I am waiting for a day when “machine learning scientists” are the blue collar workers.
Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
31–40 of 73 posts
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
huh. who'd of guessed that coal miners can't code?
I suspect that most laymen find our line of work to be kind of trivial and think that success in this field is more related to youth than intelligence. To them, "coding" is more akin to carpentry (a trade) than physics (a science). Also, pointing out that not every coal miner can learn to code is seen as culturally insensitive and perpetuating the stereotype that rural people are dumb. Which I understand, but a littl…
Is carpentry really that easy to master? Practical arts all require lots of practice. The only thing that makes coding very different is all the abstraction (so more like machine design than wood assembly).
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#33I am waiting for a day when “machine learning scientists” are the blue collar workers.
Blue collar machine learning jobs center around data labeling: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/is-data-labeling-the-ne...
I don't ever see the actual modeling work around AI becoming blue collar. It's complex and worth the price to the companies that can build a business around it. The data labeling, however, can be pretty simple.
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect that most laymen find our line of work to be kind of trivial and think that success in this field is more related to youth than intelligence. To them, "coding" is more akin to carpentry (a trade) than physics (a science). Also, pointing out that not every coal miner can learn to code is seen as culturally insensitive and perpetuating the stereotype that rural people are dumb. Which I understand, but a littl…
Is carpentry really that easy to master? Practical arts all require lots of practice. The only thing that makes coding very different is all the abstraction (so more like machine design than wood assembly).
indeed, I'll stick to coding. Tried a number of times to do some wood work, a simple mitre joint is way harder than you'd think. But then there are few true carpenters left, its mostly low skilled work e.g. framers.
Knew a guy who could do the most precise joins, its a skill people seem to be born with, or its grown somehow. If the only jobs in demand demanded the ability to construct a dovetail joint, I'd be in big trouble.
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#35I am waiting for a day when “machine learning scientists” are the blue collar workers.
In a way that's already happened, though maybe not in the way youre thinking of. Machine learning data is more and more being collected by volunteers or paid content curators. These jobs are generally low pay and in foreign countries. There's a huge outsourcing of "blue collar" mechanical Turks going on right now that is essential to most supervised learning methods.
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#36I wonder what the success rate is for their retraining program to turn factory workers into coders. When watching Andrew Yang's Presidential pitch for UBI he said most government retraining programs only have a success rate of 17%.
> I wonder what the success rate is for their retraining program to turn factory workers into coders. Probably about 0% for their warehouse workers: they're so exhausted by the end of their shifts that they won't have the energy to learn, and their most at risk of losing their jobs to automation. This is a feel-good announcement that will likely do little good without other management changes that Amazon is probably…
1. Is it really too much to believe that someone with a physically demanding job might be in good enough condition to do something else after work? I'm pretty sure folks in all sorts of physical jobs have physical hobbies as well. You never hear this sort of excuse about carpenters.
2. It's hard to work full time and go to school after. It's by definition going above and beyond.
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#37I wonder what the success rate is for their retraining program to turn factory workers into coders. When watching Andrew Yang's Presidential pitch for UBI he said most government retraining programs only have a success rate of 17%.
There are a bunch of different programs targeting different cohorts. Associate2Tech and AmazonCareer choice are targeting the fulfillment center workers.
ATA is incredibly successful at small scale. Biggest challenge is scaling it up + making it work for everyone. If you are familiar with amazon's think big and pr faqs, educated guesses can be made as to the end vision for that program.
The NYT article is actually pretty poor compared to https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-spend-700m-retrain-100k... or https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det... because it misses the apprenticeship which is by far the most interesting program amazon is running since it's targeting the veterans.
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extremely low: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/23/1859813/-Students-C...
huh. who'd of guessed that coal miners can't code?
Is that remark necessary?
Honestly, the classicist/entitled bullshit about what we (technologists) do is completely unearned. What most of us do isn’t special and the gate-keeping many people in this industry do to prevent others from entering this industry (and I’m guilty of it too at times) is unearned.
I’m glad Amazon is doing things like this. I’m glad programs are encouraging coal miners to learn a new skill.
Programming wasn’t always seen as white collar work.
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#39I wonder what the success rate is for their retraining program to turn factory workers into coders. When watching Andrew Yang's Presidential pitch for UBI he said most government retraining programs only have a success rate of 17%.
i wonder if its cheaper to retrain vs outsourcing
Re: Amazon’s Latest Experiment: Retraining Its Work Force
#40I wonder what the success rate is for their retraining program to turn factory workers into coders. When watching Andrew Yang's Presidential pitch for UBI he said most government retraining programs only have a success rate of 17%.
My job takes me to many Amazon FCs. The job families that we currently offer through career development classes are usually things like CDL, operations management, dentistry, EMT, process engineering, mechanical tech, etc. It is really a grab bag of what is most highly requested by the diverse working cohort at each FC.
Code as HN would think of it is not as common, but associates becoming IT or facilities technicians or engineers(remember, these things are teeming with robotics and conveyor systems) is highly common.
I’m glad that we are spending more on this.