8 ms·

1978: mostly secretaries, now largely replaced by computers. 2014: mostly truck drivers. To be replaced by computers by 2034?

• bsilvereagle 11y ago
  I had a professor pull this visualization up on one half of the screen, and then a news article about Mercede-Benz' self driving semi on the other half of the screen. He left them up for a about a minute, looked at all of us, said "All of your actions have consequences, some of them unintended." and moved on with the lecture for the day.
  • Tloewald 11y ago
    A friend of mine working as a transport economist produced used modeling and projections to estimate things like traffic congestion, road usage, miles driven and so forth over the next however-many years (this was in the late 90s and the effects were striking -- as in bad). His boss was startled by them and said "what about the effects of the internet and virtualization?" "That's what you're looking at." A whole lot more stuff is being delivered to people's doors today than twenty years ago.
  • thisone 11y ago
    What point was he trying to make? I would expect that anyone who's worked on enterprise software has been to client meetings where ROI is expressed in terms of human resources. It's part of advancement that certain jobs will no longer be viable for people. People will train for other work instead. It's not like suddenly, with no warning, 100s of thousands of drivers around the world will need to find new jobs. But in the very long term, fewer drivers will be needed. People who would have, at one time, become drivers, will do other work.
    • wfo 11y ago
      Most people who are taking classes from a professor haven't built enterprise software or been in client meetings. Most of them don't realize that their work while it probably makes life better for young rich white yuppies like them may destroy a way of life for huge swaths of other people for better or for worse. And generally college students haven't been trained to be cold or callous enough to express ROI in terms of human resources quite yet -- I'm sure the slide was gentle preparation for what is to come once they enter the capitalist workforce.
    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Heh, for auto-driving trucks it very likely will mean suddenly 10's of thousands out of work. And folks out of work are finding it harder and harder to find word. Automation's ultimate goal is putting us all out of work. We're in a transition, and admitting that will help guide policy from here on.
    • marcosdumay 11y ago
      > It's not like suddenly, with no warning, 100s of thousands of drivers around the world will need to find new jobs. Isn't that exactly the case? (Except that are tens of millions.) Why not, are those people warned?
      • dragonwriter 11y ago
        Its not the case because its unlikely that the technology will be adopted everywhere, simultaneously, overnight; it will be adopted gradually over time; it'll probably first manifest in the job market as a decline in growth in trucking jobs, then a decline in trucking jobs, rather than going from the existing pattern one day to no humans working as truckers the next.
        • marcosdumay 11y ago
          Well, define "gradually". I certainly won't be overnight. But you are assuming current truck drivers will have time to migrate to new jobs as those appear - I really doubt two decades is "gradual" by that measure. Yet, I can not see how it could take that long.
          • dragonwriter 11y ago
            > But you are assuming current truck drivers will have time to migrate to new jobs as those appear No, and I'm not even assuming that new jobs will appear. That there will be warning and that there will be much that can be done with the warning are very different ideas; OTOH... > I really doubt two decades is "gradual" by that measure. Two decades is enough time for people who are mid- (and often even early, though not quite at the beginning) of a career to retire and not need to worry about a new job, so its potentially gradual enough.
  • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    The kids in college don't make the big decisions on how the economy works, so these types of liberal guilt speeches always seemed hollow to me. Sure, maybe someday, but at that point market forces will be calling the shots, not personal preference or pet political activism. If it wasn't for automation, modernity, etc would Mr Professor even have a job? Before various cost savings techniques of the past 40 years, the amount of people who went to college were a much smaller percentage than the amount today. You can't have these enrollment numbers with tiny classrooms and each professor having his own secretary. It just doesn't scale. Its amusing to think that some people think of themselves as above the economic fray. Sorry, but we're all in this together.
    • __jal 11y ago
      To me, they aren't "liberal guilt speeches", first off, just a recognition of cause and effect. But the real problem, I think, lies somewhere in your interpretation of of the the goals of pointing such things out. I'm sure "Mr. Professor" is more than capable of recognizing that kids in schools aren't political leaders. "Mr. Professor" is pointing this out, not because they fancy themselves above the economic fray, but precisely because we're all in this together. That, in fact, is the actual message being conveyed by what you perceive as "liberal guilting". If you're looking for people who act above the economic fray, a far better source of those sorts of airy pronouncements would be, for instance, David Brooks or Tom Friedman, for whom massive economic dislocation tends to be a "to be sure" or "perhaps" tacked on to the end of a column about how great disruptive innovation is.
  • Johnny555 11y ago
    One unintended side effect of automated trucks may be pushing more long-haul freight to rail. Fuel and driver's salary are the biggest expenses in operating a truck -- remove the driver's salary and fuel becomes the dominant expense. Right now, rail is around 4 times more efficient than trucks, so if fuel is your dominant expense, moving to rail makes more sense. Of course, self-driving trucks could help with truck fuel efficiency by driving at a more fuel-efficient speed, and they may be deemed safe enough to haul more trailers behind a single truck. Though whether or not human drivers (even if their cars drive themselves) will put up with a 4 trailer 40mph truck on the freeway is a different question.
    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Confused: making trucking cheaper (removing driver) will drive traffic to rail? Because rail will then be cheaper?
      • muzmath 11y ago
        I'm confused as well. This doesn't make any sense
  • WalterBright 11y ago
    One consequence of self-driving trucks is that finally the loads will move onto the rails where they belong, instead of clogging the freeways.
