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The non-fundamental shift about software is not that it's creating quality jobs at the cost of medium-quality jobs. It's also not that we are creating robots th
by niuzeta 11y ago
The non-fundamental shift about software is not that it's creating quality jobs at the cost of medium-quality jobs. It's also not that we are creating robots that will replace low-quality human workers. Because we still believe that as low-quality jobs go, higher-quality jobs will somehow appear. (you may not agree with this, even I am personally sceptical, but that's not the point I'm about to argue)
But to get to the higher-quality jobs, you generally need experience. Not many employers are willing to hire someone and put him in a responsible position based off their potential alone. It follows, then, that we need substantial number of entry level positions to, so to speak, open the door for future potent workers.
But those doors are closing at an alarming rate.
Consider law firms. Discovery work(going through past records to find cases of relevance, law clauses of relevance) that used to be the "first year" work, is almost exclusively done by software. It's cheaper and more accurate. We may still need more quality lawyers, but as we remove the uses for inexperienced lawyers, we are decreasing the number of future experienced lawyers.
Translation used to be a very non-trivial work. Not just for heavy-publishing prose or fiction, but even for simple phrases, if the need was great enough, we would hire an entry level translator. Now we would generally use Google translate for a phrase or two because it was "good enough" at a marginal price.
The problem for prospect high-earning society isn't that software is eating jobs. As long as we are vain and greedy to aspire for higher quality, we will have those sophisticated jobs. The problem is that we are eating entry-level jobs, and in turn, creating an artificial scarce supply of "experienced" workers.
And those "experienced" workers, now that they have put their foot into the door, and with the huge demand for work to be done, will enjoy the job market(aren't we all, as developers?), but what of those that are left, for no fault of their own?
- acchow 11y agoDo you have some data on this? Also, this is a perspective I've not considered or heard of before. Thanks for that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hittudiv 11y agoThe ultimate winners here would be the software employees in my opinion. The money flows from investors/public to the geeks. Dont know how the economy is going to work out with that though.
- jules 11y agoWho were the true winners of the industrial revolution? The employees making the machines? Nah. The true winners here will be the ones that always have been and always will be the winners.
- santaclaus 11y agoThe software employers are probably accumulating capital at a higher rate than the software employees.
- nostrademons 11y agoProbably, but an increasing number of software employees are striking out to become software employers as well. Software is interesting in that virtually all capital is human capital, and that small changes in the environment (a shift from web to mobile, for example) can invalidate large swaths of accumulated domain knowledge.
- ghaff 11y agoMaybe. There is also a lot of work going into providing tools for domain experts so that entry-level programmers aren't needed for, e.g. data visualization. So it's not clear to me that the dynamic is any different in software engineering than anywhere else.
- task_queue 11y agoThat's a false narrative. Owners and executives are the winners here. We are underpaid for the value we bring in and the industry has been caught trying to keep it that way.
- k__ 11y agoAlso, the people who make the decisions are experienced and so don't directly profit from changing anything.
- int3 11y agoInteresting points. > The problem is that we are eating entry-level jobs, and in turn, creating an artificial scarce supply of "experienced" workers. On the other hand, it is easier than ever to get cheap, basic education in a variety of things, with the Internet and MOOCs making information widely available. So entry-level jobs may be less necessary these days. On the other hand, it means the people who can afford to spend time acquiring this knowledge without receiving pay will have a bigger advantage than ever. Yet another argument for basic income, I guess.
- sanderjd 11y agoBut education isn't what you need to be an experienced worker, you need experience. I think the parent's point is a great one, and would add to it that things are headed toward a glut of well-educated but nonetheless inexperienced people.
- int3 11y agoFair enough. But experience can be garnered outside companies, and the Internet is making that easier, too: OSS development, nonprofit / pro bono work, etc.
- sanderjd 11y agoAbsolutely true, but "well, we've replaced entry-level jobs with working for free" is a terrible answer. Also, would edit my original reply if I could to say that things seem to be heading this direction, not that they definitely or inevitably are.
- int3 11y agoIt is only a terrible answer without basic income, which was the other point I was trying to make.
- s73v3r 11y agoHow does nonprofit/pro bono work help when you're trying to eat?
- fixermark 11y agoI wonder where that leaves the job market, given that there will still be a need for these roles in the future (and plenty of incentive for someone to learn the roles via whatever means become available). Are unpaid internships a symptom of this flow perhaps? They read a lot like apprenticeships (but with a significant burden of responsibility missing).
