As a brotha from the West Side of Chicago looking around at other brothas and sistas running their mouth on the Internet and following charlatans off YouTube, I realized something. I realized these are some broke-ass brothas and broke-ass sistas who self-inflicted their own poverty positioning in this world. They didn’t have to be broke, they have chosen to be broke because they chose to be ignorant and lame.

That’s why their dumb broke-ass follow a Dr. Umar Johnson or Dr. Boyce Watkins instead of joining like-minded peer groups on the Internet and collaborating on skills and techniques to do better in their lives, all that money made from meme stocks to this day, AMC did a 30% one-day increase just two days ago of this article writing.

Slavery wasn’t a choice but folks being broke is a choice – everybody has the capacity in America to switch up and learn something new and that would get them paid more. In this pandemic era, it is plenty of high-paying jobs and even jobs that didn’t pay anything are now paying living wages. LOL, I noticed these sistas out here tricking brothas ain’t asking me for money anymore because they got good jobs now and don’t need my money anymore.

Cats are moving from Detroit, Chicago, New York to Atlanta and Dallas and Houston all happy they ain’t up North anymore and starting a new life with a good-paying job. Latinos who were denied real opportunities by Fox News watching bigots now find themselves getting good management and white-collar opportunities.

One of the best ways to position yourself to be set up and paid is to gain some IT skills where you can write all of the knowledge down in files on a USB drive. If you read earlier Dream and Hustle articles, I helped a sista out by giving her my USB drive of database commands with advanced tips so she can copy and paste SQL script templates to do her job. She was a fine chick from New York coming down to Atlanta and didn’t know the job but I gave her the tools and now she out there riding in her Range Rover HSE thanking me to this day.  Remind me what that egg-headed token clown Tristan Walker has done for folks again in this tech space; thought so.

Do you know the funny part about the last paragraph? I got plenty of Black folks over a span of 20 years I helped out in this tech space who know me personally and will vouch for me. But you had a Blavity AfroTech Facebook group full of folks over there keyboard typing some posing and posturing nonsense pretending they are alpha and can comment on someone of my caliber in this game. Fake folks trying to create narratives chasing Silicon Valley validation and acceptance all thirsty in the game. Willing to impress someone else over the Internet instead of empowering themselves personally.

That’s the fake and broke stuff that I don’t understand when the getting it game is already real, already laid out and all it takes is just following the steps to go and get yours. But they over there daily talking lightweight BS in a Blavity AfroTech Facebook group.  

In 2022, there is no reason to be hanging around broke-ass folks sitting up there talking and posturing over the Internet. It’s too much open opportunity out there to go do something big and do something different than what was done in the past. Look around – folks got new money and even the hood folks figured how to get their money right after the extra unemployment stimulus and forgivable PPP loan. Cats didn’t even have to pay rent and skipped out on their landlords – the same landlords bragging they got ”net worth” a few years ago, now their tenants getting real hard cash from the government and didn’t pay that rent and saved up and moved to another state after the eviction ban was lifted. In 2022, anybody sitting up there still talking aspirational money stuff just need to be laughed at while the rest of us go and get ours for real.

The technology space is going through a massive paradigm shift and that is where the solid money is at. The nice thing about the technology space is when you master a skill, you can take your skills literally anywhere around the world. You can move to Costa Rica and set up a cyber operation there, you can move to Los Angeles and afford a nice condo unit quickly, you can move to Virginia or Maryland and hang out with quality, intelligent Black folks in that DMW area or you can move overseas like UK or China and start international grade hustles.

You got all the leverage and moves to make, jet-setting to Dubai and while you at the airport waiting on a PCR test result, you pull out your mobile phone and look at the broke-ass brothas and broke-ass sistas still following Dr. Boyce Watkins and you laugh it off like damn, broke distracted mofos just going to stay broke distracted mofos.

With all that said, let’s talk about how to make moves in 2022 because right now I’m seeing $150k job listings and I’m talking just the Atlanta area for some IT jobs where the skills can be done online. You really don’t have to pay for anything – the software is open source and free to download and they got YouTube video showing you step-by-step how to get things up and running. All you need is a notebook and a USB thumb drive to copy down key terms and outline key steps to a process.  

Again, broke folks on YouTube watching some charlatan and broke folks be typing comments about how that charlatan spitting knowledge or they deep with all that money-making knowledge content out there on YouTube.

