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Jobs that no longer exist
- galfarragem 10y agoLamplighters are not extinct yet. They still exist in Poland at least (Wroclaw).
- ldjb 10y agoWe have a handful of them in London, too: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/dec/25/londons-last-gas-street-lamps https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/dec/25/londons-last...
- MulliMulli 10y agoTrump will bring back all these jobs!
- mtmail 10y agoLet's leave cheap political jokes off HN.
- phpnode 10y agoThe milkman is still a thing in the UK at least, but certainly dwindling.
- matthewking 10y agoCame here to say this, its sad really, quite convenient and I miss the noise of the electric milk float at 4am, always knew that meant it was time to stop coding and go to bed! Depends where you live though, still heard it in Dorset.
- spitfire 10y agoWe'll probably start hearing it again as we slowly move to a demand delivery grocery model.
- planteen 10y agoCan we please bring back lectors for open office floor plans? And you can still get premium milk delivered in the Denver area from Royal Crest dairy.
- shaftoe 10y agoHow is a lector different from audible/youtube/podcasts?
- ekianjo 10y agoHow is talking to a person in front of you different from talking to someone via Skype/video-conference ? Proximity matters.
- mrob 10y ago1. More comfortable than wearing headphones or earphones all day. 2. The fact that it's a human speaking makes particularly annoying sounds (eg. most music) impossible. There is also strong social pressure to not be annoying, because the person to blame is right there in the room.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoI wouldn't want it personally, I can't focus with people talking in the same room and this extends to the music I listen to when doing tasks that require focus (coding, drawing, reading, etc), I need it to be instrumental because otherwise it just throws me off. First discovered this trying to read in a break room at one of my first jobs and realized that I was processing the conversations around me even when I didn't want to (made only worse by the fact that both English and Spanish conversations were going on that I could understand.) So we can go ahead and get a lector, but I'll be tuning them out with headphones or working from home.
- gaius 10y agoInteresting fact: Cuban cigars are named thing like Romeo y Julieta or Monte Christo, because those were the books read aloud as those cigars were being rolled.
- feborges 10y agoI wonder, what other jobs no longer exist?
- ctz 10y agoComputers is one job that comes to mind (as in human computer, one who computes).
- eatbitseveryday 10y agoI think a modern version of a grocery delivery person would be valuable, but not to deliver food from nearby stores, but instead from nearby farms. It wouldn't need to be everyday, perhaps weekly. That keeps us using locally grown foods.
- germinalphrase 10y agoJust want to reiterate how nice a CSA share can be. Sometimes you need to be a little creative in the kitchen, but it's less expensive than buying the same quality elsewhere. Also, I have several friends that run/work on organic farms and CSA memberships are critical to their ability to survive as small farm operations.
- franze 10y agoThere are multiple companies like this in germany/austria. Basically a subscription to organic food (Vegetables, bread, cheese,...). You never know exactly what you get, but most of the time you are ok with it. One example: http://www.adamah.at http://www.adamah.at
- tajen 10y agoWe actually have this in many developed places, albeit only for vegetables. Urban people subscribe to an "organic farm coop" and receive a set of season vegetables per week. They don't have much choice, but the upsides are: - No intermediary/supermarket involved: Margins are fully paid to the producer who can either get a decent pay, work less or pay better materials, - Vegetables are ripe, but needn't be nice, filtered or advertised in a fancy packing, - Delivery at the reception of your company, - The producer has forseeable recurrent revenue, just like developers for cloud services. I've seen this in 2 French cities and in Sydney, so I bet it exists in San Francisco and most major cities.
- cowsandmilk 10y agoYep, there are at least a dozen "Community-supported agriculture" organizations in SF that will deliver veggies weekly. And in Boston. And in most major cities in the US and many smaller ones as well. You buy shares or a subscription (different places use different terms) and you get a portion of what the farm produces.
- Waterluvian 10y agoWhenever I get onto the subject of how robots are taking jobs away from people, my usual simple argument (when the conversation is only going to be a minute long) is that refrigeration took many jobs away, such as ice and milk delivery people. But I wish I could find a more significant example of some industry that was huge and is now entirely gone due to modernization.
- rwmj 10y agoDock workers (almost entirely replaced by containerization).
- mixedCase 10y agoOps guys (almost entirely replaced by containerization). (I kid, I kid)
- 3pt14159 10y agoWell cloth / clothing manufacturing is probably the largest decrease I can think of. From the cotton pickers, to the spinsters, to the weavers, and tailors. Much of it has been mechanized. The difference with robots though is that they can actually 100% out perform humans in the not to distant future. Once a robot has hands as agile and controllable as ours, and once they have energy requirements that are cheaper than ours, I don't see how humans could compete with them in non-cerebral jobs. And there is a good segment of the population that can only do physical work.
