How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

[Vonz90]

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.

They could have automated trains 30 years ago or more, but they didn't and I don't think they will in my lifetime even if the engineer is a passenger most of the time. There is more to the equation than technical feasibility. Aircraft even doubly so.

[evan price]

I'm a contractor for a global firm that has almost no competitors because the field is small but very technical. I'm permanently stationed at a specific customers' job site. In theory the customer could decide they don't want 24/7/365 on site service techs, or they don't want to continue operations at this location.
Since the customer operates 24/7/365 and this location is one of their global hubs, and we are also supporting other customers' areas out of state, I'm not too worried.
In trends of automation, I've been known to tell the operators- when they complain about the machines not being able to do tasks that a human should be able to notice, such as knowing the operator loaded the wrong supplies, "i can automate these to the point we don't need operators any more."

[Termite]

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

Judging from the performance of the pilots on Asiana Flight 214.........

[PawPaw]

I feel pretty good about my livelihood, but then again, I'm an old fart and I'll be retired in four or five years. Earlier if they pss me off.

Heh!

[Cobar]

That is why I like being in a job shop. We do stuff that isn't worth the cost to tool up production on. Automation isn't free.

[JustinR]

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

Judging from the performance of the pilots on Asiana Flight 214.........

Even Airbus can't fix stupid, ala Air France 447.

[Darrell]

Due to technology and automation? Very little. I'm the guy who makes it go.

Due to my workplace slowly spiraling into the shitter? I wonder if it's going to make it to the end of the year. I would like to retire.

[Precision]

The wife and I started our own business about a year ago. She works full time at it. I help out a bit. I work a counter at a gun store for margin money to insure against the hiccups of a start up. Low wages but dependable and flexible. Within the next few months I will go all in on our new gig.

Additionally, we are doing a gun related manufacturing gig with some partners and the wife has a part time (invite only) marketing company. So we are diversified into at least three income streams.

Not terribly worried they will all go TU. But the main one is at the mercy of Amazon which does have a rather capricious track record, but hey.

[JKosprey]

I'm not very secure, but it has nothing to do with automation. I just make poor career choices, apparently.

[Weetabix]

My job involves making judgements about a wide variety of existing conditions in the real world in tight, dark places. One of our subcontractors uses a "robot" to collect data, and his machine can't normally get to the places a man can. I'm probably good for a while.