    • the8472 11y ago
      What is the connection between those two? Or conversely, how does the presence of human drivers prevent moving cargo onto freight trains? Isn't that what standardized containers are for?
      • rdl 11y ago
        ISO 20/40 containers are not optimal for long haul over the road trucking -- you generally want something bigger (53') and lighter. You can rail those on their own flatbeds, but that's also not optimal. Intermodal ISO containers make a lot more sense for sea and (sort of) rail; some sense for trucking, especially final delivery, but not OTR; very little sense for air freight (although I've seen a bunch of specially configured equipment shelter 20' containers shipped in cargo aircraft, it's not done for general cargo because the tare weight is in the tons when you're paying $1-20+/pound; they also don't work well with aircraft cargo handling, and can't fit as standardized ULD or loose cargo in passenger aircraft.) Repacking your cargo from one container to another sucks for a lot of reasons: cost, time, theft, damage, etc. There's also a latency and performance improvement if you can go door to door with a truck, vs. do intermodal with a train in the middle. Unless you're moving a bulk commodity to a high-volume location, it's unlikely they have rail directly to the destination. (Coal power plants do; lots of modern light industrial manufacturing sites do not.) Optimizing air vs. truck vs. rail vs. ship across your whole supply chain is an interesting problem. Another fun thing: with robo drivers, you could go essentially non-stop (except for fueling) door to door. Otherwise, you need a team driver or relay concept (usually you carry 2-3 drivers and swap them enroute; you could also do something with depots where you swap out drivers while retaining the vehicle, which I think is done for some high security convoy operations.) That makes the truck vs. rail advantage even greater.
        • the8472 11y ago
  • eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    What do you mean, "unintended"? Work is crap and nobody should have to do it.
• johnm1019 11y ago
  I looked at the graph and saw the statistics, but your short and simple comment gives me pause. If in fact we achieve autonomous trucks it would mean we might potentially displace the most common job in 27-odd states. We (the USA) as a country should begin thinking about the ramifications of this and how we might need to change to preserve not the economy, but society.
  • gghh 11y ago
    There was recently a blog post analyzing exactly this: "Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck" https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961 https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-goin... It was intensely discussed on HN as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555295 edited for spelling
• Pxtl 11y ago
  I assume in 2034 a self-driving convory of trucks will still have a human steward in one of the cabs.
  • Jack000 11y ago
    I'm thinking the human would be sitting a cubicle, monitoring 100+ trucks in disparate locations remotely
    • vlehto 11y ago
      I'd guess we see tractors as the first step. They typically drive so slow the controller only needs to have stop button. If a farmer could simultaneously monitor just 4 tractors, you could make tractors half the size while having twice the work done. This would double the number of sold tractors, which gives economy of scale. While also making assembly lines lot smaller and simplifying logistics. Trucks don't scale in similar fashion. Inter-modal containers are lot bigger than ploughs.
  • iamben 11y ago
    I suspect more likely would be some kind of security team to prevent the truck's cargo from being jacked? Unless, of course, the driverless savings assume some loss of contents.
    • tormeh 11y ago
      Well, you'd need to force the cargo hold/container open; there's no driver to threaten. Assuming it's locked, you'd need some serious power to do that. A tractor or explosives, perhaps. I don't think many will bother.
      • merpnderp 11y ago
        Right now most trailers are secured with either a simple padlock or a metal ribbon with a unique number stamped on it (so if it is cut, the person signing off will know).
      • 11y ago
• drpgq 11y ago
  Have secretaries really disappeared though? I think they've just shifted job titles to things like admin assistant.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    The tasks are different. A secretary back in the 70's and earlier was primarily a typist/dictation taker. An Admin Assistant is closer to a small office manager than a traditional secretary.
  • Johnny555 11y ago
    I work in a 100 person company and we have no dedicated Admin assistant, just a couple employees who act as receptionist, HR, office manager, and part-time admin assistant to the CEO. so 2% of our workforce falls under the "Admin assistant" role. If we didn't have extended office hours that needed two people to cover, we'd probably have only one person in that role. So while Secretary/Admin Assistants haven't disappeared completely, there aren't as many as there used to be.
  • pinkrooftop 11y ago
    There are a few MBAs doing the job of secretary in my office. "Senior Communications Analyst" sounds snarky, but its true
  • njharman 11y ago
    No, but the jobs they use to do have been replaced to varying degrees. So, a company needs far fewer of them (and more likely just munge their tasks into something else). Some secretarial tasks much less common these days and/or mostly automated so primary worker does them themselves. Typing, retyping, dictating, managing calendars, meeting scheduling, appointments, taking voice messages, dealing with mail(physical opening/organizing), internal memos, filing, searching for stuff in those files, copying, faxing. What office floor use to look like https://themalcolmauldblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/secretary-pool.jpg https://themalcolmauldblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/secre...
  • rhino369 11y ago
    Companies used to have a single secretary for each executive, manager, and other mid level worker. Mad Men isn't exaggerating. For the very high end employees, sectaries morphed into admin assistants. Executives and other other very high level people still get a single assistant. But the junior executives and middle management don't have a designated assistants. They may share one with many other employees. But most of them just do a lot of the work themselves or have underlings do it in addition to their other work. I work in the legal field, one of the few that still has secretaries. Our office space is set up with a secretary desk right outside each attorney office. But now I share my secretary with NINE other attorneys. My mom is a secretary. She's gone from working for one executive to essentially being the secretary for the entire staff. So yes, the title and role changed. But there still has been a massive reduction.