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Sadly the media still likes to portray Houston as a town where everyone wears cowboy hats and that oil comes out of the ground Jed Clampett style. Literally al

Sadly the media still likes to portray Houston as a town where everyone wears cowboy hats and that oil comes out of the ground Jed Clampett style. Literally all of my surrounding neighbors are mechanical engineers for oilfield service companies and the common thing we've talked about recently IS automation. However the reality isn't robots but better engineering/process that lets a part run 50x as long with a greater prediction for need of replacement. You don't have to keep 100 hands on a drilling site for the peak demand if you can effectively schedule.

ryanmarsh 10y ago
> You don't have to keep 100 hands on a drilling site for the peak demand if you can effectively schedule. Exactly, which is why automation is going to kill so many white-collar jobs. "Effectively schedule" means let a computer do it, not Sally Scheduler who has been doing it in Excel only because they forced her to stop using paper and pen. This article is basically saying "the planes practically fly themselves", and I'm like "yah but do you still see two pilots in the cockpit?". There might be 50 extra people on a drill site but there's 5,000 in the back office whose jobs could be replaced with some quick programming and no robots.
- manglav 10y ago
  Any suggestions on this quick programming? I'm a ChemE turned programmer, it would be a cool opportunity to explore. Feel free to email me, username @ gmail.
  - ceedan 10y ago
    "5,000 jobs could be replaced" "cool opportunity" what a time to be alive
    - arjie 10y ago
      Why even would someone against that be on HN? It's a place where people interested in startups are. Automating jobs away is always seen as a fantastic opportunity here.
      - knn 10y ago
        It's a great opportunity for those automating. I'm totally for automation as it creates wealth and I think is good for humanity in the long run, but people suffer from automation (losing jobs, homes, provision for their families) in the short term. People suffering from automation is a major reason why Trump was elected. It's highly insensitive to not be aware of the pain that is caused by automation by technologists like us.
        mitochondrion 10y ago
        For the most part, automation doesn't create wealth. Sometimes it dramatically improves the functionality of an operation, but mostly it just lets private enterprise replace humans with capital. Thus, it enormously increases the wealth of the owners of that capital, and moderately increases the wealth of the managers of that capital, but overall wealth is not increased, only distributed differently. Also, to the extent that Trump was elected because of economic factors rather than social factors, a cultural reaction against the rampant libertinism of late-stage liberalism, it was because their jobs were not automated but exported overseas. If their jobs hadn't been exported en masse, they would have been largely protected from automation for the last 30 years and until 10 to 20 years from now when things really get serious.
        jordanb 10y ago
        Back when the labor movements were stronger it could be a good thing for (almost) everyone because in order to introduce new automation, management would have to offer employees something in return (high wages, benefits, shorter working hours, etc). The end result is that everyone up and down the income distribution benefited from gains in efficiency. And those who were displaced had little problem finding new work because their former coworkers now had more money and/or leisure time to spend on new economic activity.
        closeparen 10y ago
        >wealth is not increased, only distributed differently When we have the technology to meet the population's needs without its involvement in production, we have something much better than wealth: we have our lives back, our time and energy, our freedom from wage slavery. We have government for the distribution problem. The most viscerally disturbing thing I've ever seen a human do, is wish that others be forced to expend useless, unnecessary effort to "earn" what we could just hand out. I understand the argument about stealing person A's labor output and giving it to person B, but no individual has a legitimate moral claim on the output of a fully automated process.
- fokov 10y ago
  We are already there in other sectors. I have worked in Workforce Management and Optimization (WFM/WFO) for the past few years. Scheduling is already common in areas where demand can be easily captured, for example retail banking and contact centers. We use the past data plus other "stuff" to determine the given workload for a position/activity and then schedule employees based on several factors among them are min/max hours, availability, competency, and proficiency. We even have algorithms that determine when you should hire or fire people based on workload. From my point of view, anything that can measure demand will eventually have automatic scheduling. All those jobs go poof I think back office is still the current whale in the space. Some of it is harder to determine especially with async work. You are right that thousands of people will continue to lose their jobs here. Back in the day it took my college a long time to process graduation applications. I got a job in that sector that sold software to manage things like students. 6 months of processing buffer down to a button press that takes a few minutes to do everything. So many paper pushes, managers, and other "useless" jobs will go away. Right after that will be those jobs that make sure everything is in order/correct according to business rules and laws. After that will be the huge disruption of lawyers and doctors. Honestly, I am pessimistic of the future because I see it this way and do not see any political system in my country that is trying to prepare for mass unemployment or people without relevant skills.
  - jordanb 10y ago
    Now you have a computer making sure nobody gets full time hours, schedules are different every day and change weekly making it impossible to plan a life around the job. And of course people need more than one job and the other jobs are doing the same thing. You can see similar patterns with eLearning and performance management technology. The former decreases the cost of turnover for a firm, the latter eliminates the employee's ability to shirk which in turn frees the firm from having to offer Efficiency Wages. The firm is now able to adopt a policy of "burn 'em out and replace 'em" and offer the lowest wages legally permissible. Amazon appears to be at the leading edge of this technology revolution.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      >" Amazon appears to be at the leading edge of this technology revolution." Can you elaborate on this? In which parts of Amazon? Order fulfillment? IT?

