Slashdot Mirror
Outsourced Tech Jobs Are Increasingly Being Automated
Jason Koebler writes Yahoo announced [Tuesday] it would be laying off at least 400 workers in its Indian office, and back in February, IBM cut roughly 2,000 jobs there. Meanwhile, tech companies are beginning to see that many of the jobs it has outsourced can be automated, instead. Labor in India and China is still cheaper than it is in the United States, but it's not the obvious economic move that it was just a few years ago: "The labor costs are becoming significant enough in China and India that there are very real discussions about automating jobs there now," Mark Muro, an economist at Brookings, said. "Companies are seeing that automated replacements are getting to be 'good enough.'"
The monitoring software where my buddy works has gotten good enough they don't need teams of analysts to watch over things anymore. Most of the problems I see are caused by cutting corners in programming because there's not computer power. As computer power gets cheaper and cheaper that all goes away, and those tech jobs go with them.
In the 80s Computers and automation were suppose to free us for a 20 hour work week. Now we're pushing 50-60 hour work weeks because the only thing it's done is increase competition for the few jobs left. Productivity America's up something like 80% but real wages are way don. I'm not quite ready to become a Luddite yet but I'd like to see some of this increased productivity show up in my pay. But law of supply and demand says the more work I can get down the less it's worth.
Heck, I'll just come out and say it: Can I has socialism?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Read the articles, both Yahoo and IBM cuts sound like downsizing rather than automation.
I hope the "automation" they're talking about in other parts of the article doesn't really mean "Do-It-Yourself". For example, grocery store self-checkout lines are essentially using my labor (at my labor rate) as an inefficient checkout clerk. I don't want to be a checkout clerk, and would gladly pay for a few minutes of a clerk's time if it gets me through the line a couple of minutes faster.
This interesting mini-documentary by CGP Grey is totally relevant: Humans Need Not Apply.
It's inflation. Based on a simple inflation calculator I found on DuckDuckGo (usinflationcalculator.com), a $100k salary in 1980 would be the equivalent of making about $288,655.34 in 2014. Technology didn't cause the purchasing power of a dollar to collapse nearly 66% over the last 34 years. Federal reserve and congressional policy are the direct culprits. You don't have to be "anti-government" to pin much of this squarely on the federal government and Federal Reserve.
Between inflationary policies and allowing nearly unrestricted (even incentivizing by tax law) exploitation of arbitrage, we've see various government policies annihilate all of the savings and benies that technology would have brought to our economy. Now add on top of that the fact that we have a policy of heavy immigration which, when seen through the lens of the law of supply and demand, is essentially another assault on domestic wages (hint: adding millions of immigrants increases the domestic labor pool, which means that yes kids, wage competition will only increase).
Instead of Socialism, I would suggest reading up on Distributism. It is essentially Capitalism reforged through Catholic social teaching, so among many things it is free market-centric, but strongly pro-labor and pro entrepreneur.
Article is weak because it generalizes Yahoo's experience to all tech companies. Yahoo is in crash-and-burn mode, trying anything to survive. Apple hasn't changed its business practices. Microsoft just opened a Canadian center to exploit cheap labor. I don't see a trend. IBM is in crash-and-burn mode, too, so you can't use them to back up Yahoo's experience.
Article is also weak because it conflates technical support, software development, and hardware manufacturing. The author doesn't seem to know what he is talking about, even suggesting robot automation can take over tech support. Confusing.
To a certain extent, yes. However some functions cannot or should not be fully automated. There are reasons why we still have human beings flying planes. I am an ex-IT guy as I drive an 18 wheeler now. You hear about automation attempts at self driving cars and trucks but a self driving 80,000 pound semi going 65 mph is not a good idea. Driving a truck requires many, sometimes split second decisions and requires processing multiple events happening at once. An 80,000 pound semi is absolutely lethal if the driver loses control and is unable to regain control. Imagine a software or hardware glitch on an 80k semi carrying hazardous material .... you have a scenario likely to kill, maim, or effect thousands of people. Automation can and should be more of an assist rather than a takeover. I could see automation for trucks enforcing safe speeds, following distances, warnings, etc. Even Airbus and Boeing recognize that only so much can and should be done automated.
I have little doubt that computers will be able to drive big-rig trucks not too far into the future. All of the examples you gave sounds like it would be better handled by a capable computer. Split second? How about sub-millisecond? Multiple events happening at once? Humans are notoriously bad at doing that. Hardware glitch? Like sleep deprivation?
Ever see that Volvo ad of two semi's going in reverse at 40+MPH and staying within 3 feet of each other? Do you think people could do that?
Of course, we aren't there yet. It will happen though, and highway safety will improve.
I have no doubt we will....not too long after I predict we will have the great war against the masses and we shall then see what kind of society (if any) we have when its over.
The singularity is coming folks, those in power know this which is why there is such a large fascist shift in such a short period as the hoarders will try to keep their place at the top of the food chain at ALL costs including millions of human lives. What is a singularity? It is a moment in time which radically and forever changes society and our world, for previous examples see the printing press,steam engine, automobile, airplane. Once these technologies were introduced to the world the way of life planet wide was affected, reading went from an activity only for the elite to expected of all, the steam engine allowed a ship to travel across the ocean on set schedules instead of at the mercy of the currents and allowed factories to increase their output by quadruple or more overnight, and of course the airplane changed everything from freight to warfare in the blink of an eye history wise.
But for the first time in history we are reaching a point where the poor are no longer required for society to move forward because the machines will be able to do all the tasks from the picking of the food to the delivery to the consumer. Its the dark truth of John Henry which was NOT man beating the machine, but the fundamental truth that a man can work until he drops dead from exhaustion and the machine will keep on going, never getting tired, and more importantly for the elite never asking for pay. The end game of capitalism is that one shall own all and the rest shall have none and we are already a LONG way toward this goal, with the top 86 families getting nearly 90% of every dime created.....so what happens when they have reached 100% and you are no longer required?
And THAT will be the question which I truly believe will be at the core of World War III, because we can already see what the elite want to happen based upon their radical shift towards fascism and open and very blatant attacks upon the poor and whats left of the middle class, and that is an iron boot followed by slow death by starvation. It should be obvious to all by now that ultimately capitalism by its very design MUST die, because a world where 86 families control 90% of the capital while labor is replaced by machines means the very core of capitalism, trading one's physical or mental labor for capital, will soon no longer have even the pretense of functionality. Education WILL NOT SAVE YOU as the world simply won't need a billion engineers and rocket scientists, a handful of think tanks owned by the elite shall do.
What this next singularity will decide is which future the human race shall face, a Star Trek "socialism for all" where the majority have everything given to them without any labor required (because again their labor will be worthless as the robot will do it better/faster/cheaper) or the world of Soylent Green, where a handful of elite live like gods while the masses live in hell holes and slowly starve and any attempt to change this results in the iron boot upon your neck. I would say its obvious which way the majority of the %1 want it which is the latter, and this is why I fully expect to see WW III in my lifetime.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.