4 ms·

The Case of the Disappearing Secretary

59 points by rwmj 8mo ago

ghaff 8mo ago
There's a lot to unpack in that post. And, while I never had a personal assistant, I did depend on secretaries to type up memos early in my career. One or two were good; others struggled to get something mostly correct through multiple iterations. And even a bit later--in the computer biz--there were some senior managers who had their secretaries/admins print out their emails. They'd handwrite responses, and have the secretaries/admins type them in and email them. (Though the email was only internal to the company at that point.) I don't disagree with or even lament the sentiment that a lot of secretarial work has basically been smeared across a large number of workers. While a personal assistant can be useful for some people with very busy lives, I honestly never found a shared assistant/secretary terribly useful especially as computer-based tools came into the picture and got better.
- true_religion 8mo ago
  I know a certain senior manager who refuses to use Figma because complex designs aren’t easily printable so you have to use the tool directly. Instead, they have my manager transcribe all the Figma interactions with screenshots into a PRD, then they print that and handwrite notes on it for their meetings. They’re not old enough to have this be a habit from the pre compute days, but now AI has made it more and more possible to automate this kind of transcribing so I think everyone is happier for it.
skyberrys 8mo ago
I was a executive assistant when in college twenty years ago. Recognizing the writing on the wall and the fact that EA never translated into the E-suite was a huge motivator for moving past an associates degree and continuing education instead, with a left turn into computer engineering eventually. If the economy won't let me be a computer at the very least I can understand and work to build computers instead.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
vessenes 8mo ago
Some real gold from SuburbanWhiteChick in the comments: Fifth. Computerization has not improved standards; it has merely homogenized them. When humans do work, even soul-killing work, they either get bored and get out or they start to slack or sabotage or, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they start to pay attention and make it matter, they get fussy, they figure out how to do it better. When computerization was introduced in the offices in the 80s (I was there) there was more hue and cry among the clerks and secretaries that they were being asked to do a worse job only faster, than among those who objected to learning the computer, and this applied not just to document production / handling and records management but to communication protocols. When companies ordered their clerical workers to fit their duodecahedronal tasks into square computerized holes, data was lost forever, as well as these workers' hard-won, thoughtfully developed methods of tracking and processing data. This is PRECISELY the divide I see in engineering today - those temperamentally inclined to do things well / keep learning are entering a very exciting time. Those inclined to clock punch are rightly worried.
- Insimwytim 8mo ago
  It is fascinating, that you took that quote and, somehow, managed to arrive at the opposite conclusion, while presenting this quote as confirmation.
- masfuerte 8mo ago
  I read that the other way round. People who cared about their work struggled because they were expected to do more work of lower quality. The clock punchers learned the new tool and carried on clock punching.
  - arctic-true 8mo ago
    I see this as well. Part of the appeal of any crafting hobby is that it doesn’t matter and you can just mess around, but the flip side is that nobody is breathing down your neck to get it done and you can take the time to realize your vision.
- AlienRobot 8mo ago
moffkalast 8mo ago
> clerical work Ah yes: reading religious tomes, preaching, healing injured adventurers with divine magic.
- borski 8mo ago
  Clerical refers to tasks, jobs, or duties related to general office work (filing, data entry, correspondence) or, less commonly, to the work of the clergy. It typically involves white-collar administrative support, such as managing records, scheduling, and operating office equipment, requiring organizational and computer skills.
  - moffkalast 8mo ago
    Personally, I find polysemy hilarious.
    - borski 8mo ago
      Touché.
kkfx 8mo ago
Honestly, I think the initial surge wasn't down to Jevons Paradox, but simply the general ignorance of those needing secretarial staff. They were incapable of using any "machinery" themselves and saw having staff as a status symbol: "I can afford to pay extra people, it shows others I'm rich, that means my business is doing well, and I don't have to scrape the barrel by doing everything myself"... Today is slightly different; we aren't in a period of general growth but in one of deep crisis. So, while not everyone is doing badly (as always), many really do need to cut costs by any means. Just as back then, they are generally as thick as two short planks, so they think they can axe functions they don't like, typically technical roles with specialists who aren't "low-level workers" and who might tell the manager of the day, "you're asking for nonsense, it can't be done"; the manager then discovers through failure that they actually couldn't do it, that marketing played them like a fiddle, and the real potential of the service they bought is far lower, the reality is different from what the salesman described. But it happens, and the manager just hops from one job to the next; they just need something for their CV that acts as self-promotion. The company went bust? "Well, I left just before that for that very reason, because I realised there was no future there", omitting any responsibility. What I can say as a sysadmin today is that I'm seeing: - a new collapse in code quality, the likes of which hasn't been seen, so they say, since 2008 (they say, because I was a 22's CE student, so I saw very little in person) - a massive increase in software without design, without a concrete idea, thrown together on the fly following a whim where the details are missing, and often the actual purpose needed to turn a fleeting late-night idea into a concrete project is missing too. This, along with other dynamics, makes me see nothing good ahead, not specifically for those working in IT, but for society in general. And it's not because of the "LLM effect", but because of decidedly human decision-making.
- dasil003 8mo ago
  Overall I liked the article because I think the secretary analogy is closer than any of the industrial revolution comparisons that are more common, but you do make some really good points about the nature of the work and how conditions are different today. In terms of lowering quality, I don't think this is anything new. Volume of code and depth of stacks has been growing pretty much in parallel with Moore's law, and this has degraded code quality. AI is accelerating this, and creating a new kind of slop since LLMs are sloppy in a different way than humans, but directionally I see it as part of the same trend. However despite lowering quality, and increasing messiness, capabilities and user expectations have steadily increased. After a quarter century in this industry, I am blown away by the capabilities of modern computing, and the polish level of the best apps. The median bar for successful software is higher than its ever been. And to achieve this we've had to navigate steadily increasing complexity (much of it incidental), and that is where senior software folks shine. So yeah, I think your observations are prescient and I agree with a lot of your, but I wouldn't characterize it as "nothing good ahead". I see it as a mixed bag, like all "progress", it just needs time to bake and get our arms around the impact. Currently the rate of change and hype is far out-pacing our ability to reason about it, perhaps that's the single biggest difference in the smart-phone, internet-enabled era of humanity.
metalman 8mo ago
One day, purely by chance, I found myself at the corner of Young and Bloor, at noon, late 1980's, early 90's, and later I found out that business wisdom of the day was to attempt to compromise the cognitive powers of visitors to the high power offices in the area by paying secretarys to perform there duties while leaving nothing, or perhaps everything to the imagination, and getting a grand a day to do it, there bemused reactions to whatever look on my face as they hit the street going to lunch,is still fun to think about.
wazoox 8mo ago
When the CEO of our company left after a merge in 1999, his executive assistant was forgotten in the ensuing turmoil and the move of the company 's headquarters from a city to another. She just kept her office in front of the empty CEO office for months, playing Solitaire on her computer with nothing to do, until someone remarked her.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

