[antonvs]

I see this attitude all the time while people are being automated out of their jobs. Those people end up getting laid off anyway, and then wondering why jobs for their skillset don't pay as much as they used to.

Resisting automation doesn't help, because if you don't do it, someone else eventually will.

If you're in a job that's at risk of being automated in the near term, you're much better off learning how to automate it and switching to being one of the automators, than continuing doing something that's all but proven to be something machines can do. People capable of automating jobs out of existence are in high demand, for obvious reasons.

If you're not capable of becoming an automator, that's more of a problem. In that case you probably need a strategy for moving into a different kind of job, that's less threatened.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

It's not always that straightforward. I automated my job once, as a junior dev. My "job" (if you can call it that) was copying a web app's configuration off an Excel file, pasting it into a text file, converting it into XML by hand, feeding it into a program that converted it to SQL and finally running the SQL to create a database. Normally, I'd then have to tear it down again and start all over- because hand-crafted XML.

Obviously I got pretty annoyed at doing all this and wrote a bit of code to automate it. This cut down the time I needed to setup a project from a day and a half to ~30 minutes. The result? Nothing. The company did not adopt my project into its workflow. Instead, a more senior dev who heard about it started a project of his own, to do what mine did but online, so our clients could access it and configure their sites without sending us that miserable Excel file. So instead of benefiting me, my automation work almost ended up benefiting someone else (the senior dev's project was shot down in flames a few months later when it failed to deliver).

Morale of the story: you may think that this is a fair world where engineering talent is rewarded, but the truth is that most companies are not run by engineers and decisions are made by people who don't care one jot whether your everyday work is mind-numbingly boring drudgery.

[echelon]

> you may think that this is a fair world where engineering talent is rewarded, but the truth is that most companies are not run by engineers and decisions are made by people who don't care

Perhaps you should find a new place to work. There are engineering firms that value talent and capability. While it's still important to be aware of business needs and deadlines, that doesn't mean you can't have a solid engineering culture coupled to the business vision.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Perhaps you should find a new place to work.

Oh, that's a few years now. I definitely did find a new place and the culture in that next place was fantastic :)

It's just that not all teams I worked with encouraged, or even recognised, time-saving automation. Some did, some didn't- it was a mixed bag. Maybe I'm wrong to say that "most" didn't. If I think about it, out of five teams in six years, two clearly didn't care, two definitely cared a lot, one I don't know.

I think the difference in culture had something to do with the way hierarchy worked in different companies. It just happened that in every one of those jobs I was the most junior member of the team (in the last one because despite having some experience, I worked with mainframe engineers with 30+ years on me :). But, some places appreciated the fact that I did my best to keep up and pull my weight, while others- it just didn't make any difference. I was the least experienced so I was expected to trudge through endless tedious until I had tenure (by which time I was expected to delegate all the tedious to contractors or juniors, I bet).

The effect was that in the teams that encouraged putting in the extra bit, everyone did. In the other teams, not so much.

[mark_edward]

You say it like there's something to do, but in your formulation it's actually a lose-lose situation. Either you automate and get fucked, or someone else does and you get fucked anyway. Either way you have to try and find a different job, which isn't free, costless, or painless.

Yes, automation creates better global productivity, but it also creates concentrated harms that are almost never redressed. Similar problem as outsourcing/free trade.

[dagw]

Either way you have to try and find a different job, which isn't free, costless, or painless.

The guy who wrote the code to automate away his job is going to have a lot easier time finding a new job than the guy who had no idea that it was even possible to automate that job and got completely blindsided. In fact any sane company will keep the guy who did the automation and have him apply his skills to automating away other departments.

[antonvs]

> Yes, automation creates better global productivity, but it also creates concentrated harms that are almost never redressed.

That's true for people who aren't capable of automating things. They're left with skills that are more efficiently performed by machines, and so their prospects are poor if they don't have other skills.

But you raised the case of someone capable of automating their job, who refuses to do so because of the fear of losing their job. That's a very different situation, because someone capable of automating their job has exactly the kind of skills that are currently in high demand, and can't easily be automated, if at all. Why wouldn't you take advantage of that?

> Either you automate and get fucked

The idea that "if I automate my job, I'll get fired" is a simplistic scenario, that hardly ever plays out like that. The people who get fired are much more likely to be the ones who aren't amenable to automation, who just want to keep doing things the same old way. Those people tend to be worse than useless to a business trying to automate, because they obstruct instead of helping.

> or someone else does and you get fucked anyway.

In my experience, the ones that "get fucked" are those who are either not capable or not willing to get involved in automation. I've worked on the other side of this equation for most of my career: I automate stuff. That's what software developers do. I also talk to management about how best to use the people whose jobs are affected. In these situations, the people who are most open to change, and willing to help effect it, are the most useful, and the least likely to lose their jobs.

Besides, someone capable of automating their job probably shouldn't be in that rote job in the first place, and what you call "getting fucked" is more like a hint from life that they should be doing something more economically valuable.

Luckily, someone like that has that more valuable work right in front of them. Being able to automate things is a skill that not everyone has, and that's very valuable to employers. That's the entire reason that good software developers get paid as much as they do. Actually getting demonstrable experience in automating job functions is much more valuable than taking a course and trying to switch into that kind of role without experience at it.

Helping with automation puts you in a strong position - you're proving that you can help improve the efficiency of the business. Automation produces new opportunities to be more productive - e.g. producing more, or handling more customers, without increasing staff to match. Work is not so much eliminated, as changed. Again, the people who lose in this process are the people who resist change. The people involved in automation are well-positioned to understand the change and spot new opportunities, and again, this is valuable to the business.