- Waterluvian 10y agoI would intuit that the proportion of labourers to the rest has been decreasing throughout human history. I think what has me most curious is how low can it go. Is it possible to have near 0% labourers?
- lisper 10y agoFarmers. In 1850, >70% of people in the U.S. were farmers. Today <2% are. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-lowest-since-1850-s.html http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-lowest-...)
- mtmail 10y agoIn Germany we still have a couple of "Turmwächter" (turm = watchtower of a church, wächter = watcher) left. Their jobs used to be watching for enemies, fire and blow a horn to signal the time of day. Some have apartments in the watchtower. In my town the woman (http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/bizarre-berufe-tuermerin-auf-dem-turm-der-lambertikirche-in-muenster-a-938846.html http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/bizarre-berufe-tuermerin-auf-...) took the position as recently as two years ago, part time job and she has to go up the stairs every day. Between 21:00 and midnight every half an hour she blows a horn in all 4 directions. Her predecessor did the job for 70 years and reported 20 fires. German Wikipedia lists 10 in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, those are probably the last 10 remaining. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrmer https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrmer
- yoo1I 10y ago> hose are probably the last 10 remaining. Towers to watch for wildfires are still in use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lookout_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lookout_tower
- ekianjo 10y agoThat is the starting point of the game Firewatch, by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewatch
- kijin 10y agoThis looks like a job that could be replaced fairly easily with pattern-recognition software connected to infrared sensors and a satellite uplink. If a potential wildfire is detected, the system could send a drone to the location to confirm.
- XaspR8d 10y agoTrue, though having a human posted in remote locations has additional benefits, like assisting folks who are lost / injured.
- 10y ago
- teej 10y agoNear me there's a old duckpin bowling alley that's been refurbished to include a bar. They definitely employ pinsetters! It's such an interesting experience to have a human set pins just for you to knock them down. Modern pinsetters have a different style than those of old. https://m.imgur.com/ePXtfSU?r https://m.imgur.com/ePXtfSU?r
- scrollaway 10y agoOut of curiosity, are they faster or slower than mechanized pinsetters?
- teej 10y agoThey are faster but only if you aren't waiting on them to set someone else. Also due to the nature of duckpin, strikes and spares are harder to get so they typically aren't setting every pin.
- pimlottc 10y agoAs you noted, that's duckpin bowling, which uses differently shaped pins than "standard" ten pin bowling; shorter yet heavier. The New York Times did a nice mixed media piece a while ago on the sport and its fading popularity, which in part is because the additional difficulty in creating a mechanized pinsetter for this type of pin. There was a successful pinsetter invented, but the manufacturer went out of business in the 70s and declined the license the patent to other companies. Now there is a dwindling number of vintage pinsetting machines left, many of which have been cannibalized for parts to keep existing machines running. 0: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/sports/duckpin-bowling.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/sports/duckpin-bowling.htm...
- bobbytherobot 10y agoInteresting. This might in part explain why duckpin has been fading from mid-atlantic states where it use to be quite popular.
- jfroma 10y ago
- thrusong 10y agoI was a film projectionist at several theatres but moved on as everyone switched to digital. I know all the projection booths in my city are now run by managers from the first floor office.
- ekianjo 10y agoGood find. That is true that most of these jobs are gone now.
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoThe employers of projectionists were already trying to phase them out by employing one per N cinemas. The projectionist would have to drive around starting shows at different cinemas, and there would be no one around to fix a problem when it came up. Source: a local newspaper article a few decades ago.
- ekianjo 10y ago> body snatchers Were they actually stealing bodies? Was that something official or done in secret?
- yoo1I 10y agoThis was highly illegal and frowned upon in polite society, but doctors needed the body parts to study anatomy and paid for them. By chance I've recently read Dicken's "A Tale of Two Cities", which uses the banker's messenger secretly moonlighting as such a resurrectionist digging up bodies at night, as a plot device. Quite a fun read.
- andrewvijay 10y agoExpecting to see in the future: Coders - men and women writing code that would work in a computer before the computers figured they'd be better off writing code by themselves. :D
- meira 10y agoComputers will not write code by themselves. Someone else's code will be so Great that a lot of people will think it's intelligence by its own, but it will still be someone else's code.
- ekianjo 10y agoIn the very long run if we can reproduce human intelligence in a machine, maybe this will become a reality, but we are probably far, far away from it. (and further than we think we are).
- andrewvijay 10y agoYeah may be but who knows what the future holds!!