There are three transformational shifts going on in the IT space I want to make you aware of and focus on these sectors. We will cover in detail but these are the areas where things are shifting and salaries are increasing due to the demand for skills.

Software-Driven Data Center. In the old days, a data center would be server hardware with software installed on it and would be stored on a server rack system. The modern data center is now hardware that has multiple virtual machines or run containers and has a shared virtual datastore. This is what you call cloud services – most cloud platforms can be administered and managed via a web browser, yes the same web browser broke folks use to follow charlatans on YouTube. That means you can work from home or work from anywhere. You will see skills needed such as Ubuntu, Kubernetes, Docker, Ansible/Chef, AWS/Azure platforms and these are freely available software to download and practice.

Continuous Integration. Software delivery cannot be some teenage coder nowadays – most IT shops have dev teams distributed through North America, Asia, Europe, Latin America. You need a system in place that promotes multiple developers checking in their code, automated builds of codes, automated testing and scanning code to be secure, and setting up an environment to deploy with version number not only to a website but a mobile app build or a game console build or desktop application – all automated. This is called a DevOps Engineer and they work on either Azure DevOps or Jenkins and they must know how to use Git-based source control like GitHub and also how to build code and maintain a library of artifacts. All of this software is free to download and learn and plenty of YouTube videos to watch.

Real-Time Data. The term real-time data is a paradigm shift from what is stored data on a database. That is the old days where we create a connection string, connect to a database and run a SQL query to pull rows and return to the user. Today, we have cache servers and focus on a cache-first retrieval. This involves storing objects as JSON in a key-value database so we don’t run complex SQL joins, we pull the whole object once it is first written to a cache for faster retrieval.

Second, we use streaming data where publishers of data push it to subscribers of data, also known as pub-sub. This drives event sourcing where we publish the event an order has been completed to an email service which will then create an email to send to the customer their order has been processed. The skills needed are Redis which is free to download as well as Kafka which you can install both on a MacBook or Windows laptop.  The title is known as a data engineer.

All the jobs I listed are now paying over $150k/year and the information to learn these skills are easily accessible online and the software is free to download. You and your spouse can sit together and learn this technology not only for a new career but also for entrepreneurial ventures. Think about it – you can create a digital enterprise right now that can process coupon codes for small businesses if you had all this knowledge.

Think about how lame Blavity is right now – they focus on clickbait editorial content, something that never lasts long for the Black digital enterprise. Look how lame Vibe magazine is right now and they have been around since the 90s. We got to learn more advanced tech solutions in this environment today.

We have to learn payment-first business models. Think about Blavity cornball model of seeking advertisement and sponsorships, begging with their hands out. Now think about setting up a financial workflow of paying royalties in real-time and automatically generating 1099s and automatically promoting content using streaming data to kiosks and digital screens throughout the world. See, you already won before you started the battle because folks are cornballs out here.

For real, the knowledge is out there. You getting $150k/year you can afford that S-Klasse or that Range Rover HSE and that downtown condo/loft and go out and eat good with a nice date and take trips and photo selfies and buy nice clothes, solid 18k gold links and you raise your kids right and pay for their education. You can even raise these broke deadbeat brothas kids and call them your own as well.  

That’s how you be moving in this world, not sitting on some YouTube listening to Po Light or Dr. Umar Johnson still talking about starting up that school one day – a bunch of broke-ass followers want to attack someone for calling that phantom ware Freddy Dougie school BS but see, we didn’t mention one thing. Making $150k/year also helps you get some nice tools and gear to deal with angry broke folks efficiently, just letting you know.

We are going to focus specifically on these skill sets and techniques with these new IT paradigm shifts to help our audience know how to leverage and build these new skills. Because Dream and Hustle don’t have a broke-ass follower base – we got hustlers and go-getters over here. We all over the world, I uplift folks over there to be better for themselves and their families and they all can eat good and their kids can have doctor visits and checkups. You other mofos just broke talking nonsense online while working at the Amazon warehouse with robots giving you the stuff to sort and pack in boxes.

The market is hot and this is a once-in-a-lifetime prosperity event that can greatly benefit you and your future generations in the 21st century. Stop being stupid and learn these new skills and get your game up for yourself, brothas and sistas. This stuff is free to learn and master and switch your lifestyle and habits to watching YouTube for knowledge and start learning by doing. Focus on yourself because no one loves or respects a broke-ass brotha or broke-ass sista talking in the YouTube comment section about how some YouTube charlatan is spitting knowledge – uplift yourself homey.