[Myrddin]

Most of them are coming for a free ride on the taxpayer. They are unskilled, uneducated and many are in poor health. The big farms are happy to just automate to reduce the need for the unskilled labor. Robots that can perform shelf inventory have been tried at retail stores with some success. Floor cleaning at Fred Meyer is done by an autonomous robot. It was down for a couple weeks and two employees were sweeping/mopping floors. The robot was back last night and the employees were not.

In my world, co-workers all have degrees in math/physics/chemistry/software from BA to PhD. As a working group, we are aging. The young guys are in their 40s. The upper end is under 75. We're not seeing a reasonable number of qualified applicants to hire and learn the details of systems we have been supporting since the early 80s. A fair bit of corporate memory is going to retire/die before it can be passed along.

[T.B. Yoits]

In my world, co-workers all have degrees in math/physics/chemistry/software from BA to PhD. As a working group, we are aging. The young guys are in their 40s. The upper end is under 75. We're not seeing a reasonable number of qualified applicants to hire and learn the details of systems we have been supporting since the early 80s. A fair bit of corporate memory is going to retire/die before it can be passed along.

I'm witnessing firsthand the regression in IT from the late 1990s/2000s. Things that were common knowledge are now unknown to supposed "experts". It's about compensation; companies want something but don't want to pay for it and think a system is self-maintaining.