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Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

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Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#21
post #18

Most of these tech workers are too lazy to keep up with what’s going on or learn new skills, and their compensation is out of proportion to their usefulness. Their employers are no different. Both are always haunted by the fear of being made redundant by their clients. They suffer from aversion to change. As a matter of fact, the automation that the article says has taken the place of these workers should have happen…

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Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#22

"People accustomed to holding down prestigious jobs and pulling in handsome salaries are losing out to automation, a shift away from long-term legacy contracts and curbs on U.S. work visas. " It's funny, in the US when jobs get outsourced, robots get blamed. In India, when jobs get insourced back , robots get blamed. The key takeaway seems to be never, ever, ever blame trade policy made by a politician/lobbyist if yo…

To be fair the low hanging fruit for outsourcing is also the low hanging fruit for automation.

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#23
post #20
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arguable. Digital platforms are both facilitating and changing human interaction - for both better and worse.

But mostly, between echo chambers, fake news, cyber-bullying, shallow social media, etc, for worse.

Only if you choose the default. Lasting, meaningful friendships can be made - the trick is to ignore the "broadcast" tooling that's heavily suggested to you by entities that can only exist so long as they have an ever-increasing income - the walls, the feeds, even to some degree the forums - and stay instead in the private messaging systems, the tiny chatrooms, etc.

I use IRC as my primary "social media" tool of choice, but some days, I barely look at the channels - my online life is spent in the PMs with the people I've known for years.

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#24

"People accustomed to holding down prestigious jobs and pulling in handsome salaries are losing out to automation, a shift away from long-term legacy contracts and curbs on U.S. work visas. " It's funny, in the US when jobs get outsourced, robots get blamed. In India, when jobs get insourced back , robots get blamed. The key takeaway seems to be never, ever, ever blame trade policy made by a politician/lobbyist if yo…

To be fair the low hanging fruit for outsourcing is also the low hanging fruit for automation.

I think that's being completely unfair. Outsourcability is purely about how easy it is to extend a supply chain to another continent without impacting quality control and lead time. Automation is purely about how easy it is to program a computer to do the work.

The two have very little to do with one another. In fact, the more automateable a job is, the less likely it will be pushed offshore because managing a highly automated process means that quality control becomes much more difficult (bugs, etc.).

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#25

Most of these tech workers are too lazy to keep up with what’s going on or learn new skills, and their compensation is out of proportion to their usefulness. Their employers are no different. Both are always haunted by the fear of being made redundant by their clients. They suffer from aversion to change. As a matter of fact, the automation that the article says has taken the place of these workers should have happen…

What's your opinion of presenting speculation as fact?

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#26
post #20
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arguable. Digital platforms are both facilitating and changing human interaction - for both better and worse.

But mostly, between echo chambers, fake news, cyber-bullying, shallow social media, etc, for worse.

> But mostly, between echo chambers, fake news,

But is it really so? Echo chambers and fake news are as old as civilization, only we used different words for them in the past. The villages in which our great^n-grandparents lived were even more of an echo chamber - all the opinions you've ever heard were the ones of a few dozen people you could communicate with. "Fake news" existed in the form of hostile gossip then. Newspapers gave us access to more information, and with it, organized fake news - and the choice of which paper you read created your echo chamber.

The real problem is, the world is just too complex for our minds to handle. It's only becoming apparent because progress of technology gives us more of the world to see.

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#27

Most of these tech workers are too lazy to keep up with what’s going on or learn new skills, and their compensation is out of proportion to their usefulness. Their employers are no different. Both are always haunted by the fear of being made redundant by their clients. They suffer from aversion to change. As a matter of fact, the automation that the article says has taken the place of these workers should have happen…

I’ve worked with such service providers. Your words echo my thoughts :)

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#28

Most of these tech workers are too lazy to keep up with what’s going on or learn new skills, and their compensation is out of proportion to their usefulness. Their employers are no different. Both are always haunted by the fear of being made redundant by their clients. They suffer from aversion to change. As a matter of fact, the automation that the article says has taken the place of these workers should have happen…

What's your opinion of presenting speculation as fact?

It's called "empirical evidence" probably from experience and observation.

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#29
post #12

Every time I hear/read about automation, all I can think about is the movie "Her". Humans are weak and companies are just waiting to exploit that.

The problem is ... unless there's a universal income, or new jobs for all these people, who in the hell is going to buy your products?

That's why products are becoming progressively more expensive including things which traditionally became cheaper with generations.

Why focus on the 'fluff' who have lower incomes and will have soon have even less, when you can focus on the 'cream' with high margins, hence $1000 phones and $800 billion cash reserves with no use.

Re: Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy

#30
post #12

Every time I hear/read about automation, all I can think about is the movie "Her". Humans are weak and companies are just waiting to exploit that.

The problem is ... unless there's a universal income, or new jobs for all these people, who in the hell is going to buy your products?

Weren’t we making the same arguments with weavers in the early 1800s and with the assembly line?

Same story, different century.

The auto made horse traders and blacksmiths redundant, automated weaving looms made weavers redundant, high yield farming made many small farmers redundant — yet worldwide poverty is lower than it has ever been, unemployment rates are fairly constant.

New industries form when others decline. Who would have thought in 1920 that there would be an entire industry centered around home recording technology or that car alarms would be a thing or that home automation installers would exist?

Everyone always thinks that their age is the pinnacle of technological achievement — only to be proven wrong within a single generation.

This clamor for UBI and sky-is-falling fear is textbook Ludditeism. Identical arguments were presented by the Luddites, yet everyone can agree that England was a pretty rotten place for normal people in the early 19th century.

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