Are jobs obsolete?

Turgon

phoeneous wrote: »

I think I miscommunicated my point, which is, the inevitable is bound to happen but until it does I'm trying to stay positive. In the end, arent all of us screwed anyways? Who in IT is even safe anymore?

I might as well kiss my experience and education bye bye and do something that a machine cant do like daycare manager, marriage counselor, divorce lawyer, florist, underwater basket weaver...

We are not all screwed. Move with the times, but that doesn't mean chasing technology, a mistake far too many people make. Keep up with trends, invest time in technical work that maintains your employability but crucially get your head out of certification books once in while. Look at the directions the industry is taking and head there in terms of jobs and roles that are in demand.

Turgon

Devilsbane wrote: »

Deploying machines and testing are about the only thing that couldn't be automated. A single non techy person could be responsible for delivering hardware. Really not too much training needed for that. Insert cord into socket. If it doesn't fit, try another.

Testing could be done by a few people in IT, or even move the burden to the users.

IT comes down to 3 resources: People, Process, and Infrastructure. When something breaks, one of these pieces is usually responsible. Processes are continually improved, usually with the goal of increasing automation and thus productivity. Infrastructure is upgraded to increase performance, or reduce cost. And of course it takes people to run all of this.

I'm not saying that companies will never need to have somebody in the kitchen. But with a growing tech savvy population and advancements in technology, IT departments could easily see their funding routed from payroll to other resources.

I think this is still years away, and the only thing saving us is that systems break frequently. And when they do, people are about all you can rely on.

Deploying machines...well I guess you need someone to install a box in a rack but with a lot of virtualisation on offer increasingly the racks are just sitting there floodwired waiting to be used. As the technology gets mature you can do more with less anyway. An on demand script can offer what a customer needs in terms of configuration and the technology is getting better.

Virtual data centres will be used more in the future and the vendors are right behind it. Attending a Vendor HQ recently I sat through the presentation of the latest DC provisioning offerings and I could just see the jobs disappearing with each slide..

Testing is increasingly scripted and automated. Of the 3 resources people, process and infrastructure I see process and infrastructure leveraged a lot to get the people headcount down, particularly in the technical areas. Making that happen has created a lot of managers who attend a lot of meetings. They will be trimmed in due course.

There will always be a need for some technical people, just not as many in the future. Lots of work in the outsourcing world though, they are busy enough.

Turgon

RobertKaucher wrote: »

When things break it is expensive because people have to be called in to deal with it. But once the cost of just throwing things away is much less than having a person even look at it then procedures and infrastructure will be in place to make that happen. 7 servers out of your rack of 10 have failed? Replace the entire rack. It's too costly for a person to rack them individually because a dual 4 core server with 1/2 TB of RAM only costs $300. Same with routers or switches.

Deployment couldn't currently be totally automated. But using VDI and server provisioning technology 1 guy can handle hundreds of systems.

I think we will see more repair by replacement. People stopped using NT debugger a while ago and just reimaged machines when there were faults. We will see this extended to hardware if you have the economies scale to operate like that. Large scale outsourcing and vendors can offer the massive provisioning you speak of.

RobertKaucher

phoeneous wrote: »

I think I miscommunicated my point, which is, the inevitable is bound to happen but until it does I'm trying to stay positive. In the end, arent all of us screwed anyways? Who in IT is even safe anymore?

I might as well kiss my experience and education bye bye and do something that a machine cant do like daycare manager, marriage counselor, divorce lawyer, florist, underwater basket weaver...

Or maybe society will change to where gathering wealth for the sake of just having more than others will become out of date and human beings will focus their lives on making the world better.

If it is not cost effective for people to work and the cost of producing goods is actually trivial maybe we can do better things than working in an effort to survive? Good or bad, the societal change will be drastic over the next 20 years. I tend to be an optimist and I'm kind of excited to see what is going to happen.

