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.

Comments

any job that can be automated

[pezpunk]

should be.

Re:any job that can be automated

[Austerity Empowers]

Any job that can be automated will be . End of discussion.

Re:any job that can be automated

[DarkOx]

^^THIS^^ its the fundamental problem with the 'you are a collaborator' in the labor vs capital argument. If *I* don't do it management will find someone who will (and probably with little difficulty). There is not resisting this from the front lines anyway.

There really is no resisting this from the political lines either. One way or another is going to happen because even if we outlawed certain types of automation or chose to forbid certain industries from automating, some other nation would choose not to do so and our industry would simply get wiped out.

There is no choosing people over productivity. If you don't chose productivity you get no products and the people suffer anyway. We must find solutions that allow people to retain their value by moving into new roles.

A new way to get an employee to quit?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> been put in a position where they'd have to (automated their colleagues out of work) and decided to quit instead

I wonder if this would work on a overly righteous but inept employee. Hmmmm.

>> To write or procure the program that makes a department or a job redundant.

I don't know about you, but automating work that people manually previously had to perform is one of the main reasons I enjoy what I do.

Evolution

[chrpai]

I've spent a career automating processes. My first such innovation came in my first year and I remember having these feelings when I realized the consequences of my proposal. I spoke to my manager and she said it was our duty to make things more efficient for our customer and that if we didn't someone else would. There is always someone paying the bill whether it's customers, shareholders, private investors or tax payers or maybe in a more abstract way the environment. We always have an obligation to use those resources wisely. In the end these people will retrain and do something else as evidenced by our current unemployment rate.

Things are about to get interesting

[CastrTroy]

Things are about to get pretty interesting in this respect. For the last century we've been focusing on automating physical labour and we've made a lot of headway, but automating data oriented tasks has been kind of ignored. Sure we've introduced computers into the workplace, but we haven't done a lot of work to make sure we are using them efficiently.

I've seen countless organizations who had 2 systems that didn't communicate with one another so they just employed a bunch of people to copy and paste data between them, and never thought of whether it could be done better and/or cheaper if they just did a little bit of programming to glue the systems together.

Very few companies realize how much time they are wasting when they don't have a good system that is tailored to their needs. There are so many companies working in an Outlook + Excel + Word culture where they don't have any real processes, nobody knows what anybody else is doing, and they aren't really taking full advantage of the computers sitting on their desks.

Good employees are gold

[grasshoppa]

I know we're all supposed to fear automation, but the fact of the matter is humans respond best to other humans; there will always be work for people to do.

On that note; if I have a good employee, and I write some code that deprives them of anything with which to pay them for, a few things are happening, and will happen:

1) I was grossly underutilizing the good employee to begin with
2) I will find something else for this good employee to do.

Good employees are like gold; you never throw one away, or waste them in such a manner that they'll go looking for someone to better appreciate them. I realize a lot of managers don't grasp this concept, but enough do that good employees will find one if they keep looking.

Mind you; if I automate someone out of a job, and that's all they're capable of doing, they aren't a good employee. At best, mediocre, but probably lower than that. My payroll is more important to me than their want to waste my money.

The other way is sad too

[Anonymous Coward]

The other way is sad too. Having employees do busy work that could easily be automated is kind of soul-crushing in its own way. It's like watching someone dig a tunnel with a spoon when you're standing next to them with a shovel.

It's sad to see someone lose their job, especially if they haven't built skills to get their next job. But we would never go the other direction and purposely remove automation and modern tools from people so that we could hire additional folks. The fact that we never choose to go backwards means that we should be wary of being too critical of moving forward.

Re:The other way is sad too

[turp182]

When considering IT efforts I like to ask people: "What do you do that makes you feel like a robot?" and/or "What sucks the most?"

That's where efforts should mostly be focused when not purely focused on revenue generation.

There is no shortage of answers to these questions, in any organization.

Involve workers to increase productivity, wages

[raymorris]

Multiple times I've automated much of the work that a person or department has been doing. In each case, it made the workers more valuable.

I talked to workers and watched them work. Together we looked at what tasks they spent a lot of time on, tasks that could be automated to help them achieve department goals more efficiently, while removing human error from that task. We talked about what their workflow would be after the automation and what additional value they could add after they didn't have to spend time in $menialtask.

Being part of the planning, they were able to think about how they could more effectively accomplish department and organization goals when they were freed up from the time-consuming task we were automating. There are ALWAYS more things the company or department wants to do, worthwhile things for people to work on, that they don't currently have time to do (unless perhaps the company is headed for bankruptcy).

