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I really doubt anyone can be paid a decent salary to do something "directly comparable to laying bricks". Brick laying is completely repeatable iteration, requ

I really doubt anyone can be paid a decent salary to do something "directly comparable to laying bricks". Brick laying is completely repeatable iteration, requiring no modification or thinking. Anything "directly comparable" to that can be done by a program. That's not a job - that's a short programming project. More broadly, there's always a set of roles which haven't been automated... just yet. Being a sysadmin, for example, used to be a job. People used to be able to make pretty good living from managing a small custom set of servers sitting in a room somewhere. It was extremely common, too. Almost every company had some of these people on payroll. Must have seemed like a good, secure career. It required a ton more learning, skills, and thinking than brick laying. Yet it got completely automated. Now we have devops, which are programmers who write programs to do what sysadmins used to do. Each devop is effectively replacing hundreds or more of those former sysadmins, by leveraging automation.

Retric 8y ago
Brick laying is not that simple even if it seems that way. Which is one of the reasons it has yet to be automated. Also, plenty of system administrators still make a good living out there. Just as their are still companies running 40 year old code. Automation is less about replacing every system administrator as it is allowing companies to have fewer of them. Which eventually means it’s not a full time job and it’s folded into other tasks. Generally the costs of automation outweigh the benifits at some point and people sit in the middle. Look at a coke bottling plant and their is one manual step where a guy loads the can lids into the machine. It’s just one guy and he gets something like 1,700 cans a minute so it’s just not a big deal. PS: See 5:00 to 6:00 on this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQXxhd4CHE#fauxfullscreen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQXxhd4CHE#fauxfullscreen
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > Automation is less about replacing every system administrator as it is allowing companies to have fewer of them. Which eventually means it’s not a full time job and it’s folded into other tasks. Sure, but that's exactly my point. One devop who is much more capable in programming, leverages his superior skills to automate away 20-50 sysadmins. That one devop still has a job. In fact, he is probably promoted and makes more money than any of the single sysadmin he replaces, since he his set of skills and abilities is more rare. But that doesn't change the fact that 29-49 lower-skilled tech workers are now out of a job. All these people went into sysadmin training because someone naively projected very high demand for their relatively limited skillset. Then they got automated away. The same process is happening relentlessly. Ever more so as the cost of living in places like the Bay skyrockets. Companies employ fewer people, pay each of them more, but expect a very large amount of output from each. So telling people "hey, you don't have to be smart, or learn much, to have a great career in tech" is simply misleading. Take a guess at the number of sysadmins who followed this advice, and have out of a job since the advent of the cloud.

Retric 8y ago

Brick laying is not that simple even if it seems that way. Which is one of the reasons it has yet to be automated. Also, plenty of system administrators still make a good living out there. Just as their are still companies running 40 year old code. Automation is less about replacing every system administrator as it is allowing companies to have fewer of them. Which eventually means it’s not a full time job and it’s folded into other tasks. Generally the costs of automation outweigh the benifits at some point and people sit in the middle. Look at a coke bottling plant and their is one manual step where a guy loads the can lids into the machine. It’s just one guy and he gets something like 1,700 cans a minute so it’s just not a big deal. PS: See 5:00 to 6:00 on this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQXxhd4CHE#fauxfullscreen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHQXxhd4CHE#fauxfullscreen

dunpeal 8y ago
> Automation is less about replacing every system administrator as it is allowing companies to have fewer of them. Which eventually means it’s not a full time job and it’s folded into other tasks. Sure, but that's exactly my point. One devop who is much more capable in programming, leverages his superior skills to automate away 20-50 sysadmins. That one devop still has a job. In fact, he is probably promoted and makes more money than any of the single sysadmin he replaces, since he his set of skills and abilities is more rare. But that doesn't change the fact that 29-49 lower-skilled tech workers are now out of a job. All these people went into sysadmin training because someone naively projected very high demand for their relatively limited skillset. Then they got automated away. The same process is happening relentlessly. Ever more so as the cost of living in places like the Bay skyrockets. Companies employ fewer people, pay each of them more, but expect a very large amount of output from each. So telling people "hey, you don't have to be smart, or learn much, to have a great career in tech" is simply misleading. Take a guess at the number of sysadmins who followed this advice, and have out of a job since the advent of the cloud.