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Both articles misses the mark. There are still autoworkers out there, just not in Detroit (OK, there are less of them, but they're still there). Autoworking did

Both articles misses the mark. There are still autoworkers out there, just not in Detroit (OK, there are less of them, but they're still there). Autoworking didn't fail, Detroit (ie "big auto") failed. And they failed because they spend all their energy building moats (trade policy, emissions policy, unions etc) rather than improving and innovating (like the asian auto companies excelled at and the european ones partly kept up with), so when the house of cards came down, it came down hard. As long as we (software engineers) don't sequester ourselves wholesale in a homogenous monolith but continuously keep up with innovation, we should be well equipped to respond to changes in the market in time. The first article touches on this in the last paragraph, but I'm not convinced it's for the "right reasons".

ams6110 13y ago
The rote, unskilled work in auto assembly was easily automated (apply a spot weld here, insert a part there) but a lot of the skilled work was as well. The precision parts in automobiles used to be made by hand by machinists. This was highly skilled work, and it's now almost entirely been replaced by CNC. Machinists today, to the extent they still exist, are much more like programmers. They are still used for small and one-off jobs, but mass production of machined parts is programmed directly from the designs now, so you don't need a machinist in the picture at all for that. No amount of keeping up with innovation would have helped there.
- mseebach 13y ago
  If those people were let go (or retrained) continuously as they became redundant, instead of being employed in a unsustainable behemoth which then collapses all at once, they are much better positioned to re-qualify and re-join the workforce (maybe in the same, maybe in a different company) in a higher-skilled position. This could happen multiple times over a career.

ams6110 13y ago

The rote, unskilled work in auto assembly was easily automated (apply a spot weld here, insert a part there) but a lot of the skilled work was as well. The precision parts in automobiles used to be made by hand by machinists. This was highly skilled work, and it's now almost entirely been replaced by CNC. Machinists today, to the extent they still exist, are much more like programmers. They are still used for small and one-off jobs, but mass production of machined parts is programmed directly from the designs now, so you don't need a machinist in the picture at all for that. No amount of keeping up with innovation would have helped there.

mseebach 13y ago
If those people were let go (or retrained) continuously as they became redundant, instead of being employed in a unsustainable behemoth which then collapses all at once, they are much better positioned to re-qualify and re-join the workforce (maybe in the same, maybe in a different company) in a higher-skilled position. This could happen multiple times over a career.