Turgon wrote: »

I think we will see more repair by replacement. People stopped using NT debugger a while ago and just reimaged machines when there were faults. We will see this extended to hardware if you have the economies scale to operate like that. Large scale outsourcing and vendors can offer the massive provisioning you speak of.

And the tech exists tody. We are just waiting for it to become stable enough for wide adoption and for the cost of hardware to come down so much that outsourcing the IS department is efficient for most companies.

gbadman

This is a fascinating debate. I've enjoyed the comments. I find the prospect of jobs, particularly IT jobs, disappearing before the technology juggernaut both depressing and exciting. it's obviously depressing because (at least on the face of it) we're all doomed! But it's also exciting because it means the cost of everyday goods becomes ever lower and all sorts of things that might have been luxuries in years gone by become increasingly accessible even to people on the minimum wage. For instance, the reason that the Windows 7 CD that you bought last week was so extortionately expensive was largely due to the immense manpower required to create and support it. As the number of manhours required to create that software and maintain it decreases, so will the price.

However there may be a silver lining on this dark cloud, for those who are prepared to grasp for it. No matter how manageable or autonomous systems become, I think there will still be a lot of demand for senior engineers and architects for many years to come. It will still be necessary to have people who understand the technologies from top to bottom, so they can make sense of what's going on if things go pear-shaped, and drive process and infrastructure changes as required.

So just as increasing mechanisation is much less of a worry for the civil engineer or car designer than it is for the labourer, so increasing automation is less of a worry for the technical architect than for the 'grunt', otherwise known as the sysadmin/netadmin.

In short then, if you intend to make something of your career in this field in the 21st century, you'd better have a clear plan of action to reach design level. Otherwise it may be prudent to seek a new line of work.

Turgon

gbadman wrote: »

However there may be a silver lining on this dark cloud, for those who are prepared to grasp for it. No matter how manageable or autonomous systems become, I think there will still be a lot of demand for senior engineers and architects for many years to come. It will still be necessary to have people who understand the technologies from top to bottom, so they can make sense of what's going on if things go pear-shaped, and drive process and infrastructure changes as required.

In short then, if you intend to make something of your career in this field in the 21st century, you'd better have a clear plan of action to reach design level. Otherwise it may be prudent to seek a new line of work.

I have been saying that for five years on this forum, but I would go further and say you want to get some commercial awareness into your daily work and start to find yourself in more commercially facing meetings where technology choices and direction are concerned. You do earn your props in support but from there you want to moving away from work where you are cranking the handle, and into architecture work that delivers technology to support business strategy. That is not learned through certifications and college. You learn it by doing it. Get some.

cxzar20

This is why it is important to have a grasp of both business and technology, it matters. The individual with a CCIE but socially inept will eventually become obsolete. Your skill set needs to be a combination of technology as well as soft skills.

Chris:/*

He was correct about the industrial age killing artistry and the artisan but he does fail to connect research to fact. The postal service is processing more mail with less people today then 10 years ago. There are a number of other poorly presented items within the article.

RobertKaucher

Chris:/* wrote: »

He was correct about the industrial age killing artistry and the artisan but he does fail to connect research to fact. The postal service is processing more mail with less people today then 10 years ago. There are a number of other poorly presented items within the article.

I don't understand. What you are saying is beside the point. It does not matter how fast and cheaply you can do something if that thing is becoming irrelevant faster than increases in effenciency.

U.S. Postal Service nearing bankruptcy as email asserts its dominance | Technology News Blog - Yahoo! News

Chris:/*

I am saying the failure of the business is not because of the process but because of out side cost factors. Stuff still needs to get shipped, there is a business for it but what makes it different from other mail carriers?

Ridiculously high wages for menial work and a large labor support structure. In addition it takes more man power to deliver one package in the USPS than other carriers. They do not have fewer technological capabilities but their work force is less competent because of the pool they pull from. Lastly the HR man hour costs to fire a USPS employee is significantly higher than its competitors. This leaves incompetent people in place longer.

