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There are types of programming that create jobs, but you're right, most of them eliminate jobs while making the rich (owners of our companies) richer. Which k

There are types of programming that create jobs, but you're right, most of them eliminate jobs while making the rich (owners of our companies) richer. Which kind of sucks if you think about it. The programming that creates job is the kind that sells to consumers. Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. B2B will eliminate jobs. Most programming is B2B (I think...) because it's easier to take money from other companies. Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games Iphone Apps Todo lists Products that make money by showing advertising

redthrowaway 15y ago
If you work for a publicly-traded company, then you aren't really "making the rich richer", or at least not totally. Some of the biggest investors are pension and mutual funds, so it's quite likely that the success of your company is being shared by many fairly ordinary people.
mseebach 15y ago
> Which kind of sucks if you think about it. Yeah, it totally sucked that the tractor came along and eliminated all those coveted farm hand jobs. Software is the tractor of our time. > Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. Such as the iTunes store that overnight closed pretty much every single brick-and-mortar music store in the world (mild, but only mild, hyperbole)? > Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games doesn't automate a physical task, but it's silly to assume that they haven't displaced other kinds of entertainment, say, perhaps, comic books. (I consume neither games nor comic books, so I'm speculating) Whether an iPhone app has destroyed or created jobs depends on the app, after all it's just a computer program like any other. Take magazines and newspapers: There is NOTHING these businesses would like better than to shut down their printers and distribution divisions. Those are, if anything ever was, pure cost centres. Also, any app that lets you do something from your phone that you otherwise had to call a call centre to do probably isn't exactly a job creator. I don't know how todo-lists earned a spot on the list, but there is no reason to believe that they (and any other "productivity" app, say, a good e-mail client or calendar app) don't, on the margin, raise the barrier to needing a personal assistant/secretary. Advertising online is just one example of the lower-barriers-to-everything that the Internet has facilitated. Whether the Internet is a job creator probably depends on who you ask: A self-taught Rails dev or a Borders employee. EDIT: My point, which took a little while to crystallise, is that at businesses the things being automated away are larger and have individual accounts, so savings/consequences are very visible. When you download NYT to your iPad, they don't fire three guys in the printshop, they need a small fraction of one of them less. When you send an e-mail to your mother, a fraction of a person in the mail- or greeting cards industry is less needed. Etc.
guard-of-terra 15y ago
As pg pointed out, everybody should be concerned with creating more wealth instead of creating more jobs. There are economies where are a lot of jobs (low unemployment) but very few wealth and it doesn't seem to stick regardless of what they do. You probably don't want that. As long as you do your job of creating wealth you can hope somebody else to work at improving wealth distribution process. Most of programming either creates wealth or conserves wealth, which is a good thing.

redthrowaway 15y ago

If you work for a publicly-traded company, then you aren't really "making the rich richer", or at least not totally. Some of the biggest investors are pension and mutual funds, so it's quite likely that the success of your company is being shared by many fairly ordinary people.

mseebach 15y ago

> Which kind of sucks if you think about it. Yeah, it totally sucked that the tractor came along and eliminated all those coveted farm hand jobs. Software is the tractor of our time. > Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. Such as the iTunes store that overnight closed pretty much every single brick-and-mortar music store in the world (mild, but only mild, hyperbole)? > Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games doesn't automate a physical task, but it's silly to assume that they haven't displaced other kinds of entertainment, say, perhaps, comic books. (I consume neither games nor comic books, so I'm speculating) Whether an iPhone app has destroyed or created jobs depends on the app, after all it's just a computer program like any other. Take magazines and newspapers: There is NOTHING these businesses would like better than to shut down their printers and distribution divisions. Those are, if anything ever was, pure cost centres. Also, any app that lets you do something from your phone that you otherwise had to call a call centre to do probably isn't exactly a job creator. I don't know how todo-lists earned a spot on the list, but there is no reason to believe that they (and any other "productivity" app, say, a good e-mail client or calendar app) don't, on the margin, raise the barrier to needing a personal assistant/secretary. Advertising online is just one example of the lower-barriers-to-everything that the Internet has facilitated. Whether the Internet is a job creator probably depends on who you ask: A self-taught Rails dev or a Borders employee. EDIT: My point, which took a little while to crystallise, is that at businesses the things being automated away are larger and have individual accounts, so savings/consequences are very visible. When you download NYT to your iPad, they don't fire three guys in the printshop, they need a small fraction of one of them less. When you send an e-mail to your mother, a fraction of a person in the mail- or greeting cards industry is less needed. Etc.

guard-of-terra 15y ago

As pg pointed out, everybody should be concerned with creating more wealth instead of creating more jobs. There are economies where are a lot of jobs (low unemployment) but very few wealth and it doesn't seem to stick regardless of what they do. You probably don't want that. As long as you do your job of creating wealth you can hope somebody else to work at improving wealth distribution process. Most of programming either creates wealth or conserves wealth, which is a good thing.