59 points by rwmj 8mo ago

ghaff 8mo ago

There's a lot to unpack in that post. And, while I never had a personal assistant, I did depend on secretaries to type up memos early in my career. One or two were good; others struggled to get something mostly correct through multiple iterations. And even a bit later--in the computer biz--there were some senior managers who had their secretaries/admins print out their emails. They'd handwrite responses, and have the secretaries/admins type them in and email them. (Though the email was only internal to the company at that point.) I don't disagree with or even lament the sentiment that a lot of secretarial work has basically been smeared across a large number of workers. While a personal assistant can be useful for some people with very busy lives, I honestly never found a shared assistant/secretary terribly useful especially as computer-based tools came into the picture and got better.

true_religion 8mo ago
I know a certain senior manager who refuses to use Figma because complex designs aren’t easily printable so you have to use the tool directly. Instead, they have my manager transcribe all the Figma interactions with screenshots into a PRD, then they print that and handwrite notes on it for their meetings. They’re not old enough to have this be a habit from the pre compute days, but now AI has made it more and more possible to automate this kind of transcribing so I think everyone is happier for it.

skyberrys 8mo ago

I was a executive assistant when in college twenty years ago. Recognizing the writing on the wall and the fact that EA never translated into the E-suite was a huge motivator for moving past an associates degree and continuing education instead, with a left turn into computer engineering eventually. If the economy won't let me be a computer at the very least I can understand and work to build computers instead.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

vessenes 8mo ago

Some real gold from SuburbanWhiteChick in the comments: Fifth. Computerization has not improved standards; it has merely homogenized them. When humans do work, even soul-killing work, they either get bored and get out or they start to slack or sabotage or, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they start to pay attention and make it matter, they get fussy, they figure out how to do it better. When computerization was introduced in the offices in the 80s (I was there) there was more hue and cry among the clerks and secretaries that they were being asked to do a worse job only faster, than among those who objected to learning the computer, and this applied not just to document production / handling and records management but to communication protocols. When companies ordered their clerical workers to fit their duodecahedronal tasks into square computerized holes, data was lost forever, as well as these workers' hard-won, thoughtfully developed methods of tracking and processing data. This is PRECISELY the divide I see in engineering today - those temperamentally inclined to do things well / keep learning are entering a very exciting time. Those inclined to clock punch are rightly worried.