The USPS is better than it used to be but not better than any of its rivals. It is a socialist dream to claim work is no longer needed but it is much harder to prove looking at only one business factor.

tpatt100

So how long until humanity will have a war against their Cylon leaders lol.

Guess I am glad I am moving into more into auditing and compliance

RobertKaucher

Chris:/* wrote: »

I am saying the failure of the business is not because of the process but because of out side cost factors. Stuff still needs to get shipped, there is a business for it but what makes it different from other mail carriers?

Ridiculously high wages for menial work and a large labor support structure. In addition it takes more man power to deliver one package in the USPS than other carriers. They do not have fewer technological capabilities but their work force is less competent because of the pool they pull from. Lastly the HR man hour costs to fire a USPS employee is significantly higher than its competitors. This leaves incompetent people in place longer.

The USPS is better than it used to be but not better than any of its rivals. It is a socialist dream to claim work is no longer needed but it is much harder to prove looking at only one business factor.

Ok, I understand what you are saying now and agree. I have to say that if we look at the state of the world right now it is clear that there is plenty of work that needs to be done, though, in fairness that was not what he was arguing. I think technology will eventually get to the point that humans do not need to have jobs. But I think we are very far from that point. The questions I am raising is what will happen to society between now and then. What will the degreee of human suffering be? I think that is the interesting "stuff" to the point he is raising. It's not that we are at the point where "jobs" are irrelevent. What good is pointing out what we could do when no one would care to do it? Maybe it gets him attention from the ladies for being so sensitive?

rsutton

I've said this before and it remains true to this discussion. Smart people will continue to find/have jobs and prosper. People that have not honed their skills since the NT days will suffer now, and that mentality is what will will kill you moving forward.

Devilsbane

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Ok, I understand what you are saying now and agree. I have to say that if we look at the state of the world right now it is clear that there is plenty of work that needs to be done, though, in fairness that was not what he was arguing. I think technology will eventually get to the point that humans do not need to have jobs. But I think we are very far from that point. The questions I am raising is what will happen to society between now and then. What will the degreee of human suffering be? I think that is the interesting "stuff" to the point he is raising. It's not that we are at the point where "jobs" are irrelevent. What good is pointing out what we could do when no one would care to do it? Maybe it gets him attention from the ladies for being so sensitive?

Do you think no human will need a job? No Doctors, no lawyers, no financial advisors, or government leaders?

Sure you can make a machine that picks up the trash and delivers the mail. But can you really have a machine that is going to build and fix these machines? Certainly somebody will need to have a job, and like the original article points out, what does everyone else do?

The way that the system has always been setup is that everyone supports the system. In early days this meant that men spent the day hunting while women took care of the children and cooked. These days, it varies a lot more but it usually consists of somebody selling their soul for 8 hours a day to do their part and thus receive support (in the form of money) from the system.

Turgon

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Ok, I understand what you are saying now and agree. I have to say that if we look at the state of the world right now it is clear that there is plenty of work that needs to be done, though, in fairness that was not what he was arguing. I think technology will eventually get to the point that humans do not need to have jobs. But I think we are very far from that point. The questions I am raising is what will happen to society between now and then. What will the degreee of human suffering be? I think that is the interesting "stuff" to the point he is raising. It's not that we are at the point where "jobs" are irrelevent. What good is pointing out what we could do when no one would care to do it? Maybe it gets him attention from the ladies for being so sensitive?

Technology will not provide love and care for your mother or father when they are infirm and in a home. Plenty of jobs there and I think everyone will be concerned that the people providing it are skilled, caring and competant.

RobertKaucher

Devilsbane wrote: »

Do you think no human will need a job? No Doctors, no lawyers, no financial advisors, or government leaders?

Sure you can make a machine that picks up the trash and delivers the mail. But can you really have a machine that is going to build and fix these machines? Certainly somebody will need to have a job, and like the original article points out, what does everyone else do?

