[array_key_first]

They really didn't fall short. A lot of people who would've had assistants no longer do, now it's really just the executives like you said. But fairly low managers used to have them and now they don't.

Software is pretty good. It remembers everything, perfectly, forever. It will never forget to remind you of something. It can give you directions, sort your emails by how important they are, help you find shops and restaurants. The only people busy enough to warrant an actual human doing that stuff are executives. And, even then, I think for most of them it's an ego thing, not an "I need this" thing.

[oatmeal1]

> It will never forget to remind you of something.

Software isn't as faultless as you suggest. The default alarm app on my phone occasionally fails to go off (not an issue with Silent Mode or DND).

> The only people busy enough to warrant an actual human doing that stuff are executives.

Life is short. It is absolutely worthwhile to spend as little time doing trivial work if possible, and avoid decision fatigue on unimportant decisions. We are nowhere close to the usefulness of a secretary in our devices.

[array_key_first]

> Software isn't as faultless as you suggest. The default alarm app on my phone occasionally fails to go off (not an issue with Silent Mode or DND).

I'm guessing this is an iPhone, and yeah it's because that software is just bad. I've helped my Mom try to get her phone to ring, like, 12 times now and I've failed each time. And I'm a dev! So, point taken.

> Life is short. It is absolutely worthwhile to spend as little time doing trivial work if possible, and avoid decision fatigue on unimportant decisions.

Ehh, I kind of disagree. The work is the same, at best it shifts to something else. Asking for more productivity is a monkey paw. Best to just take it all in and try to enjoy the simple joys of life. Or, uh, work.

[kelnos]

I agree with you on the work shifting. Whenever someone takes some of our work burden from us, someone else just gives us more tasks to do, and we end up working for the same amount of time. Maybe the work ends up being more interesting or rewarding, though. But sometimes trivial work is a nice physical/mental break, too.

[ziml77]

Why do you guess it's an iPhone? I switched to an iPhone because my OnePlus phone failed to ring or play alarms due to a constantly crashing and restarting media indexer service (I could only tell this is what was happening from the logs).

[array_key_first]

Because all of my family members have had sound issues with iPhones. Ringer, alarms, media. Mostly software, I think. I also had an iPhone, I somewhat recently switched.

[kelnos]

> They really didn't fall short. A lot of people who would've had assistants no longer do, now it's really just the executives like you said. But fairly low managers used to have them and now they don't.

I think the reason for this is labor cost, and "good enough". I don't think a smartphone is an equivalent replacement for a dedicated assistant. The average mid-level manager who would have had an assistant 30 years ago likely (today) spends more time on "assistant-y" work than they would if they had an assistant today. It's just that now they do 30% of the work the assistant did, and their phone handles the other 60%. That kind of ratio is enough to make upper management believe that human assistants for the lower-level folks isn't worth the cost. (While they themselves of course still have human assistants.)

[butlike]

> Software is pretty good. It remembers everything, perfectly, forever.

This is not a true statement and never was. Bitrot is real