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So You Automated Your Coworkers Out of a Job (gizmodo.com)
merbs writes: Automation is too often presented as a faceless, monolithic phenomenon -- but it's a human finger that ultimately pulls the trigger. Someone has to initiate the process that automates a task or mechanizes a production line. To write or procure the program that makes a department or a job redundant. And that's not always an executive, or upper-, or even middle management -- in fact, it's very often not. Sometimes it's a junior employee, or a developer, even an intern.
In a series of interviews with coders, technicians, and engineers who've automated their colleagues out of work -- or, in one case, been put in a position where they'd have to do so and decided to quit instead -- I've attempted to produce a snapshot of life on the messy front lines of modern automation. (Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the automators.) We've heard plenty of forecasting about the many jobs slated to be erased, and we've seen the impacts on the communities that have lost livelihoods at the hands of automation, but we haven't had many close up looks at how all this unfolds in the office or the factory floor.
In a series of interviews with coders, technicians, and engineers who've automated their colleagues out of work -- or, in one case, been put in a position where they'd have to do so and decided to quit instead -- I've attempted to produce a snapshot of life on the messy front lines of modern automation. (Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the automators.) We've heard plenty of forecasting about the many jobs slated to be erased, and we've seen the impacts on the communities that have lost livelihoods at the hands of automation, but we haven't had many close up looks at how all this unfolds in the office or the factory floor.
"The ones losing their job due to automation are dumb people, factory workers, people pushing shelves. They truly desrve it."
Big myth, the people losing their jobs are tech workers and most of them automate themselves and their co-workers out of the job.
I disagree with who they disparaged, but I also disagree with you too.
I have been doing process automation for 24 years now and no one has ever lost their job because of my work. That was because they were smart enough to not be tied to dead end monotonous jobs and when I presented them with the ability to do a tedious job faster (or not to have to do it manually at all) they used that extra time to perform other tasks.
There is simply always more that needs to be done and automation frees us to work on other things. If someone isn't willing to invest in themselves to learn new skills and find new things to do to stay relevant, it's not the fault of the automation if they lose their job.