The way that the system has always been setup is that everyone supports the system. In early days this meant that men spent the day hunting while women took care of the children and cooked. These days, it varies a lot more but it usually consists of somebody selling their soul for 8 hours a day to do their part and thus receive support (in the form of money) from the system.

I'm not saying people will not do work. I am saying that the production of goods will eventually come to be so cheap and be done so efficiently that one of two scenarios will occur:

1. We will reprioritize as a species and those who do work will do so because they want to. If I did not need to have a job, I would still work. But I would not be doing this. There are far more important things I could be doing which make nearly nothing.

2. The human population will, through war and famine, be forced to reduce in population to what can be supported by the economy.

In the 2030s we will be well on our way to seeing this happen. It is predicted by Moore's law, not expected to be exhausted until into the 2080s, a $1000 coputer will have roughly the computational ability of the human brain - 100 trilion calculations per second. In the next 10 years it should be clear to everyone that the productivity we are able to achieve is far greater than the people who are able to consume it. Either the poor must be culled to support the ever shrinking class of the rich or we must come to the conclusion that we are surronded by so much wealth that living just to aquire wealth is meaning less and antiquated. I'm not saying it will be such a wonderful utopian world that there will no longer be social stratification - that's not what I think at all.

In 10 years IT will not exist as it does to day and the people we call sys admins or net admins today will be very few in number if they exist at all. Maybe a few 100 in all the US.

I think in 30 years:
There will be no "jobs" as we think of them today.
Wealth will not be humanity's greatest motivating factor.
Humanity will have achieved this not because it will have matured but because the very concept of "wealth" will become irrelevant.
Or...
War and famine on a massive scale as society violently reorginizes itself.

Based on nonzero sum game theory - I think the first is the more likely to happen. Who is going to fight a war because the poorest of the poor have all their fundamental needs met? It's kind of like the Nash theory of equilibrium on a large scale.

Of course I could be completely wrong and we will be unable to find efficient forms of renewable energy and the world will in fact explode in war taking with it 2/3rds of the population.

I'll leave two links:
How Long Till Human-Level AI?

Likely the second one will be censored. Search for What's your Internet [informal name for Richard that is not Rich] Level.
What's Your Internet Dick Rating?

I'm the "please this is all I have" guy.

RobertKaucher

Turgon wrote: »

Technology will not provide love and care for your mother or father when they are infirm and in a home. Plenty of jobs there and I think everyone will be concerned that the people providing it are skilled, caring and competant.

Not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing... Again - not saying that people will not work or will be unskilled. I am saying that the work you do will not conform to what we think of as a "job" today. My job earns me a living. In the future I don't think that will be the case.

gbadman

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing... Again - not saying that people will not work or will be unskilled. I am saying that the work you do will not conform to what we think of as a "job" today. My job earns me a living. In the future I don't think that will be the case.

I don't think you're saying the same thing. Turgon refers to the enduring necessity of the provision of certain services by humans. This contradicts your belief that it will be possible for every service of value to eventually (and in the not too distant future) be provided by machines.

I think it's important to bear in mind in this whole issue that the problem is really mostly a problem for the technology sector, and sectors with a service-defining interface with technology. Lawyers, teachers and healthcare workers are no less in demand now than they were 300 years ago, and their work is no less lucrative.
Even if one were to imagine that it would some day be possible for machines to have subroutines for empathy, judgment and social and historical perspective as required in, say a Judge, that moment is far into the distant future, certainly too far for anyone posting here to worry about.

Getting back to our industry then, I would say it's critical to have an understanding of your interests, strengths and weaknesses, and what services those attributes enable you to offer to a competitive standard.
Having made that assessment, it is then important to match those with the current trends in the marketplace and see how you project yourself being positioned in 10-15 years time. Since those trends tend to change direction quite often, it's wise to set on a trajectory that allows a reasonable amount of flexibility, so you don't find yourself having to retrain when things change. An aspect of this is to avoid niche areas unless they're so lucrative that you're prepared to take the hit if that avenue suddenly disappears.

