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> The cynical me says they weren't smart enough to automate away their own work (so they could be assigned more, different work), so eff 'em, right? That is, un

> The cynical me says they weren't smart enough to automate away their own work (so they could be assigned more, different work), so eff 'em, right? That is, until someone else automates away your job. Sort of besides the point but I wish someone _would_ automate my job so I can find even more interesting things to work on; I’m trying and I haven’t figured out how to yet. Yes, this is obviously only a position someone can feel if they are blessed with either lots of ability or economic security, but could we change that? I know the problem is the resulting economic hit and not the having of a job or not, and I wish we had more of a safety net and support for people shuffling to better economic activities rather than being stuck in a local maxima with potentially disastrous switching costs. Things like UBI, public option healthcare, free state sponsored college degrees, and government sponsored vocational training have a decent record, and I wonder how we can scale them up past things like the GI bill.

HWR_14 4y ago
> but I wish someone _would_ automate my job so I can find even more interesting things to work on What makes you think you would work on "more interesting things" as opposed to "nothing". That is, why would your employer keep you on as opposed to firing you.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try my hand at consulting or making my own business). But, to me, that would’ve been preferable to doing busy make-work, or worse lobbying to keep the inefficiencies that provide me the busywork I use to justify a salary. Once something becomes automate-able, I think it should be. I have never seen software people at the big co FAANG companies I’ve worked at get let go because their core job was automated, only reassigned out of dead end roles that never would have gotten them promoted. I understand this position is only possible to hold alongside all those privileges.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    But why do you not see or feel that if you’re capable of doing more interesting work than your current role that you don’t need wait for automation to make you redundant to switch roles.
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      Because my work isn’t fully automate-able yet; if I became aware of a method to do so I would do it.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    > They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try my hand at consulting or making my own business). > But, to me, that would’ve been preferable to doing busy make-work Good news. You can totally stop doing busy make-work and find another job, start consulting or start a business right now! You don't have to wait to be fired. Yes, if you work at a large software shop, they may reassign you. Or maybe not. Apparently even FAANG is trimming workforce.
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      This misses the point that things become busywork because there are better alternatives. There is a difference between weaving a pattern by hand now vs hand weaving before the invention of the loom. My work isn’t busywork _yet_ because I don’t know of a way to automate it. As an aside about large software shops reassigning, I’ve found at large software shops a big part of the role is making up meaningful work for yourself that helps the firm, and that’s a large part of what is actually rewarded (as opposed to fixing bugs or maintenance). I think a lot of people fall into the career trap of needing their immediate manager to narrowly define what is useful exactly. Usually when you are made redundant nobody reassigns you directly they just kinda ask you to figure it out and give you a couple weeks to a month to talk to teams with headcount and pick one with a problem area you think you can make progress on.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  In theory, they could work on nothing, with over all productivity staying the same. In theory, looking at a complete society's productivity, unemployment is a great thing, because it means little work is needed to sustain a specific level of wealth. The problem is only one of distribution.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I genuinely believe we can make a world where no one is required to work for survival. We could intentionally automate as much as possible while also ensuring that automation is collectively owned. Then we could all collect dividends on our system with ample time off for "what we will" as the activists fighting for the 8 hour work day used to say. I believe strongly that the current economic system is effective primarily at concentrating wealth at the top and using the general population as a pool of cheap desperate labor. I believe we can actually generate more wealth if we abandon intellectual property and develop technologies specifically to free people from toil in an open, community-oriented way. Of course this will be a fight because those who hold the reins of power today have no interest in diluting their power. "But automation is expensive" - well engineering development is expensive. Which is why I think we should spread the costs out as much as possible - make everything open source, so none of the work is repeated, and anyone in the world hungry to get in on the action can contribute, instead of secretive siloed orgs spending a hundred million on some secret sauce for one single application, without sharing the benefit of that work for all the adjacent applications. Instead smaller investments distributed throughout the world will lead to large scale innovation of the crowd, the way we saw 3D printer development explode AFTER the patents expired. Because 1000 people working on an idea get way more done that one well funded organization in many cases. This is exactly the kind of innovation that patents extinguish, and worldwide agreements ensure patents have widespread enforcement. We all need the same basic necessities, so there is so much overlap, that these systems built by the crowd could rapidly mature. Eventually we could envision a system that can function with just 10% workforce participation, as people basically volunteer for maintenance and development. Before then we need to educate as many people as possible on engineering, robotics, and computer science. But the end goal of a world where a highly automated "means of production" is held in community ownership is I think very important. Working in a world of privately held companies with closed source engineering leads to VERY different engineering requirements, and fails to realize benefits of community based engineering development. There are people all over the world that need what you are developing, and some of them have the time and energy to make it their own and contribute their own spin. But only if we make that community. I have tried to discuss these concepts on my youtube channel in this latest video, though it was unscripted and I'd like to produce a clearer scripted version in the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_2-xwWJUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_2-xwWJUk EDIT: For additional motivation, I highly recommend this talk by Jenny Odell called "How To Do Nothing". I feel so strongly that we are wasting ourselves away at jobs that could be automated away, and this talk really captures some of what the alternatives could be for the human psyche: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjlP9qtmBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjlP9qtmBU
scombridae 4y ago
Our species should always prefer more to less interesting work Look around, your eminence. Most of our species prefer not working at all, and if we must, prefer expending the least mental effort.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Sure, I get it, it’s naive and idealistic. However, as a counterpoint I have seen repeatedly that people actually go a bit nuts without interesting work or hardship. I think that’s why puzzles, video games and dramatic television shows are so popular. The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and interesting. It should be right near the edge but firmly within our abilities to be satisfying and meaningful, and we have problems when it deviates from that significantly. It’s possible that for wide swaths of people that edge won’t keep up with the edge of what is not automate-able, but I think a) accepting that someone people will have to be supported out of work and b) others can have their personal ability edge pushed further with vocational training is both good for those individuals and good for society.
  - scombridae 4y ago
    The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and interesting In the words of Chris Farley, "sounds like a personal problem."