Insimwytim 8mo ago
It is fascinating, that you took that quote and, somehow, managed to arrive at the opposite conclusion, while presenting this quote as confirmation.
masfuerte 8mo ago
I read that the other way round. People who cared about their work struggled because they were expected to do more work of lower quality. The clock punchers learned the new tool and carried on clock punching.
- arctic-true 8mo ago
  I see this as well. Part of the appeal of any crafting hobby is that it doesn’t matter and you can just mess around, but the flip side is that nobody is breathing down your neck to get it done and you can take the time to realize your vision.
AlienRobot 8mo ago

moffkalast 8mo ago

> clerical work Ah yes: reading religious tomes, preaching, healing injured adventurers with divine magic.

borski 8mo ago
Clerical refers to tasks, jobs, or duties related to general office work (filing, data entry, correspondence) or, less commonly, to the work of the clergy. It typically involves white-collar administrative support, such as managing records, scheduling, and operating office equipment, requiring organizational and computer skills.
- moffkalast 8mo ago
  Personally, I find polysemy hilarious.
  - borski 8mo ago
    Touché.

kkfx 8mo ago

Honestly, I think the initial surge wasn't down to Jevons Paradox, but simply the general ignorance of those needing secretarial staff. They were incapable of using any "machinery" themselves and saw having staff as a status symbol: "I can afford to pay extra people, it shows others I'm rich, that means my business is doing well, and I don't have to scrape the barrel by doing everything myself"... Today is slightly different; we aren't in a period of general growth but in one of deep crisis. So, while not everyone is doing badly (as always), many really do need to cut costs by any means. Just as back then, they are generally as thick as two short planks, so they think they can axe functions they don't like, typically technical roles with specialists who aren't "low-level workers" and who might tell the manager of the day, "you're asking for nonsense, it can't be done"; the manager then discovers through failure that they actually couldn't do it, that marketing played them like a fiddle, and the real potential of the service they bought is far lower, the reality is different from what the salesman described. But it happens, and the manager just hops from one job to the next; they just need something for their CV that acts as self-promotion. The company went bust? "Well, I left just before that for that very reason, because I realised there was no future there", omitting any responsibility. What I can say as a sysadmin today is that I'm seeing: - a new collapse in code quality, the likes of which hasn't been seen, so they say, since 2008 (they say, because I was a 22's CE student, so I saw very little in person) - a massive increase in software without design, without a concrete idea, thrown together on the fly following a whim where the details are missing, and often the actual purpose needed to turn a fleeting late-night idea into a concrete project is missing too. This, along with other dynamics, makes me see nothing good ahead, not specifically for those working in IT, but for society in general. And it's not because of the "LLM effect", but because of decidedly human decision-making.

dasil003 8mo ago
Overall I liked the article because I think the secretary analogy is closer than any of the industrial revolution comparisons that are more common, but you do make some really good points about the nature of the work and how conditions are different today. In terms of lowering quality, I don't think this is anything new. Volume of code and depth of stacks has been growing pretty much in parallel with Moore's law, and this has degraded code quality. AI is accelerating this, and creating a new kind of slop since LLMs are sloppy in a different way than humans, but directionally I see it as part of the same trend. However despite lowering quality, and increasing messiness, capabilities and user expectations have steadily increased. After a quarter century in this industry, I am blown away by the capabilities of modern computing, and the polish level of the best apps. The median bar for successful software is higher than its ever been. And to achieve this we've had to navigate steadily increasing complexity (much of it incidental), and that is where senior software folks shine. So yeah, I think your observations are prescient and I agree with a lot of your, but I wouldn't characterize it as "nothing good ahead". I see it as a mixed bag, like all "progress", it just needs time to bake and get our arms around the impact. Currently the rate of change and hype is far out-pacing our ability to reason about it, perhaps that's the single biggest difference in the smart-phone, internet-enabled era of humanity.

metalman 8mo ago

One day, purely by chance, I found myself at the corner of Young and Bloor, at noon, late 1980's, early 90's, and later I found out that business wisdom of the day was to attempt to compromise the cognitive powers of visitors to the high power offices in the area by paying secretarys to perform there duties while leaving nothing, or perhaps everything to the imagination, and getting a grand a day to do it, there bemused reactions to whatever look on my face as they hit the street going to lunch,is still fun to think about.

wazoox 8mo ago

When the CEO of our company left after a merge in 1999, his executive assistant was forgotten in the ensuing turmoil and the move of the company 's headquarters from a city to another. She just kept her office in front of the empty CEO office for months, playing Solitaire on her computer with nothing to do, until someone remarked her.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]