How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

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Jericho941
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How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by Jericho941 »

Humans Need Not Apply

The obvious first ones on the chopping block are the kids behind the register at Burger King, buuuuut...
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Netpackrat
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by Netpackrat »

Until people quit flying on airplanes, or until they start issuing A&P licenses to robots (or illegal aliens)... Yeah, pretty secure. Specific jobs may come and go, and elements of the job change over time, but short of a total economic meltdown, there will always be a need for my trade for the forseeable future. The job I had back when this group got its start long ago on a server far away, basically doesn't exist anymore. Volume at ANC is down since '08 to be sure, but for the most part people have just changed uniforms as they've shuffled around the airport. Some people who probably shouldn't be working on airplanes anyway, found themselves without chairs when the music stopped. Most of the mechanics who were worth a damn, and wanted to stay mechanics, eventually found a place.
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Odahi
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by Odahi »

I have seen and thought about these kinds of issues for a while. Even when I was working on phone and fiber-optic cabling, it would have been very difficult for a robot to do the work. Dirty, cramped, wet, non-standardized conditions make it tough for metal menials. Now my job is much more technical and adaptive. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but to start from an empty box, and turn it into a working spacecraft component, with all the iterations and modifications along the way, and to do all the intricate work along the way, is probably out of the question for the next ten years. Large-scale automated manufacturing is one thing. When you literally never see a component with a two-digit serial number, it's a little different. Why ten years? Because I retire in seven and a half. ;) But, "Specialization is for insects." I try to continue to broaden my skill-set. In the long term humans will probably reduce our population, and possibly even cease to be humans as we think of ourselves now. Transfer your consciousness to an android body (the Singularity), become immortal and invincible (or close to it), and you don't NEED no stinkin' job. Now go walk around the world, see every square meter of it, including the ocean depths. Then repeat at the next planet on the list, and the next... become an interstellar tourist. Work will not define humans forever, and we may wind up with a few "meat people" still living on a garden Earth, but the majority of the best and brightest are eventually headed outward. We today probably can't imagine what our descendants will look like, much less what they will do or think. Provided we don't blow ourselves up before we get there. There's always that.
Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, assholes gotta ass, until the day they die.

"Common sense" is an oxymoron.
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randy
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by randy »

Since my job involves planning for, and responding during, situations when it hits the fan and systems have failed, not to mention those failures often being the result of human stupidity, I think I am pretty secure, up to retirement age at any rate.
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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First Shirt
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by First Shirt »

Until they make a machine that drinks coffee, plays solitare, and gives smart-ass answers to stupid questions, I think I'm pretty safe.

Plus, I'll be retiring in five or six years.
But there ain't many troubles that a man caint fix, with seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six."
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BDK
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by BDK »

I develop recipes for a living, mainly, and a little bit of lawyering.

The right search engine could really aide a lawyer, but if you think the brethren and getting automated... :lol:

Can't see how a cook can be replaced. Not s great job, but it's dependable - I'm sure it has other origins, but as I heard it one time, both the Tsar and Stalin had cooks.
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Steamforger
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by Steamforger »

I would have to do some pretty amazing shit to get fired. I'm also virtually impossible to RIF.

It can be done, but you have to go to lengthy extremes.
BDK
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by BDK »

This seems where US education used to be better and where the current direction is a disaster - we used to test much lower in reading and math - for a variety of reasons (we test everyone, poor quality systems, immigration, etc), but much higher on creativity.

And, that's really what is needed. As we've grown, I've needed about the same number of people though we make 10times the volume, but I need much more capable people who can either solve hiccups/at least recognize there is one - and I suspect that is true across all industry.
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Vonz90
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by Vonz90 »

I think automated new product development and R&D is a long way off - I think around the time the third Terminator movie comes true.

Considering how much of the company I work for deals on both export and import, I could see a tRump or Sanders administration putting me and a ton of ither people out of work.
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JustinR
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Re: How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

Post by JustinR »

I doubt automation will become fault and error tolerant enough to make airliners into UAV's within my lifetime.

If so, I'll move on to spacecraft. :)

Far in the future, there will be a transition period where one pilot will sit at a base station and monitor 20-30 flights, just like a dispatcher. If something goes wrong, you flip the switch and you're directly controlling that aircraft now. That will provide job security for a much smaller number of pilots once the automation fully kicks in, and even then lightning can still decide to ruin your whole day.
"The armory was even better. Above the door was a sign: You dream, we build." -Mark Owen, No Easy Day

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