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In a related note. I had a new client in fall of 2018. The purpose was to build a system that collected and tracked competitors prices across a portfolio of ent
by mswen 8y ago
In a related note. I had a new client in fall of 2018. The purpose was to build a system that collected and tracked competitors prices across a portfolio of enterprise products. When we first started talking the Director of Operations indicated that they were looking at hiring an entry level pricing analyst who would track competitors prices and use that market information plus other internal information to set appropriate prices for their own company. This was across about 4000 model/part numbers.
About 40 to 50 hours into the project I have a show and tell demo on what I had developed so far. At the end of the meeting the Director of Operations leans back and says.
"What I envisioned as the never ending, never caught up task of collecting and organizing competitive pricing is now going to be 1 or 2 hours a day for someone."
Developer me was proud to hear that. I heard/understood the real business requirements and developed a system that automates away 90% of the repetitive drudgery of the overall task leaving someone better able to spend time on edge cases and what is changing in the market.
On the other hand I felt slightly guilty that maybe now someone who is already too busy will get this added to their plate because it is just an hour or two a day. And, that someone else who could really use an entry level analysis job, won't get one because I automated it away before they could even get started.
In the end developer me will keep building stuff like this because that is what is valued and helps pay my bills.
- harryh 8y agoAnd, that someone else who could really use an entry level analysis job, won't get one because I automated it away before they could even get started. You didn't take a job away from anyone. You freed up someone from drudgery so that they could do more valuable work instead. This is EXACTLY how society gets richer. We have hundreds of years of evidence that this is the case.
- mswen 8y agoYes. I mostly believe this as well. I have little or no guilt about it. Especially since the person was not yet hired. But when I think about stuff like this happening at scale across tens of thousands of small private companies it starts to add up to a lot of missing entry level jobs. I will keep automating away the drudgery in part because it is inevitable and I might as well be someone who profits from the master trend rather than be trampled by the trend.
- egypturnash 8y agoOn the other hand... in a lot of fields, doing the drudgery is the perfect thing for apprentices and new hires to do. You can learn a lot of stuff from grinding on the boring tasks that need doing but nobody wants to do. And while doing this you make contacts, learn other processes, and end up being in the right place at the right time when a better gig in the company opens up.
- cvrjk 8y agoI guess, stuff that is getting automated, should become a part of the education curriculum. That way, the hire will have the relevant know how, and start doing useful work on joining.
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoThe impact of AI and automation on white collar jobs isn't going to be that they're going to be entirely replaced, but that the top 10% of employees are going to become so productive that they displace swaths of less productive workers. I think this is a really clear example of that.