I find that Carl Marx has much of interest to say in Capital about the value of services and commodities, and the origins of that value. It's a shame that too many people today would never consider studying his work, due to its conflation with the failed ideologies of the 20th century that claimed inspiration from him.

To conclude (and I recognise this is turning into an essay!), I don't believe there ever be a point in the human future where no one needs to work. The reason being that human contentment is always a function of expectation. People living several hundred years ago, looking at us now, would have concluded that we live in a utopia, After all, no one in the western world truly faces starvation, something that was a serious reality of life back then. We have social safety nets designed to eliminate that. However, as the human condition has been elevated, so has the concept of an acceptable life. And this will continue so long as humans exist.
So I study and work hard not because it's necessary for a basic existence, but in order to meet my definition of a contented life. That has elements both of standard of living and social status, and of technical self-fulfillment.

UnixGuy

RobertKaucher wrote: »

. Dells already selling an entire virtualization solution as a full rack....

This is a complete solutions (server, storage, application, database)..and it doesn't even need a DBA to manage it, It's kind of scary..

What is Oracle Exalogic? (Oracle Exalogic)

Turgon

gbadman wrote: »

I don't think you're saying the same thing. Turgon refers to the enduring necessity of the provision of certain services by humans. This contradicts your belief that it will be possible for every service of value to eventually (and in the not too distant future) be provided by machines.

I find that Carl Marx has much of interest to say in Capital about the value of services and commodities, and the origins of that value. It's a shame that too many people today would never consider studying his work, due to its conflation with the failed ideologies of the 20th century that claimed inspiration from him.

Correct on both counts.

RobertKaucher

gbadman wrote: »

I don't think you're saying the same thing. Turgon refers to the enduring necessity of the provision of certain services by humans. This contradicts your belief that it will be possible for every service of value to eventually (and in the not too distant future) be provided by machines.

Turgon wrote: »

Correct on both counts.

Actually, no. Incorrect on the first count as that is not what I have said nor was it my intended meaning. And that is why I was confused.

RobertKaucher wrote: »

The question is what will society look like when in rich nations most people do not need to work or simply cannot work because it is cheaper for machines to do most jobs.

I do believe that machines (software and hardware) will be highly entrenched in every field/profession. Every profession will have mechanical practitioners of some sort. There are already, and have been since the 2000s, expert systems that can perform medical diagnostics as well as (and in many cases better than) most doctors. “Robots” are already performing surgery only attended by doctors who just press buttons to tell it what to do. Machines will be able to carry far more in another 10 years and even more in 20. But humans will always want to do things but with the vast majority of our needs being met in other ways we will be free to do things that we cannot even imagine right now.

So when I say I don’t think we will need “jobs” I’m not saying we won’t work nor am I saying there will not be professions, nor that there will not be professionals and when I say that the vast majority of our needs will be met I am not preaching a communistic vision of human goodness and benevolence through the raising of spiritual awareness. We will still have capital, we will still be socially stratified, but the way those things are expressed will be different.

Now if you want to talk about the future in the 2040s I kind of think that gbadman has said is correct. But only because what we consider human and machine will become blurred.

Edit -
Prime example of what I am talking about:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/painfree-meat-how-synthetic-sausages-could-be-on-our-plates-in-six-months-20110909-1k0nj.html

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/networking/3302464/algorithmic-stock-trading-rapidly-replacing-humans-warns-government-paper/

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/daniel_kraft_medicine_s_future.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/skylar_tibbits_can_we_make_things_that_make_themselves.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_breazeal_the_rise_of_personal_robots.html

RobertKaucher

I had to publish this... But they are saying that by 2025 50% of all "jobs" in the US will be done by robots. If you add in automation by software and consolitation technologies like could computing I don't think my predictions seem so crazy.

http://www.botjunkie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/focus-robots.png

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828815,00.html