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Tools like email, instant messenger, and online calendars made secretaries much more productive which increased demand for the skills. Wait... Replacement of p

Tools like email, instant messenger, and online calendars made secretaries much more productive which increased demand for the skills. Wait... Replacement of programmers will follow these lines. New tools, like copilot (haven't tried, but will soon), new languages, libraries, better IDEs, stack overflows, Google, etc will make programming easier and more productive. One programmer will do the work that ten did. That a hundred did. You'll learn to become an effective programmer from a bootcamp (already possible - I know someone who went from bootcamp to Google), then from a few tutorials will. Just like the secretary's role in the office was replaced by everyone managing their own calendars and communications the programmer will be replaced by one or two tremendously productive folks and your average business person being able to generate enough code to get the job done.

pantalaimon 5y ago
but secretaries are still a thing, they are just usually shared by a whole team / department these days
- haimez 5y ago
  That was the point, I think.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  I had a corporate gig as a coder reporting to at most three economists at any one time. I spent at least two hours of every day getting them to explain what they wanted, explaining the implications of what they were asking for, explaining the results of the code to them, etc. So even if I didn't need to code at all my efficiency would have expanded by at most a factor of 4.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    The future as I see it is that coding will become a relatively trivial skill. The economists would each know how to code and that would remove you from the equation. They would implement whatever thing they were trying to do themselves. This would scale to support any number of economists. This would also be a simpler model and that simplicity might lead to a better product. In your model, the economists must explain to you, then you must write the code. That adds a layer where errors could happen - you misunderstand the economists or they explain poorly or you forget or whatever. If the economists could implement things themselves - less room for "telephone" type errors. This would also allow the economists to prototype, experiment, and iterate faster.
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      That game of telephone is certainly an enormous pain point, and I can imagine a future where I'm out of a job -- but it's extremely hard for me to see them learning to code.
      - zerd 5y ago
        And if what the economists needed to do could be programmed trivially with the help of AI then their job is probably also replaceable by AI.
        Jeff_Brown 5y ago
        That would be harder. I shuffled data into a new form; they wrote papers. All I had to understand was what they wanted, and how to get there; they had to understand enough of the world to argue that a given natural experiment showed drug X was an effective treatment for condition Y.
noelherrick 5y ago
Secretaries became admin assistants who are much more productive and valuable since they switched their job to things like helping with the content of written communications, preparing presentations, and managing relationships. I saw my mother go through this transition and it wasn't really rough (though she's a smart and hard-working person).
- epolanski 5y ago
  > Secretaries became admin assistants That doesn't mean anything. The last 20 years have seen an absurd chase of more and more stupidity in job titles to make people feel they are "executive assistants" instead of secretaries, "vice presidents" instead of whatever managerial role, etc, etc.
itsoktocry 5y ago
>Tools like email, instant messenger, and online calendars made secretaries much more productive which increased demand for the skills. Wait... There are more "secretaries" than ever, and they get to do far more productive things than delivering phone messages.

pantalaimon 5y ago

but secretaries are still a thing, they are just usually shared by a whole team / department these days

haimez 5y ago
That was the point, I think.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
I had a corporate gig as a coder reporting to at most three economists at any one time. I spent at least two hours of every day getting them to explain what they wanted, explaining the implications of what they were asking for, explaining the results of the code to them, etc. So even if I didn't need to code at all my efficiency would have expanded by at most a factor of 4.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  The future as I see it is that coding will become a relatively trivial skill. The economists would each know how to code and that would remove you from the equation. They would implement whatever thing they were trying to do themselves. This would scale to support any number of economists. This would also be a simpler model and that simplicity might lead to a better product. In your model, the economists must explain to you, then you must write the code. That adds a layer where errors could happen - you misunderstand the economists or they explain poorly or you forget or whatever. If the economists could implement things themselves - less room for "telephone" type errors. This would also allow the economists to prototype, experiment, and iterate faster.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    That game of telephone is certainly an enormous pain point, and I can imagine a future where I'm out of a job -- but it's extremely hard for me to see them learning to code.
    - zerd 5y ago
      And if what the economists needed to do could be programmed trivially with the help of AI then their job is probably also replaceable by AI.
      - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
        That would be harder. I shuffled data into a new form; they wrote papers. All I had to understand was what they wanted, and how to get there; they had to understand enough of the world to argue that a given natural experiment showed drug X was an effective treatment for condition Y.

noelherrick 5y ago

Secretaries became admin assistants who are much more productive and valuable since they switched their job to things like helping with the content of written communications, preparing presentations, and managing relationships. I saw my mother go through this transition and it wasn't really rough (though she's a smart and hard-working person).

epolanski 5y ago
> Secretaries became admin assistants That doesn't mean anything. The last 20 years have seen an absurd chase of more and more stupidity in job titles to make people feel they are "executive assistants" instead of secretaries, "vice presidents" instead of whatever managerial role, etc, etc.

itsoktocry 5y ago

>Tools like email, instant messenger, and online calendars made secretaries much more productive which increased demand for the skills. Wait... There are more "secretaries" than ever, and they get to do far more productive things than delivering phone messages.