow code. At this point, you are starting to doubt if the project is really yours at all.
Even worse, you don’t try doing projects at all, because, you don’t have the equipment (or) you don’t have the time (or) Nobody told you!!
Now, after Paths is implemented,
Step 1: Understand that the college courses only give you a foundation and that you need to get a deeper understanding of some subject or domain that you college is teaching you. Even, if it is not a part of your curriculum, it is alright. College courses are designed in such a way that it can help everyone, not just one person. Learn what you want to, try learning the other subjects too, they might help later on, because everything is interconnected.
Step 2: Go to the Paths website, and pick a Domain that you want to completely go into and master. Or even better, pick the subjects you like and the site tells you what jobs you are apt for.
“The best jobs you can get are the ones that are CREATED for you” — Ivan Peppelnjak
Step 3: Now you know, what you wanna become, what you have to study(vaguely).
You would have chosen Python, but, python is super huge, 1000’s of libraries and the versatility of the language is too great for you to fully learn it. If you want to do Data Science — Numpy and Pandas is key. If it is Web Development — Django and Flask come without saying. If it is Computer Vision — you will find yourself at the mercy of OpenCV and skimage. If it is… you get the point.
Where do you start, the world runs on open-source and there are many open-source tools out there! What will you learn?
You will use the syllabus that is provided on the Paths website for the domain you selected, and in that you will have a list of subjects and in that you will have a list of things you will have to study in that subject, of course the prerequisites will be included too.
Step 4: Navigate to the website’s resources section, which is basically a thread containing all possible resources (links to Blogs, Books and YouTube Videos) for each topic in each subject. These resources are rated and is updated by the users. They are also Up voted and Down voted by the community.
Step 5: After this the candidate becomes a noob in the subject. After this the ranks are upgraded by the rating other people give for his profile. This rating is more like us asking, “How is my GitHub?”.
Yes, Paths has ranks for each member, 16 ranks to be precise.
Not just GitHub, candidates can attach any website, like blogs, project videos etc.Why would people want to rate other people’s pages? Who would do this to who?How would they do this? I’ll come to this in a minute, now we will move on to the next step of your journey.
Finish studying and rise in ranks and after 3 months minimum, get ready to write the first exam for entering the Professional rank, which is the 9th rank.
To be ranked, you must pass a written exam, for a very small fee(less than 7$), but beware, if you fail the exam, you won’t be able to write it for the another 3 months. There is no workaround.
This is to make sure the students actually prepare for the exam and actually study, because, time is as valuable as money. The pass conditions for the exam are strict, but not based on rank, it will be based on the difficulty of the paper.
Step 6: Now, assume you have reached the “Professional” rank on Paths,
You will get notified immediately as you reach the Professional Rank, because, this rank is the requirement for you to enter Paths —Bridge, which connects you to organizations that are posting vacancies on not just Paths, but other websites like Glass door, Indeed, etc. Paths will auto-apply with your resume (or you can toggle it to do this manually, in this case, you will only get notified).
You can keep track of your applications, any interviews or task deadlines, will be added to your calendar, which will remind you 1 week, 3 days and 1 day prior to the task’s deadline. (Customizable)
Step 7: You get a job, you are a Professional, but it doesn’t end here,
Learning is a never ending process, and did I mention that Professional is only the 9th rank? Yes, There are 8 more ranks for you to climb. You will also be able to evaluate the papers of the students who write to get ranked in that domain.
Don’t worry, the papers will go through multiple layers of evaluation and rejection is possible only if the first evaluator provides a proper reason and all the subsequent evaluators accept that the reason is sufficient to reject the paper.
Nope, you do not have to correct them for free, you will get a part of the fee that was paid by the candidate, for each paper evaluated. First Evaluator, gets the maximum share.
There are ways for your profile to get down-voted also, which means a fall in the ranks, which means, even if you are a “Professional”, you still face a risk of falling back to “Beginner”. So, keep updating your profile and learn new stuff.
On the upside, you can progress in you work environment too,
“Learning should never stop, if you want success, don’t look at learning as a part of you college or school life”
Step 8 : Help people, help the society advance, contribute to open-source projects, its not all about computers and academics. Help clean a local park or participate in a tree-plantation drive. Post them on the Paths website.
Paths holds your data, true, but to an extent you are allowed to manage what goes to the analytics and what does not. Paths requires your data to improve its services and won’t sell it to data vendors.
The System :
I have been making some wild claims as to what paths can do, though, I have minutely covered how it will do things, this section will hopefully clarify all of your doubts.
I’ll go step by step in terms of doubts as well,
Step 2: Doubt 1: How can Paths know what career I like?
Honestly, Paths won’t, it cannot! Based on your likes and preferences in terms of subjects in the Paths Database and other hobbies. It suggests you a list of choices. Along with this, it also provides a complete definition of the domain, in terms of scope, salary, benefits, demerits, and also the syllabus for the domain and if possible we can try to include a list of the major industry players in the domain too.
Paths will take the help of the community to create this database. Uses Analytics to suggest options and help you choose.
Step 2: Doubt 2: What if I want to change the Domain once I start?
A very good question, if you do have this question in your mind, it means you have started thinking about this.
The syllabus is not a piece of paper, it is a check list, as you fill in each box in the check list, your career options in other domains open as well. For example, A candidate who wants to do Data Science, can transition to ML or AI Engineer Domains. You can also complete multiple domains.
In case you want to work on a whole different field, which has no subjects in common with the one you are currently working on, you must restart with a new checklist.
As you complete each subject, small tests are conducted to help you evaluate your proficiency.
Step 3: Doubt 1: What Domains? What Subjects? What Syllabus?
There are many domains, like Data Science, AI-ML Engineer etc, you have to complete the complete syllabus of that domain, which includes a set of subjects.
Each subject has a list of topics, it is these topics that are kept track of by Paths, for helping you in case you wanna transition into other domains.
This, is what the structure will look like,
Step 5: Doubt 1: How does the ranking system work?
Now, I am obligated to tell you,
Paths has 16 ranks, each rank has a set of basic tasks and additional tasks. Each task has a credit score.
As you finish each task, you will add a link to it or an equivalent on Paths, a person in the ranks above you will up-vote or down-vote it. Once, you reach the assigned difference in votes (up-votes minus down-votes), your task will be considered accepted and you will be awarded the credits for that task.
This credit score will get added to your Overall Credit Score (OCS), which includes the total of all the credit scores you achieved for all the ranks you have progressed through so far. It is possible for your OCS to go down if the number of down-votes increases and the difference in votes, goes below the assigned value. In this case the task that was previously accepted will be returned.
You will have to complete the basic set of tasks in order to qualify for rank progression. If your OCS is higher than the person with the lowest OCS in the rank above yours, your rank will will progress and that person will come down to your rank.
So, there are as many ways to rise as there are way to fall.
Step 5: Doubt 2: Why will someone rate my profile?
Well they will, since, for every profile you rate, someone will rate yours, and only that is possible. You could be sitting in India and rating a profile of someone in Uganda.
Well, this is my idea, and I have come to the conclusion, that it has to be
by the community — for the community — of the community of programmers.
No one person or organization can pull this off. This idea is more of an imagination, and I hope it interests a group of people. If you are interested in implementing this idea, go ahead with it, but please don’t make any profit minded amendments to it. You do not have to ask me or anything. Consider the idea my contribution to the project.
I am only a college student and might have made a few mistakes in the finances part, for this idea.
Additional Readings —
OER : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources
FCC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCodeCamp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education#On_the_Internet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_OpenCourseWare
A friend found a similar website online : https://launchschool.com/