- spanktheuser 11y agoInteresting anecdote: at a devbootcamp event, I ran into two high school graduates who skipped a traditional bachelor's in favor of three months of intensive web development training followed by a year of unpaid internships. They evaluated this as considerably less expensive than a university education while providing a comparable level of experience. I'm not sure I agree, but it's interesting that very young people and their families are beginning to question the established educational model in such a bold fashion.
- s73v3r 11y agoOnly those who's family is already relatively well off, and who live in an area where these types of work are available can really do it, though. That's not a reasonable solution.
- rayiner 11y agoWhile predictive coding (using machine learning to identify potentially interesting documents in discovery) exists, it is not common. Armies of first year associates have mostly been replaced by armies of contract lawyers, not machines. I imagine that's true in a lot of other industries. Entry level jobs pay less and have less prospect for growth simply because labor supply continues to grow while the economy and consequently demand is pretty stagnant.
- sixtypoundhound 11y agoWorse, we seem to be eroding the nature of those entry level roles so that they don't teach the broader parts of a role. Was I excited to get an analyst job right out of school for $28K/year (many years ago), after earning a math degree from a prestigious school? Uh, not really. But... - Only about 50% of my job was actually excel nerf-herding - The other 50% was a mix of research projects and building the department budget...this allowed me to meet everyone in the building and learn a little bit about how their area worked (and how the company made money) - Better yet, I was one of three analysts in a 50 person marketing unit...so it was expected my next role would be outside of analytics and I was trained/coached accordingly. The company put less focus on my excel wrangling skills (low value) and more on me as a future program manager or senior tech (high value). - Ah yes...and we were sufficiently small, I had to learn how to pull my own data (SQL and some light SAS scripting) The net result? Pretty much everyone in my 10 person class of recruits amounted to something, professionally. Most are manager/director level, about half technical, half business. The same company today splits the same work into a couple of specialist teams, consolidated across the company, with minimal cross training. You don't join as talent, you join as an Excel monkey. And dang it, we're gonna make you a very productive Excel Monkey. No need to learn the other stuff. The results have been disappointing...
- jerf 11y agoThis is in the class of problems that naturally corrects itself over time. When your firm can't hire anyone with experience, and there's no entry-level jobs, it will discover the same solution to that problem that has been discovered any number of times in any number of other situations already: Mentoring and something that looks like apprenticeship. Compared to the prospect of there being no job at all because software ate the whole thing, at the societal level this is barely interesting at all. Yeah, it sucks if you get caught in that moment where the problem hasn't quite become acute enough for the field to realize it needs to do apprenticeships instead of expecting experience, but, well, there isn't necessarily a better solution than waiting for the field to figure it out.
- stcredzero 11y agoShouldn't an economist be able to figure out when such a phenomenon is happening? It seems like this should be quantifiable. It seems like a 21st century government should be looking for these situations to be arising with some regularity now, and that a "template" program for helping mentoring/apprenticeship practices to come about faster might make sense. (Modulo one's faith in the (in)competence of government interventions and its degree. obLibertarian objection noted -- so please expand and not just repeat if you are commenting in that direction.)
- anigbrowl 11y agoYes, and in countries like Germany there's a three-way relationship between government, employers, and unions, who seem to start from a broad assumption of being on the same team. That relationship is much more fraught in the US, where relations between business and unions are historically antagonistic (with both sides deserving some blame for this), and you have a large contingent of people that are convinced government shouldn't exist and is fundamentally incompetent to solve problems (but often simultaneously a highly effective tyrannical entity).
- stcredzero 11y agoa large contingent of people that are convinced government shouldn't exist and is fundamentally incompetent to solve problems (but often simultaneously a highly effective tyrannical entity). Well, yes. Nutters are louder everywhere. Not sure if it's worse over here. Not sure if there's as much pandering to the nutters all across the political here as elsewhere. On trips abroad, I did detect that many Europeans were aghast at our politics in the early 2000s and were still (but for different reasons) as of 2014.
- jcromartie 11y agoThere's no solution for this short of a revolution in free real-world education and something like apprenticeships.
- dllthomas 11y ago"But to get to the higher-quality jobs, you generally need experience. Not many employers are willing to hire someone and put him in a responsible position based off their potential alone. It follows, then, that we need substantial number of entry level positions to, so to speak, open the door for future potent workers." I've been wondering about a similar (far more narrow) dynamic around the C programming language. There are still a number of places C is the best fit, but those are increasingly in places where expert knowledge of C is required. There are presently enough legacy projects where people can cut their teeth usefully that this isn't soon a major issue, but if we continue to displace more but not all uses of C, this could get interesting in the long term (maybe).