- adangert 10y agoMachine learning works by writing a framework for a computer to learn, then throwing tons of examples at the algorithm. The base may be created by humans, but the creativity actually comes from within the algorithm itself.
- andrewvijay 10y agoWhy not? programs as Training sets can do it I guess. Atleast for the mundane tasks in software like a large chunk of devops and UI stuff.
- pmyjavec 10y agoFlawless code for a fraction of the cost, matter of time?
- ekianjo 10y agoScribes/Copiers are completely gone, too. Until printing was invented every copy of every book had to be done by hand, one by one. That's not a super recent change, but still not too far in History.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThe entire medieval bookmaking process, from velum and inks to lettering to illumination (illustrations) was fascinating. And extraordinarily expensive. http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/21161/how-long-did-it-take-to-rewrite-the-bible-during-the-early-propagation-of-the-ch http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/21161/how-long-di... Figure that a single book was 1/2 to 1/3 a man-year's labour, of rare and skilled talent. They were more bespoke jewelry than media, and often treated as such. If you think about the falling costs, and increased access, to information over the span of centuries, it's staggering.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoRat catchers definitely still exist, they're employed by farming communities. Usually not a full time job.
- ekianjo 10y agoAnd they also have been replaced by Exterminators, who take care of all sorts of "pests" and insects usually with poisons or traps.
- CydeWeys 10y agoPoison and traps were in wide use at the time of the photos in question and had been for some time. The only reason that "ratcatcher" is a job that no longer exists is because it changed names to "exterminator", the same way that "secretary" no longer exists as a job and is now called "administrative assistant". Preferred titles have changed over time, but the basic job of killing rats absolutely still exists.
- __s 10y agoMy mother's a secretary
- bryanlarsen 10y agoAt least in my neck of the woods, a rat catcher's job is primarily monitoring. The rat catcher will trap and bait, but if fumigation is required, they'll call an exterminator.
- ape4 10y agoIts not like rats aren't around any more.
- ekianjo 10y agoIs there a reason why using cats is not effective?
- 10y ago
- ekianjo 10y agoA couple more: - luggage porters in train stations and the like. It used to be a whole business for voyagers who could afford it. - shoeshiners: yes they still do exist in some poorer countries, but by large they have disappeared (for numerous reasons).
- adrenalinelol 10y agoWe still have them in NYC. Right outside of Grand Central too (aka not the poor part of town).
- wingerlang 10y agohttps://www.yelp.com/biz/mels-shoe-shine-new-york https://www.yelp.com/biz/mels-shoe-shine-new-york
- bobbytherobot 10y agoThey are still around, but far less than they use to be. I remember as a kid you would find a shoe shine guy setup in the lobby of most buildings fill with professionally dressed people. Certainly work place attire has become more casual across the board, but there are still places where people dress up like lawyers. I find them still in train stations where there is a large enough traffic of people to support it. It goes to illustrate that fewer people are getting their shoes shined when a shoe shiner requires half the workforce in a city to pass them by instead of just occupants of a single building. It is perhaps that shoes are simply more disposable than they were before.
- rectang 10y agoI used to work in a record store (well, CD store) in the 90s. It was fun but times change! I liked the job in part because I got introduced to a lot of new music. But with the internet, it is so much easier to discover new music than it was, even for a record store employee.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- neonnoodle 10y agoAnother former record store employee here. I disagree about music discovery being easier now. I find I got much better recommendations from other music nerds than I tend to get from algorithms. The depth and nuance of micro-nano-pico genres is something that hasn't really been well replaced by machine learning IMO. I have a Google Play music subscription and its recommendations are pretty consistently bad. I don't get it. I have given it all my music and it monitors how often I listen to every song. Why can't it figure out what types of hooks I like? The human-curated playlists are almost always better; even if I don't like every choice, there's still some ineffable spark of a single human personality that gives unity to the selections.
- pmyjavec 10y agoSame, the steaming music service has heen frustraing for me, my music goes missing due to license changes etc. I'm thinking about at least relying on keeping my own digital library again. Also, have to agree about the music stores, they were and are good fun. I say that as they seem to be making a comeback.
- pimlottc 10y agoAnother one from the article recently posted on HN: library custodian. In the days of coal furnaces, many libraries had live-in apartments for the custodians who were tasked to keep the furnace going and generally look after the building. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847
- cstross 10y agoHere's another one: Computer. Back before programmable general-purposes computing machinery existed, computer was a human job description -- a human being who was employed to perform basic calculation tasks rapidly and accurately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer
- yolesaber 10y agoThat job still exists, except in the very far future, and is known as a "mentat"
- dave_sullivan 10y agoThat's kind of the joke though right? In 1965, when Dune was written, computer was still a human job title and mentats seemed like a totally reasonable far future extrapolation. Notice in Dune, no AIs, but they did have "family nukes". Really, Dune's vision of the future was about human augmentation through drugs (spice) as opposed to digital automation.
