This is a good thing. I help companies reduce the administrative tasks in complex processes. What took 8 full time people to do, we do with a part-time person.
The typical thinking about automation is: there will be no human burger-flippers.
In reality, a lot of very high-level jobs are going to disappear. This is going to really be a problem because a lot of people (low skilled trouble-makers as well as bitter people with graduate degrees) are going to find that the world simply has no need for them.
The classic response is: “We will invent new jobs; we always do.” This response leaves me cold. There are no guarantees. There is no logical reason to think that we will suddenly develop a brand-new industry. And NO we cannot all be robot repairmen. It seems pretty damn obvious to me that robots are going to be repairing the robots.
Are they talking about the decision makers or the guys on the floor who wore funny colored jackets and flashed what looked like gang signs to each other and then wrote down the trades on paper? The second seemed archaic in the 1970s.
600 jobs to 202
that’s fine
Yep, one company I went to and reworked part of the main application they were selling. When I got there 3 people were full time doing “tech support” and one doing training (which they made money on). After a little straightening out the code, getting rid of bugs, and UI rationalization, it was one person part time on tech support, and three making money doing training (and selling while training).
Better for the company, better for the customers. Bad for their competitors.
Milton Friedman Shovels vs. Spoons Story
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
I hope their new techies are better than the one I have seen. I smell a big loss coming.
On a different note— if we automate everything, who’s going to buy the things that are made. Automation is not just for goods and low level services. Is your work safe? I bet these traders though so.
Forget all the hubbub about "Fake News." We might wake up one day soon and realize that our 401Ks, IRAs, and retirement savings was Fake Money. There are deep, deep flaws in our financial systems, the global economy, and the markets. A match lit to the derivative bomb alone could blow it all sky high.
The ones with HB1 visas can always get a job at Starbucks.
No surprise. Any menial or physical job that can be replaced by a robot will be replaced over time. People will need to adapt.
At some point, a smart human will game the machines by acting non-human.