Automation vs Today's Jobs
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Interesting article:
So You Automated Your Coworkers Out of a Job
During his first day on the job at a small 3D-modelling company, Griffith noticed that his new colleagues’ workstations were hopelessly out of date. So he took the initiative to suggest some automation upgrades to the higher-ups, who concurred. Two years later, 20 employees—some of them good...
On the one hand, this is how we progress and get wealthier, generally. People have to become more productive, which means that a single person can produce more than he used to be able to. And it benefits him and also his customers who get cheaper prices.
But of course, the people who used to do the inefficient stuff in the past need to find new stuff to do and maybe they aren't capable or willing to do that, which sucks. Of course, if you refuse to do that locally it's likely that someone else will update their processes or maybe even start (more or less) from scratch and then you're potentially all out of jobs if you don't catch up (e.g., American auto industry in the 70s through today).
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
or willing
Sucks to be them, I guess. Food on the table is more important than not having to learn anything.
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@pie_flavor the problem is when food is on table regardless.
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@Gąska the market moves as it should. If learning isn't worth money to you, then that's your problem.
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Specifically for all kinds of computing jobs, a great many do need not be done in the first place were it not for the IT industry constantly reinventing itself without any added value.
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@Applied-Mediocrity it's not entirely coincidental that IT employees have created a situation where lots and lots of IT employees are needed in the market.
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This has been something I've been thinking about for a while. And it's a common theme among those who support UBI (not saying it's a good argument, just saying it's being talked about).
Besides the issue of existing people in the workforce, we also have the issue how to best prepare younger people into the workforce. It used to be a high school diploma could still get you somewhere; even if it's a dead-end job, it's at least A job. It's very quickly becoming more and more a high school diploma being more worthless than toilet paper (more worthless because at least toilet paper is soft and easy on your ass). Trade schools are becoming more popular these days, and I think that trend will continue, which I think is a worthwhile trend at this point. They aren't as expensive as liberal arts colleges, and have usable majors.
I think the only detriment I can think of for the trade school model is that they are often specialized in a very specific skill, and not everyone graduating high school quite knows what they want to be when they grow up. For a liberal arts college, you can more easily switch your major, but if you suddenly find out that the trade you picked isn't working out the way you expected, it could be a more frustrating experience.
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@The_Quiet_One Wrong order of cause and effect I think. It's more that high schools these days eliminate the trade classes and replace them with arts because college prep. My high school has gotten rid of auto work, metalworking, electrical, and even cooking - the only trade left is woodworking.
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@The_Quiet_One said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
I think the only detriment I can think of for the trade school model is that they are often specialized in a very specific skill, and not everyone graduating high school quite knows what they want to be when they grow up.
- It's not like the high school taught any more skills (at least not the variety that's useful in getting a job).
- It's not like they can't learn more skills later in life when they will feel a need to.
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@Gąska There's the problem, however, that at some time in one's life most people will look to put down roots and you might not be as mobile as you were in earlier years.
For instance, if you're in a relationship you'd also now have to find a new job at the new location for your partner. Nevermind finding new friends, dragging your kids with you and actually finding a job you can learn/do in the first place.
The latter of which gets harder the older you become.
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@Rhywden I got dragged to California. Worked out just fine.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Rhywden I got dragged to California. Worked out just fine.
And how would you have felt being dragged around repeatedly?
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@Rhywden said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska There's the problem, however, that at some time in one's life most people will look to put down roots and you might not be as mobile as you were in earlier years.
That's not an argument against trade schools. That's an argument against... dunno. Not having welfare maybe? Anyway, schools have nothing to do with it.
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@Rhywden If your job just got automated, what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
The kind that can't predict the future.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Rhywden If your job just got automated, what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
If you work in an easily automated job the chances are pretty good that you don't have the intellectual skillset to recognize that fact.
I mean, the article referenced a data entry job. Which are the most mindless kind of jobs imaginable.
There's a reason those people actually stayed in such a job in the first place. And it doesn't always have to do with being too lazy to look for something else.
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I saw an interview with Tucker Carlson who made the point should we automate all of these functions if it puts a large segment of the population out of work.
Factory jobs in small towns that allowed the average HS graduate (or even dropout) support a family. The towns dry up, and the those that remain have few options.
While I generally lean toward let the market figure it out, I see that things could things could turn very ugly if a large segment of the population is put out of work with few options. People who have no hope tend to make poor choices.
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@cvi You can predict 'a year from now' a hell of a lot better than 'a decade from now'. Repeatedly implies oftenness.