- icebraining 10y agoAIs do exist in the Dune world, they were simply forbidden after the Butlerian Jihad. The author didn't extrapolate, he made a deliberate decision to exclude such devices.
- dave_sullivan 10y agoHa, you're right. I forgot about that, but I even read the first book in the series about the butlerian jihad that Frank Herbert's son wrote. I should finish that series... So the thesis was "machines will enslave us but drugs and religion will set us free"? Because, of course, all fiction should reduce to a single sentence thesis, otherwise all those words would be a waste...
- OJFord 10y agoWhy on Earth is the milkman on that list? I stuck up skittles at a local government members' club just a decade ago too; I would assume that's still happening. It's not common, but some pubs still have skittle alleys - and someone's got to stick up!
- bobbytherobot 10y agoBecause milkmen don't exists anymore - at least not in the U.S. or Canada. Houses were built with little doors from the outside into a chillbox for the milkman to directly place the milk inside.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoThey're not completely gone. Here in Utah the Winder Dairy company still does milk and other dairy product delivery to the home. Maybe it's not exactly the same with a little door and whatnot but there's still a person delivering milk (among other things.)
- droithomme 10y agoMilkmen still deliver milk in the US, just not in all areas.
- planteen 10y agoYou can still get milk delivered in the Denver metro area in Colorado from Royal Crest dairy.
- OJFord 10y agoWell they exist here in the UK. I've not seen those built-in chill-boxes though - I suppose here the temperature's never been a reason not to just leave them on the doorstep!
- neonnoodle 10y agoHere are some more (in the US, at least) Travel agent Door to door salesman Typist Typesetter/Linotype operator Telegraph operator Ice and coal delivery Appliance repairman Then there are the jobs that just got consolidated out of widespread existence. They still exist but in very limited form. These are jobs that used to be regional until the market drifted toward economies of scale: Radio host Newspaper reporter/editor/cartoonist Greengrocer Bookseller
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agoThe first two are still around. I know someone whose wife has a travel agency: it's a specialty business now. And I have an aerial photo of my house that was sold by a door to door salesman. I also get sales people going door to door in my neighborhood selling anything from trash pickup to carpet cleaning. Appliance repair businesses are still around, they just focus on high-end appliances now.
- k__ 10y agoI have a travel agent in my street. Here in Germany they are omnipresent. But when I count how many people on Tinder got "Traveling" as their only hobby, I can see why. We had door to door salesmen back when I was young (15-20 years ago), they sold vacuum cleaners for Vorwerk or Kirby. High end systems, very expensive and they showed them at your home, my mother bought 2, so it worked haha. Then there are salesmen that sell stuff like scented candles, Tupperware, Dildos etc. pp. which throw tiny parties for their sales events at customers livingrooms. Not exactly door to door salesmen, but they visit customers at home to sell them things. 2009 I worked in an HR office (public service) where two typists worked, people recoreded letters all the time and they typed them with headphones on. I don't know if they still work there. A friend of mine lives in Berlin and heats with coal. She says many flats in the east of Berlin are still heated with those coal ovens. Sometimes she buys the coal at the store and sometimes she gets deliveries. Also here are regular markets with greengrocers and one of them even drives through my street once a week and sells from a truck. He has a bell and yells stuff like "POTATOOOOOS. FRESH APPLES AND CARROOOOTS" etc. And a friend of mine works as a bookseller.
- ranprieur 10y agoSome of those jobs look more fun than any jobs I could get now.
- animex 10y agoRat Catcher (dubbed the Rat Patrol here) still exists in one place in the world: Alberta, Canada. I think we're one of the only places with nearly zero Norway Rat Population. http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/All/agdex3441 http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/All/agd...
- Someone 10y agoTechnically, they aren't rats, but "muskrat catcher" is a profession in parts of Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskrat#In_human_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskrat#In_human_history: "In some European countries, such as Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, the muskrat is considered an invasive pest, as its burrowing damages the dikes and levees on which these low-lying countries depend for protection from flooding. In those countries, it is trapped, poisoned, and hunted to attempt to keep the population down"
- ianopolous 10y agoThe lamp lighter job still exists in Wroclaw: https://www.inyourpocket.com/wroclaw/The-Wroclaw-Lamplighter_73110f https://www.inyourpocket.com/wroclaw/The-Wroclaw-Lamplighter...
- dwaltrip 10y agoV