The people I "automated away" didn't sit there and say "well now that I don't have to copy/paste from system A to system B, I'm useless". They said "now that I don't have to copy/paste from system A to system B, I can do these other important things to move the organization forward".

Re:That's right.

[Sarten-X]

Rely on the retraining fairy tale?

Yep.

For one, everyone cannot be retrained for a marketable profession. And who knows what will be marketable by the time they're done. And...

And those are all strawman arguments.

Automation doesn't happen overnight. If I automate a production process, it's just one small part of the industry. There are still jobs available for the displaced workers on other lines production lines or in other departments. As an example, they might not be holding the meter, but they would be reading the test report. In the time it takes to automate a whole industry, the oldest workers usually retire, the mid-career ones head toward management, and the youngest (who started their career when automation was starting) are easily able to move, because they're grown alongside the new automated processes.

It's a common fallacy to think that someone like me (occasionally an automation specialist) will come into a factory in the morning, and put a thousand people out of work by evening. The reality is it takes about 20-30 years to fully automate an industry. Automation just shows such promise that most industries (even those that were reluctant in the 1980s) are about halfway down that road now, so people look around and see automation everywhere, and get worried, even though the unemployment rate has actually dropped, and workforce size has stayed relatively flat.

Now, I'm not saying automation isn't disruptive, and in the short term and small scale it can indeed be devastating to a local economy, but at a national scale it isn't going to lead to any major economic collapse.

What do you do with the people out of work?

[rsilvergun]

I keep hearing that the only solution is to come up with new jobs for them, but there doesn't seem to be much of anything. When I was a kid it was coding and then the H1-Bs and outsourcing took those jobs. Then it was biotech, but those jobs never really materialized in mass (and you need a 4-6 year degree to get them).

I keep saying this on Automation threads, but there was close to 80 years of strife and unemployment following the industrial revolution before WWI & II came alone (the largest government backed guaranteed jobs programs in history, which I could take the credit for that observation but it was Rob Reich who made it). We blew up most of Europe & Asia and killed tens of millions of working age males. The 20th century equivalent of Aztec sacrifice to cull the population.

Are we gonna do that gain? If not what are we doing to do with all these people? Look at the American Indian reservations before the Casinos if you want to see what life is like for people who aren't needed by anyone. Do we want large masses living like that? If not do we have a solution besides "Wait 80 years for a technological revolution to employ everyone"?

Well, Great employees are gold

[rsilvergun]

folks who can do cryptography, AI math, complex mechanical and electrical engineering, etc.

The key here is these are highly skilled and creative people. They're not just workers, they're creators. When you've got people literally making new things for your business yeah, they're gonna be worth while.

This is not to say you can't make money off good employees. But you're going to run into margins at some point. Like the classic pizza example of economics. That first slice is great, and second might even be better, by the third you're pretty much done and you're probably not gonna make it to the crust on #4. Diminishing returns.

The key here is your good employees are "doers". They aren't making new things for you and opening up new markets, they're just servicing the existing markets.

Most of us are "Doers". Some of them are even very, very good at it. But there just aren't that many "creators". Especially in STEM fields. If there were we'd already have flying electric cars and no disease. You're expectations are too high, which sadly is pretty common among small business employers. You want the world, but you don't want to have to pay for it.

Re:Must be tough for prospective parents

[ichimunki]

If all the jobs are automated, and no one has any jobs, who will buy the stuff the machines produce?

Luddite didn't start out as an insult

[rsilvergun]

it was a movement started by textile workers put out of work by automation. Their aversion to industry was because they didn't get anything out of it except unemployment.

What new jobs? Be specific? How will anyone buy the things those new jobs product if they don't have money from jobs now? It doesn't take much to get humans to stop progressing. Remember the Dark Ages? 1200 years of no progress and abject poverty for 99% of the population.

It won't be apocalyptic. The world isn't coming to an end. But we're going to have anywhere from 50-100 years of mass unemployment, poverty, social strife and war. This is exactly what happened the last time we had a major industrial revolution. Eventually new tech caught up and employed people, but in the meantime folks suffered. We have history. We know this happened and we know it's happening now. Why not do something about it?

Put another way: When in your life has the solution to a complex problem (mass technology unemployment) been to ignore it and hope for the best (laissez faire)? Because right now that's all I see us doing.