[symstym]

Did you read the whole article? I don't think it was implying anything negative about tech workers or making value judgements. I am frustrated by some of the same things you are, but I don't think they were present in the article.

To me it was saying something pragmatic like "Now that advances in technology are taking care of more and more of our material needs while requiring less labor, there is a relative need/opportunity for workers in roles requiring especially-high emotional skills and endurance". Would you disagree with that?

[infinity0]

The article is certainly more negative than you're giving it credit for. Its title makes a prediction about the future, but it spends about 3/25 paragraphs explaining why it is making that prediction (where it quotes statistics about the changing landscape of jobs).

The rest of it instead talks about the benefits of being more emotional (nobody would disagree) and complaining about why people don't seem to think it's as important as the author thinks, but without balancing it out with everything else happening in the world that people have to also think about.

This is done after framing the first paragraph in terms of Obama supporting computer science education, so it's clear that the author wants to imply a contrast or opposition to this, in the rest of the article.

There's also a fair amount of implicit bias and weasel wording dotted around the place, like:

- "But the truth is, only a tiny percentage of people will ever end up working in software engineering [..]" - "It’s also not hard to see that highly educated, mostly male [..]" - "the information revolution frees us to complement, rather than compete with, the technical competence of computers"

The first and third ones basically "beg the question" of the whole article's thesis - it's stated as an implicit assumption, it's never actually justified.

In fact, technology is also automating away a lot of human service jobs, and there's even ongoing research to replace them with robots that can "act" more emotionally. I think the development of this sort of technology shows that plenty of programmers are emotional and empathetic, and the article makes no mention of these.

So it's not infeasible that we'll see a trend (in the long run) of there being less "care workers" of the sort that the article mentions. I'm not in the business of making predictions though, I don't think I know enough - unlike this article which is too falsely confident of itself.

Nobody disputes that it would be good, if all jobs were done by people that were more emotionally sensitive; however you could say the same thing about technical topics, like knowing how your new laptop or phone actually works.

Finally, my own experience of this topic has been that, without exception, complaints about the supposed lack of emotion in programmers or in industry or whatever, has been from people with personal grudges to hold against particular programmers or particular aspects of more analytical behaviour, and who also implicitly think they are "superior" emotionally.

[resu_nimda]

I think you're being overly reactive here. The article really had nothing to do with what you're talking about (though I understand that sentiment exists). It did make a general class-based argument about "emotional IQ," but none of that was directed specifically at analytic programmer types.

The reason that programming was mentioned was to illustrate how our culture is currently very focused on knowledge work (programming for everyone!), so they could make the counter-point that another type of work is currently undervalued. You may agree or disagree with that, but it is a huge stretch to take the whole thing as a slight against analytic/less emotional types.

[pron]

I find it ironic that your reaction to the article proves the point you imagine it makes, but that it doesn't actually make. The way I understood the sentences you point out (and I am pretty certain that my reading matches the author's intention) is that certain things are put in opposition to technical subjects merely because this is where power is currently overwhelmingly concentrated. When you write about the importance of dry land in islands in the Pacific ocean, it is not to imply that the water is bad in any way, but to contrast it with the obvious overwhelming predominance of water in the ocean.

[infinity0]

To use your analogy, the article's title is "The key to jobs in the future is not water but land." It spends very little time arguing this. Instead, it assumes it, and rather argues why land is useful, with some random remarks throw in about how the land is green and the water is blue.

I don't think it's an over-reaction to understand that they are implying that the water is unimportant, and also implying that the water won't help to fulfill the same needs that the land might fulfill.

And here, I think your analogy is biased in favour of the article; there's no reason why analytical skills can't help us improve services that require a lot of emotional empathy; they are not as separate as "land" vs "water.

And if you're talking about irony, what I find ironic is an article that places such importance on emotional empathy is happy to use a divisive title like "The future is not X but Y". Obviously the people that personally hold greater weight for X are going to be annoyed. And they didn't even do a good job of explaining why they think it!

[pron]

> To use your analogy, the article's title is "The key to jobs in the future is not water but land."

No, it isn't.

> I don't think it's an over-reaction to understand that they are implying that the water is unimportant,

Not only do they not say that, I seriously doubt they think that.

> and also implying that the water won't help to fulfill the same needs that the land might fulfill.

Well, that's a matter of opinion and you're welcome to disagree with the article, but I think that there are many important jobs that software can't do well. I certainly don't think that it's obvious that software will do all those things well any time soon.

> there's no reason why analytical skills can't help us improve services that require a lot of emotional empathy

Maybe, but the article says no such thing.

> they are not as separate as "land" vs "water.

At this point they are.

> what I find ironic is an article that places such importance on emotional empathy is happy to use a divisive title like "The future is not X but Y

What I find ironic is that this is not the title at all.

> Obviously the people that personally hold greater weight for X are going to be annoyed.

Why? That's not the title nor explicitly or implicitly said in the article at any point. What annoys me is that not only are you now in the position having far more power, but are annoyed at the claim that others may have some power as well, insisting that your power dominates theirs and balking at the idea that it may not.

[hosh]

> there's no reason why analytical skills can't help us improve services that require a lot of emotional empathy

While I agree with that to a certain extent (example, the work Microsoft is doing in collaboration with Dr. Eckman's work on microexpressions to read emotional cues from facial expressions), there is a certain part in mindful, loving-kindness that I doubt could be replicated by automation. (Or rather, if there were a way, it would involve a kind of self-serve ... where the user is lead through an experience that generates self-compassion).

I say this as someone who has spent much of my 20s and early 30s heavily analytical, then went through some extreme, transformative experiences. These transformative experiences got me in awareness of emotions in a way that was difficult for my intellect to fool me into thinking otherwise. There was a world of experience that made much more sense.

You're mistaken in thinking that emotional empathy means that such people will not be divisive. The most compassionate can stay centered even in face of extreme divisiveness -- being centered in midst of extreme emotions is why they _can_ be compassionate -- and as such, can often be the voice of uncomfortable, deep, soul-shaking truths. Or better, to bear silent witness for the uncomfortable truths as it works its way out into the open.

The kind of "emotional labor" this article talks about involves bearing a lot of pain and suffering, above and beyond the physical labor. These pain are often pain that, others are not witnessing or mindful themselves. The traditional archetype of heroism is exactly the wrong archetype that bears these pain: the traditional hero who bears pain fools himself into thinking he still retains control over when and how that pain expresses itself. Life, though, brings pain all on its own. No one can control it. Absorbing, deflecting, and armoring against pain does not develop empathy. There is no fooling yourself that you can control when and how it happens, and that unpredictability and lack of control makes it much more difficult to experience. A traditional hero eventually breaks under these conditions. Our society currently materially rewards these heroes, even though they are not suited for dealing with pain and suffering.

When we cross a threshold with automation, I think we will no longer have much left to keep the existential anguish at bay. And that's when people who have been quietly working with these difficult emotions will help keep things from flying apart.