HWR_14 4y ago

> but I wish someone _would_ automate my job so I can find even more interesting things to work on What makes you think you would work on "more interesting things" as opposed to "nothing". That is, why would your employer keep you on as opposed to firing you.

mattnewton 4y ago
They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try my hand at consulting or making my own business). But, to me, that would’ve been preferable to doing busy make-work, or worse lobbying to keep the inefficiencies that provide me the busywork I use to justify a salary. Once something becomes automate-able, I think it should be. I have never seen software people at the big co FAANG companies I’ve worked at get let go because their core job was automated, only reassigned out of dead end roles that never would have gotten them promoted. I understand this position is only possible to hold alongside all those privileges.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  But why do you not see or feel that if you’re capable of doing more interesting work than your current role that you don’t need wait for automation to make you redundant to switch roles.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Because my work isn’t fully automate-able yet; if I became aware of a method to do so I would do it.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try my hand at consulting or making my own business). > But, to me, that would’ve been preferable to doing busy make-work Good news. You can totally stop doing busy make-work and find another job, start consulting or start a business right now! You don't have to wait to be fired. Yes, if you work at a large software shop, they may reassign you. Or maybe not. Apparently even FAANG is trimming workforce.
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    This misses the point that things become busywork because there are better alternatives. There is a difference between weaving a pattern by hand now vs hand weaving before the invention of the loom. My work isn’t busywork _yet_ because I don’t know of a way to automate it. As an aside about large software shops reassigning, I’ve found at large software shops a big part of the role is making up meaningful work for yourself that helps the firm, and that’s a large part of what is actually rewarded (as opposed to fixing bugs or maintenance). I think a lot of people fall into the career trap of needing their immediate manager to narrowly define what is useful exactly. Usually when you are made redundant nobody reassigns you directly they just kinda ask you to figure it out and give you a couple weeks to a month to talk to teams with headcount and pick one with a problem area you think you can make progress on.
solarkraft 4y ago
In theory, they could work on nothing, with over all productivity staying the same. In theory, looking at a complete society's productivity, unemployment is a great thing, because it means little work is needed to sustain a specific level of wealth. The problem is only one of distribution.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

I genuinely believe we can make a world where no one is required to work for survival. We could intentionally automate as much as possible while also ensuring that automation is collectively owned. Then we could all collect dividends on our system with ample time off for "what we will" as the activists fighting for the 8 hour work day used to say. I believe strongly that the current economic system is effective primarily at concentrating wealth at the top and using the general population as a pool of cheap desperate labor. I believe we can actually generate more wealth if we abandon intellectual property and develop technologies specifically to free people from toil in an open, community-oriented way. Of course this will be a fight because those who hold the reins of power today have no interest in diluting their power. "But automation is expensive" - well engineering development is expensive. Which is why I think we should spread the costs out as much as possible - make everything open source, so none of the work is repeated, and anyone in the world hungry to get in on the action can contribute, instead of secretive siloed orgs spending a hundred million on some secret sauce for one single application, without sharing the benefit of that work for all the adjacent applications. Instead smaller investments distributed throughout the world will lead to large scale innovation of the crowd, the way we saw 3D printer development explode AFTER the patents expired. Because 1000 people working on an idea get way more done that one well funded organization in many cases. This is exactly the kind of innovation that patents extinguish, and worldwide agreements ensure patents have widespread enforcement. We all need the same basic necessities, so there is so much overlap, that these systems built by the crowd could rapidly mature. Eventually we could envision a system that can function with just 10% workforce participation, as people basically volunteer for maintenance and development. Before then we need to educate as many people as possible on engineering, robotics, and computer science. But the end goal of a world where a highly automated "means of production" is held in community ownership is I think very important. Working in a world of privately held companies with closed source engineering leads to VERY different engineering requirements, and fails to realize benefits of community based engineering development. There are people all over the world that need what you are developing, and some of them have the time and energy to make it their own and contribute their own spin. But only if we make that community. I have tried to discuss these concepts on my youtube channel in this latest video, though it was unscripted and I'd like to produce a clearer scripted version in the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_2-xwWJUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_2-xwWJUk EDIT: For additional motivation, I highly recommend this talk by Jenny Odell called "How To Do Nothing". I feel so strongly that we are wasting ourselves away at jobs that could be automated away, and this talk really captures some of what the alternatives could be for the human psyche: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjlP9qtmBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjlP9qtmBU

scombridae 4y ago

Our species should always prefer more to less interesting work Look around, your eminence. Most of our species prefer not working at all, and if we must, prefer expending the least mental effort.

mattnewton 4y ago
Sure, I get it, it’s naive and idealistic. However, as a counterpoint I have seen repeatedly that people actually go a bit nuts without interesting work or hardship. I think that’s why puzzles, video games and dramatic television shows are so popular. The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and interesting. It should be right near the edge but firmly within our abilities to be satisfying and meaningful, and we have problems when it deviates from that significantly. It’s possible that for wide swaths of people that edge won’t keep up with the edge of what is not automate-able, but I think a) accepting that someone people will have to be supported out of work and b) others can have their personal ability edge pushed further with vocational training is both good for those individuals and good for society.
- scombridae 4y ago
  The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and interesting In the words of Chris Farley, "sounds like a personal problem."