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Software Is Eating the Job Market

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Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#11
The non-fundamental shift about software is not that it's creating quality jobs at the cost of medium-quality jobs. It's also not that we are creating robots that will replace low-quality human workers. Because we still believe that as low-quality jobs go, higher-quality jobs will somehow appear. (you may not agree with this, even I am personally sceptical, but that's not the point I'm about to argue)

But to get to the higher-quality jobs, you generally need experience. Not many employers are willing to hire someone and put him in a responsible position based off their potential alone. It follows, then, that we need substantial number of entry level positions to, so to speak, open the door for future potent workers.

But those doors are closing at an alarming rate.

Consider law firms. Discovery work(going through past records to find cases of relevance, law clauses of relevance) that used to be the "first year" work, is almost exclusively done by software. It's cheaper and more accurate. We may still need more quality lawyers, but as we remove the uses for inexperienced lawyers, we are decreasing the number of future experienced lawyers.

Translation used to be a very non-trivial work. Not just for heavy-publishing prose or fiction, but even for simple phrases, if the need was great enough, we would hire an entry level translator. Now we would generally use Google translate for a phrase or two because it was "good enough" at a marginal price.

The problem for prospect high-earning society isn't that software is eating jobs. As long as we are vain and greedy to aspire for higher quality, we will have those sophisticated jobs. The problem is that we are eating entry-level jobs, and in turn, creating an artificial scarce supply of "experienced" workers.

And those "experienced" workers, now that they have put their foot into the door, and with the huge demand for work to be done, will enjoy the job market(aren't we all, as developers?), but what of those that are left, for no fault of their own?

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#12
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not per capita it doesn't. Come on, that's a novice error.

Every election since 2000: "More people voted for {Bush, Obama} than any President in history." There's more total voters, so...

Every blockbuster movie released ever: "This movie made X millions of dollars!" Ticket prices keep going up, so...

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#13
post #3
post #2

America has the most job openings in 15 years - http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/09/news/economy/us-job-opening-...

Not per capita it doesn't. Come on, that's a novice error.

The chart on the first page of his link is "Job openings rate" which graphs the number of job opening by percentage of the population per year. How is that not per capita?

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#14
post #7

Nothing new.. If i can replace a security guard of my office for a cheaper more efficient, less error prone, robot/software instead of a human for half the price, WHY NOT! The exact same philosophy goes into "software is eating the world".

It works until you run out of consumers with cash, at which point it no longer works.

sounds like capitalism is broken.

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#15
post #11

The non-fundamental shift about software is not that it's creating quality jobs at the cost of medium-quality jobs. It's also not that we are creating robots that will replace low-quality human workers. Because we still believe that as low-quality jobs go, higher-quality jobs will somehow appear. (you may not agree with this, even I am personally sceptical, but that's not the point I'm about to argue) But to get to t…

Do you have some data on this?

Also, this is a perspective I've not considered or heard of before. Thanks for that.

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#16
post #11

The non-fundamental shift about software is not that it's creating quality jobs at the cost of medium-quality jobs. It's also not that we are creating robots that will replace low-quality human workers. Because we still believe that as low-quality jobs go, higher-quality jobs will somehow appear. (you may not agree with this, even I am personally sceptical, but that's not the point I'm about to argue) But to get to t…

The ultimate winners here would be the software employees in my opinion. The money flows from investors/public to the geeks. Dont know how the economy is going to work out with that though.

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#17
post #11

The non-fundamental shift about software is not that it's creating quality jobs at the cost of medium-quality jobs. It's also not that we are creating robots that will replace low-quality human workers. Because we still believe that as low-quality jobs go, higher-quality jobs will somehow appear. (you may not agree with this, even I am personally sceptical, but that's not the point I'm about to argue) But to get to t…

Also, the people who make the decisions are experienced and so don't directly profit from changing anything.

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#18
This article is written in such a pompous style that I can't immediately tell if it isn't tied to some form of public relations press release.

The shortage of software developers is well-documented and increasingly discussed.

It's certainly discussed, though its ostensible documentation is a subject of dispute [1]. The role of poor hiring practices is also often omitted.

Far more than just a fad or buzzword, references to analytical and data-oriented skills appeared in 4 million postings over the last year – and data analysis is one of the most demanded skills by U.S. employers, according to Burning Glass data.

That it is commonly cited as a term doesn't necessarily contradict that it's a buzzword.

The aforementioned in-demand skills areas represent more of a structural shift than an issue du jour or passing trend. It is precisely the rapid, near daily change in software- and technology-related skills needs that necessitates new approaches to human capital development. While traditional long-term programs such as college degrees remain meaningful, new software platforms, languages, apps and tools rise annually.

This is the classic equivocation of tools and techniques in action. New platforms and tools indeed do arise annually, but our techniques have remained in stasis, and are only being painfully reinvented in a rat race. See David A. Wheeler's essay "The Most Important Software Innovations" [2], and perhaps mentally add in CRDTs, I suppose.

Who in the mainstream a few years ago had heard of Hadoop or Ruby?

Many.

Finally, it's curious to note given the assertion of software eating the job market or world, that many of the examples listed are media companies or companies whose business models are augmented by software (often via data entry, really), rather than engulfed by it. Fintech's an exception. But I didn't find any examples of technical infrastructure or CS and software research.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...

[2] http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html

Re: Software Is Eating the Job Market

#19
I think we need this to happen. We need McDonald's to move to an entirely robotic store. We need every store to mechanize every thing they possibly can.

That way we can increase our efficiency as a country by multitudes and get on with the nasty part of Universal Base Income.

It has to happen. And for America, as a competitive nation, the sooner the better.

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