ryanmarsh 10y ago

> You don't have to keep 100 hands on a drilling site for the peak demand if you can effectively schedule. Exactly, which is why automation is going to kill so many white-collar jobs. "Effectively schedule" means let a computer do it, not Sally Scheduler who has been doing it in Excel only because they forced her to stop using paper and pen. This article is basically saying "the planes practically fly themselves", and I'm like "yah but do you still see two pilots in the cockpit?". There might be 50 extra people on a drill site but there's 5,000 in the back office whose jobs could be replaced with some quick programming and no robots.

manglav 10y ago
Any suggestions on this quick programming? I'm a ChemE turned programmer, it would be a cool opportunity to explore. Feel free to email me, username @ gmail.
- ceedan 10y ago
  "5,000 jobs could be replaced" "cool opportunity" what a time to be alive
  - arjie 10y ago
    Why even would someone against that be on HN? It's a place where people interested in startups are. Automating jobs away is always seen as a fantastic opportunity here.
    - knn 10y ago
      It's a great opportunity for those automating. I'm totally for automation as it creates wealth and I think is good for humanity in the long run, but people suffer from automation (losing jobs, homes, provision for their families) in the short term. People suffering from automation is a major reason why Trump was elected. It's highly insensitive to not be aware of the pain that is caused by automation by technologists like us.
      - mitochondrion 10y ago
        For the most part, automation doesn't create wealth. Sometimes it dramatically improves the functionality of an operation, but mostly it just lets private enterprise replace humans with capital. Thus, it enormously increases the wealth of the owners of that capital, and moderately increases the wealth of the managers of that capital, but overall wealth is not increased, only distributed differently. Also, to the extent that Trump was elected because of economic factors rather than social factors, a cultural reaction against the rampant libertinism of late-stage liberalism, it was because their jobs were not automated but exported overseas. If their jobs hadn't been exported en masse, they would have been largely protected from automation for the last 30 years and until 10 to 20 years from now when things really get serious.
        jordanb 10y ago
        Back when the labor movements were stronger it could be a good thing for (almost) everyone because in order to introduce new automation, management would have to offer employees something in return (high wages, benefits, shorter working hours, etc). The end result is that everyone up and down the income distribution benefited from gains in efficiency. And those who were displaced had little problem finding new work because their former coworkers now had more money and/or leisure time to spend on new economic activity.
        closeparen 10y ago
        >wealth is not increased, only distributed differently When we have the technology to meet the population's needs without its involvement in production, we have something much better than wealth: we have our lives back, our time and energy, our freedom from wage slavery. We have government for the distribution problem. The most viscerally disturbing thing I've ever seen a human do, is wish that others be forced to expend useless, unnecessary effort to "earn" what we could just hand out. I understand the argument about stealing person A's labor output and giving it to person B, but no individual has a legitimate moral claim on the output of a fully automated process.
fokov 10y ago
We are already there in other sectors. I have worked in Workforce Management and Optimization (WFM/WFO) for the past few years. Scheduling is already common in areas where demand can be easily captured, for example retail banking and contact centers. We use the past data plus other "stuff" to determine the given workload for a position/activity and then schedule employees based on several factors among them are min/max hours, availability, competency, and proficiency. We even have algorithms that determine when you should hire or fire people based on workload. From my point of view, anything that can measure demand will eventually have automatic scheduling. All those jobs go poof I think back office is still the current whale in the space. Some of it is harder to determine especially with async work. You are right that thousands of people will continue to lose their jobs here. Back in the day it took my college a long time to process graduation applications. I got a job in that sector that sold software to manage things like students. 6 months of processing buffer down to a button press that takes a few minutes to do everything. So many paper pushes, managers, and other "useless" jobs will go away. Right after that will be those jobs that make sure everything is in order/correct according to business rules and laws. After that will be the huge disruption of lawyers and doctors. Honestly, I am pessimistic of the future because I see it this way and do not see any political system in my country that is trying to prepare for mass unemployment or people without relevant skills.
- jordanb 10y ago
  Now you have a computer making sure nobody gets full time hours, schedules are different every day and change weekly making it impossible to plan a life around the job. And of course people need more than one job and the other jobs are doing the same thing. You can see similar patterns with eLearning and performance management technology. The former decreases the cost of turnover for a firm, the latter eliminates the employee's ability to shirk which in turn frees the firm from having to offer Efficiency Wages. The firm is now able to adopt a policy of "burn 'em out and replace 'em" and offer the lowest wages legally permissible. Amazon appears to be at the leading edge of this technology revolution.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    >" Amazon appears to be at the leading edge of this technology revolution." Can you elaborate on this? In which parts of Amazon? Order fulfillment? IT?