Gamers, Hackers and Crypto: The Skills Hiding in Plain Sight
Something extremely unusual has happened over the last 30 years or so. It’s so pervasive that we hardly notice. For thousands of years adults have guided young people through life, using our wisdom and experience to help them learn to navigate the world.
But the dramatic speed of constant technological change has flipped this dynamic on its head. We might be the first generation in history where younger people know more than older people about the tools that run our world. According to one survey among many I could cite, by the age of 12 a child knows more tech than their parents. Sounds about right to me.
The places young people learn about this stuff has changed too, thanks to the proliferation of household devices, free and open-source software, and of course, smart phones. Many of us studied ‘IT’ in school – that learning was structured, scheduled, and rote-based.
Younger people today learn about technology in a very different way. It’s practical, irregular and unsupervised. They are constantly exposed to tech in their daily lives – whether that’s video editing software, generative AI, crypto-markets, gaming. They pick up valuable skills and know-how, sometimes without even realising it.
This silent revolution has dramatic ramifications for how we understand and find talent – especially at a time where most organisations are trying to recruit people with technical skills. We are all, collectively, slow to recognise talent in unexpected places. The result is a huge amount of squandered ability.
The skills gained from Fortnite
The 13-year-old in trouble for hacking his school CCTV camera might one day end up defending the national grid from cyber-attacks. And have you actually watched teenagers playing Fortnite? It is a common misconception that gaming is a waste of time. Most research suggests almost the precise opposite: it helps develop communication, teamwork, strategic thinking, collaboration, imagination, resourcefulness and adaptability among gamers.
All organisations need to seek out these new sources of expertise and ability. You probably have vast amount of in-house talent already – your youngest and newest recruits likely have skills no-one’s ever asked them about. Take generative AI, the current must-have. A recent Deloitte survey found that 62 per cent of 16-34 year olds have used it, compared to only 14 per cent of 55-75 year olds.
That survey also found that millions of people in the UK are using it at work too – and the vast majority say it’s made them more productive. But here’s the kicker: only 27 per cent say their bosses encourage it. I suspect a lot of younger employees are using genAI in work right now, without the support (or even knowledge) of the leaders. Which is a big loss.
Are gamers the perfect police recruits?
The police force is a good example of what we might do differently. Every year they recruit thousands of new constables. Many are straight from school or university, and will typically start on the entry programme, out on the beat. There is nothing wrong with that of course.
But we know all our police forces are struggling to get on top of high-tech crime; that the majority of crime these days is computer misuse and fraud; and that most forces have serious skill shortages in these areas, notably digital forensics. There are also whole new worlds of criminality that the police have barely noticed yet, like online gaming sites, some of which have become vehicles for money laundering and theft.
I’ll wager that among those thousands of new constables – most of whom are under 25 – there are world experts on gaming culture, dark net data markets, hacker forums, crypto-currencies, scamming websites, and a thousand other things besides. They won’t have learned this at school; and it won’t appear on their CVs. But the skills are there. I’ve also noticed an appetite to learn more among younger staffers, which makes sense. After all, constant change is normal for this generation.
Most people coming into the workforce today have gotten used to multiple phases of tech evolution – web 2.0, web 3.0, generative AI. They’re used to constantly switching apps and learning new software. According to the Princes Trust, four in five young people want to train or re-train in digital skills. There’s a desire – not a fear – to keep learning about new tech.
So here’s a tip for any police force reading this: find out what online games your new constables played, and how good they were. Voila – there’s your new online gaming criminal investigations unit!
Turning hackers into new hires
Take our armed forces as another example. Future armies will be fighting increasingly with remote drones and robots, as my colleague Richard Beck writes about here. Their success might depend on how well we can recruit gamers into the military. I assume the greatest gamers are already being directly approached by the Navy or Airforce. If they aren’t – they should be.
Sometimes finding that hidden talent is hard work. Even a little risky. Every time I read a story about a young hacker breaking into a school network, my first thought is what a talented young person this must be - Can we train them up, and get them on the right side of the tracks?
A while back, we at QA decided to do exactly that. In the early 2010s the most notorious hacking collective in the world was a group called ‘Lulzsec’. You might remember some of their headline grabbing exploits: they hacked into, among other places, Fox News, the NHS, PBS, the FBI, Sony Playstation and News Corp. One of the members, a gifted young British man named Ryan Ackroyd, was arrested and spent 30 months in prison in 2013.
He was a criminal; but he was also brilliantly smart – one of the best hackers in the world. And after he came out of prison, and following months of effort, security screening, and a few internal arguments, we recruited Ryan as a Cyber Security Technical Consultant & Trainer. He turned out to be an even better trainer than a hacker: he taught hundreds of technical courses, including penetration testing, cyber security ops, malware analysis and reverse engineering.
As you can imagine, he understood – really understood – how criminal hackers think, because he’d been one. He was brilliant at sharing that insight. He also had a lot of credibility because of what he’d done: people really listened to him. Not everyone agreed we should have Ryan on, but we felt he’d come out of prison a changed person. I’ll admit it wasn’t the easiest hire in the world. But it was one of the smartest we made.
Unlock the hidden skills in your workforce
So here's my advice. If you’re considering, as a business, investing heavily in some new AI software; or new video software; or new databases; or new cloud solutions; or new content generation – take an informal skills audit first. I guarantee there will be people in your organisation who’ve already used it, or will be very adept at picking it up. And they will probably be staffers you’d least expect.
You might find that the 22-year-old recruit in HR runs an impressive side-gig in social media editing software; or your 19-year-old apprentice has in fact spent the last 3 years working on OpenAI’s generative AI tools. Skills are not always where you expect them to be anymore; valuable talent can crop up from sources that will surprise you – and it’s worth nurturing.