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@Rhywden I repeat: If it isn't worth money to you, that's your problem.
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@pie_flavor well, yeah, but as that sort of thing piles up it kind of has ways of becoming everyone else's problem too.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Rhywden If your job just got automated, what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
He says, in a thread about how everything is going to be automated...
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
You can predict 'a year from now' a hell of a lot better than 'a decade from now'. Repeatedly implies oftenness.
Sure, but having to relocate every 3 or even every 5 years is often. If you put down roots, have a family, own your house and so on, I'd still consider relocating every 10 years to be relatively frequent.
Besides, how do you expect people to pick up new skillsets and stay on top? You're relatively lucky to work with computers, where you can learn new related skills with very little investment. Picking up jobs that come with specialized machinery/equipment on your own is much much harder. Especially if you already work full time elsewhere.
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@topspin said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Rhywden If your job just got automated, what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
He says, in a thread about how everything is going to be automated...
Software development will always be the last job to go.
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@pie_flavor well, yeah, but as that sort of thing piles up it kind of has ways of becoming everyone else's problem too.
And then it becomes worth money to them.
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@pie_flavor ...to go on riots.
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This reminds me of another video that's actually laid out more clearly here https://youtu.be/5-Ur71ZnNVk
Thinking about this too long actually worries me. As automation gets better how long will it be until the lowest tier jobs require an IQ greater than 100? That's almost half the population unable to get a job. What's left is going to be "our customers like the human touch". With half the population competing for those jobs, wages are going to be driven into the ground.
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What do y'all think would be better - UBI, or the govt directly subsidizing low level jobs? Because it looks like one of these two will eventually have to happen.
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@DogsB My take is that if it goes far enough, there will end up being businesses whose sole purpose is providing meaningless jobs for people. And they will be very successful.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
Software development will always be the last job to go.
What's the difference between automated away and outsourced away?
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@Magus said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@DogsB My take is that if it goes far enough, there will end up being businesses whose sole purpose is providing meaningless jobs for people. And they will be very successful.
There's even a game about that very topic.
Save 50% on 7 Billion Humans on Steam
Automate swarms of office workers to solve puzzles inside your very own parallel computer made of people. A thrilling followup to the award winning Human Resource Machine. Now with more humans!
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@DogsB
I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the characterization that a software development job or other sorts of jobs not currently being automated "require above average intelligence" (IQ > 100). While they certainly require a certain mindset and baseline knowledge, it's generally in a trainable area, just a different type of training than has been the baseline for the past 20-30 years.I suspect that if you were to go back in time to the early 1900s, Henry Ford's assembly line would have been considered equally mystical. Or driving a crane instead of raising barn walls with hammer & nails & pulleys. Or operating a steam plant in a riverboat, instead of adjusting sails and manning oars.
Humans have consistently been the most versatile self-reprogramming robots for hundreds of years, and society has generally been able to adjust to changes in technology baseline, albeit not without some pain. Especially the cases TFA cited about someone at the tail end of a 30 year career being unwilling to retrain to a new way of building molds... well, duh. And there's certainly some degree to which the business converting to automation lost (or at least will now have to relearn) some knowledge about pitfalls and gotchas with mold creation, which will be built into the job of the person babysitting the 3D printer over the next interval, until something else replaces it. But in general, the current automation trend is following in the same veins as earlier technology revolutions -- improving the amount of output from the same amount of inputs (in a combination of raw materials, investment capital, and labor), and thus improving the quality of life in the medium and long term. Short term disruptions suck, and should definitely be discussed at the societal and business levels, but to just wring our hands and be "ermahgerd, 50% of the population is going to be unemployable because computers" is a biiit on the Chicken Little side of the reaction.
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@izzion That assumes that automation creates jobs at the same rate it destroys.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@topspin said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Rhywden If your job just got automated, what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
He says, in a thread about how everything is going to be automated...
Software development will always be the last job to go.
TIL everyone who isn't a software developer is an idiot.
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@Rhywden
True. And given the international nature of IT consulting as it is, there's definitely the reality of location arbitrage -- even if you assume the automated checkouts are creating jobs on net, due to the developers maintaining & developing the code for them, the technicians repairing the systems when they break and otherwise generally administering the system, etc... most of those jobs can be anywhere, and only require a small number of "local hands" guys to go out and push the buttons or swing the hammer intermittently.It's definitely easy to be "comfortable" sitting here on my perch as an IT "superstar" troubleshooter, confident that I'm employable without even really needing to move if my current job dried up. But I've also met plenty of people working barista/clerk level jobs that are fully capable of doing Tier 1 / Tier 2 technical support or other entry level "automator" jobs, once they're driven to the necessity of learning how. Is it really better for them to "trap" them in their lower paying, lower producing job so they don't get the discomfort of retraining? Is it better for society? Can I add many more questions to the end of this post without getting it Jeffed to the questions thread?