> Either way you have to try and find a different job, which isn't free, costless, or painless.

Having to find a new job is not a foregone conclusion by any means, for the kinds of reasons I've described, as well as because total automation of a job typically isn't achieved quickly.

But even if you do end up losing your job, you now have skills that are multiple times more valuable than what you were originally doing before automation.

In any case, you really shouldn't think of having to switch jobs as "getting fucked." The general advice these days is to switch jobs every few years, if you want to maximize your salary, because companies don't tend to give raises that match the industry rate, particularly in tech jobs.

If you're in a rote job that's amenable to automation, you should be looking for ways to improve that situation anyway. Even if your current job is safe for a while, if other jobs like yours are being automated, salaries for those jobs are going to start dropping. You'd be in a sinking ship and not doing anything about it.

I'm reminded of a quote from "Ghost in the Shell": "Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."

[EGreg]

Here is a silly question

Why will everyone need jobs if so much stuff is automated? Why not just give out free money?

[NoGravitas]

Technically, no one will need jobs.

However, our society rations resources, including resources that are needed for living, and including resources that are not actually scarce, on the basis of money, which can be returned based on capital or labor. Most people have no capital, so are forced to sell their labor. As work is automated, the return on capital increases, but the return on labor decreases (because more people are competing for a decreasing amount of paying labor).

Capital-holders wanting to preserve the existing system (if they are reasonably foresighted) are promoting the idea of a universal basic income. But the equitable long-term solution to this imbalance is Fully Automated Luxury (Gay Space) Communism.

[placebo]

I don't think it's a silly question, but I think free money basically means dismissing the money system altogether. That would work in an ideal world with ideal people but we are not that far out of the jungle yet (and I'm not referring to intelligence levels but to qualities that didn't evolve as fast as our intelligence). So, while you're right in principle, in practice there will probably still be a lot of injustice and suffering to go around long after everything is automated. Having said that, I still think it's a step in the right direction to reduce the ills of society.

[dragonwriter]

> Why will everyone need jobs if so much stuff is automated?

In a system with property rights of the type found in capitalism, you need income from capital or labor to survive, basically. Unless the distribution of capital is levelled (and some force is exerted to keep it levelled), that means most people will rely on labor because they have no other choice.

[king07828]

Instead, why not transition from a labor based system of resource acquisition for the masses to an investor based system of resource acquisition for the masses?

Assuming that the labor economy is dying, then all laborers (truck drivers and code writers) need to figure out how to transition from generating livable income with their labor to generating livable income from their investments.

Difficult? Yes. But is it any more difficult than attempting to acquire sufficient resources to live using obsolete labor skills?

[dragonwriter]

> Instead, why not transition from a labor based system of resource acquisition for the masses to an investor based system of resource acquisition for the masses?

Because that means the existing capitalist class has to be forcefully deprived of much of their capital so that it can be redistributed, and a system needs to be set up to prevent it being from be reconcentrated.

The existing capitalist class, which holds disproportionate power, largely opposes this for obvious reasons.

[king07828]

Agreed that top-down solutions will likely be opposed by those who are already at the top.

And this is exactly the reason why the comment was posted. I.e., the debate about how to help laborers transition to different types of labor may not be the correct debate because it only pushes out the problem to the next technological revolution, which will likely come even faster. Improving technology reduces the need for labor while at the same time it increases opportunities for investment. Hence, perhaps the debate should focus on transitioning from a labor based society to an investor based society.

[cloverich]

> The existing capitalist class, which holds disproportionate power, largely opposes this for obvious reasons.

Counter-point -- if the situation really _is_ such that the vast majority of the population enters into a situation where they require capital that only a minority have, then its inevitable that some form of wealth sharing would develop in any non-dictatorial society. In other words, I argue that such a transition could happen in a relatively peaceful, progressive way. _If_ it really needed to.

[ben_w]

You have to collect the money from somewhere (printing it counts as “from savings accounts”), and the people you collect it from have, historically, tended to resist this any way they can.

I’m not saying this problem can’t be solved — I rather hope it can — but that’s why it is still an open problem.

[EGreg]

How about printing community currency?

[ben_w]

I doubt it would make any difference, but I am unfamiliar with the phrase. Why would a community currency be different from a national currency?

[vbezhenar]

Silly question. Why give out free money when you can starve them to death? I've heard that average American dumps lots of food into trash. I've heard that a lot of children in Africa are starving to death. Yet I don't see some real efforts to solve starvation problem, even if it's obvious that humanity technically is able to feed everyone on this planet. Yet we spend those resources on military stuff and other stupid things.

I don't really see free money working, at least because people are selfish and won't agree to pay their money to someone else.

[cloverich]

> I've heard that average American dumps lots of food into trash. I've heard that a lot of children in Africa are starving to death. Yet I don't see some real efforts to solve starvation problem

There is a lot of effort put towards solving starvation and other forms of poverty around the world, and staggering progress made on that front. But its not nearly as simple as sending food that was destined for the trash to another country is it? There's logistics and when crossing state boundaries, politics as well. If you try to merely send food -- or _any_ form of wealth to a less wealthy country, it won't always have the immediate effect of making people's lives better.

[MaxBarraclough]

It's a question of future economic systems, and "just give out free money" isn't much of an answer.

[Tech-Noir]

Why bother with money at all?

[kofejnik]

You might be interested in: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/