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@Rhywden said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@izzion That assumes that automation creates jobs at the same rate it destroys.
We shouldn't really expect automation to create jobs. More jobs are created by people finding new things to do. Which could certainly be enabled by automation, but don't necessarily need to be.
But I find it unlikely that the creation and destruction will be well synchronized enough to prevent a lot of disruption.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
What do y'all think would be better - UBI, or the govt directly subsidizing low level jobs? Because it looks like one of these two will eventually have to happen.
Or wages going down. It works here, automation is a rare thing, because humans are so cheap.
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@sockpuppet7 said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
What do y'all think would be better - UBI, or the govt directly subsidizing low level jobs? Because it looks like one of these two will eventually have to happen.
Or wages going down. It works here, automation is a rare thing, because humans are so cheap.
But artificially raising that cost will encourage automation.
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
But artificially raising that cost will encourage automation.
Eventually, the automation will allow people to be far more productive than they were, and to work in jobs where human creative ability is more useful instead of rote repetition. That's a good thing. The awkward bit is getting there from here will be horribly painful; it was in previous industrial revolutions, so there's no reason to suppose different this time.
Also, we don't know what exactly is going to be automated.
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@Magus said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@DogsB My take is that if it goes far enough, there will end up being businesses whose sole purpose is providing meaningless jobs for people.
Those already exist: companies that contract with local government to “help unemployed people get jobs.” In practice, this means they take in people who are on some kind of benefits, make them do totally unskilled production-type work, and perhaps give them some half-assed training in writing CVs and doing job interviews. They supposedly also look for real jobs for these people and occasionally send them on job interviews with real companies. (The
victimsparticipants, by the way, generally stay on benefits for all the time they are required to be at these companies. A common complaint is, “I could be out looking for a real job if I wasn’t required to be here.”)And they will be very successful.
Quite the opposite.
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@Zenith said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
Software development will always be the last job to go.
What's the difference between automated away and outsourced away?
That's meaningless, though. We're talking worldwide, not American.
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@Rhywden There's a Human Resource Machine sequel? TIL
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@pie_flavor American jobs are of primary concern to American workers. Jobs that go overseas are every bit as gone as jobs that are destroyed from that perspective. You can't decide to be Indian or Chinese any more than you can decide to be a robot.
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@Zenith You can't decide to be Indian but you can decide to move to India. And funnily enough we were just talking about the implications of moving.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
If it isn't worth money to you, that's your problem.
Until you and other easily-automated-job workers vote for someone who implements policies to "save your job". Then it becomes everyone's problem.
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@anonymous234 And thus everyone learns that they should have paid attention, and resolves to do so in the future. And everyone who can't learn from their mistakes finds themselves no longer in a position where their mistakes affect other people.
This sort of thing is called "the free market".
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@topspin said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@topspin said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Rhywden If your job just got automated, what kind of idiot would you have to be to go take up another easily automated job?
He says, in a thread about how everything is going to be automated...
Software development will always be the last job to go.
TIL everyone who isn't a software developer is an idiot.
Of course, if you read the front page, you learn that all software developers are idiots.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
What do y'all think would be better - UBI, or the govt directly subsidizing low level jobs? Because it looks like one of these two will eventually have to happen.
I'd lean UBI. Pushing money into keeping jobs alive that could be automated away is just dumb IMO. Not only is there a need to pay for it either way, but the latter wastes the time of people in those jobs for nothing other than keeping them artificially busy. I'd rather have a system where the basic income is covered, and people without fixed jobs can aspire for part-time/one-off tasks to raise the income slightly (as to afford more than basic necessities). But still tasks that make some resemblance of sense.
And to get back to the other discussion ... if they're not doing stupid busy-work, they at least have the time to learn something new (regardless of whether they end up doing so or not).
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@Gąska This - I have observed entire teams and departments that have no reason to exist except to exist. The bureaucracy must expand to meet the needs of a growing bureaucracy, and of course the fact that accounting only lets you hire Indians doesn't help.
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@cvi No. We must fight each other forever and the wolf must be waiting to devour the laggard.
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@pie_flavor said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
everyone learns that they should have paid attention, and resolves to do so in the future.
