Amazon Drones, Meet Your Mothership

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Not true. Not every position in the drone industry is going to require an engineer-level education. Besides, I guarantee you a postal job is more difficult to get (and education-level has nothing at all to do with the reason for that).


Correction: the jobs created are almost always on a higher level of specificity than the ones eliminated. "Much" higher is debatable. I don't know that the education level required always is, either. Again... pointless education level requirements are the fault of stupid company policies--not automation. A degree has never been that reliable of an indicator of intelligence, aptitude, or preparedness.


Nothing new under the sun here. Where did the Buggy-whip manufacturer's employees go to work when cars came along? This is the way of the world. Always has been. I just don't get the angst.

Just adding to this:
Your field of expertise goes belly up, you look for another line of work to feed your family.
Yes it is probably lower pay but you make do and adjust. You may lose everything and have to start all over but it has been done many times. I know way too many people that happened to. And it can take 2 decades to get back to where you were.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

The problem with that argument is that once the drone is built by our hypothetical re-positioned postal-worker, the drone will go on doing the ex-postal-workers job day after to day for a long time. Whereas the construction of the drone would have taken a day, unless a robot builds it, in which case it would be much cheaper and much quicker.

As I said earlier, I have no reason to suspect that a viable drone delivery program will directly translate to unemployed postal workers. I suspect the post office will be the secure location to which drones will deliver their cargo (from there to be delivered to--or picked up by--customers). Especially in rural or suburban areas. If the Postal Service isn't positioning themselves for this eventuality already, then they deserve to be supplanted by someone who is. I'm sure there will be warehouse-to-doorstep drone delivery available (or corporate dropoff kiosks), but it will (at least initially) be cost-prohibitive for the most part. If anything, it will be the UPS/Fedex drivers who will be impacted more. But if recent history is anything to go by, UPS/Fedex are showing increasing reluctance to want to mess with residential delivery anyway. *shrug*

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

There's everything stopping him. Creating and/or maintaining drones (machinery) requires some level of education. If he had that, or could have had it, he would never have worked as a mailman. He would have been working as an engineer in one field or another.

The problem is that the jobs created are very often on a much higher level than the ones that are eliminated.

Where are you going to put waiters to work, after the waiter robot is introduced? As dishwashers? Nah. Already a machine for that. Bus/taxi drivers? Nah. Cars are automated already. Mailman? Mwoah. Amazon automated that using drones. Mechanical Engineer / Software Engineer to create all of these devices himself? Forget it. He doesn't have the education, for whatever reason. No money to study, or not enough intelligence to study at the required level.

Actually, I know two people that are mail carriers that have advanced degrees. One was a respiratory therapist for 20 years, and accepted a retirement package from the hospital. He then went on to work for the post office for another 20 years and just retired from there this year. The other was a software engineer who got tired of playing the corporate game and quit. He got a job at the post office as a fill-in while he was starting his consulting business, and decided to keep doing it while running his business, since rural carriers only work about 4 hours per day, he can still get quite a bit of programming work done in his off hours.

Shari

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by shalym

Actually, I know two people that are mail carriers that have advanced degrees. One was a respiratory therapist for 20 years, and accepted a retirement package from the hospital. He then went on to work for the post office for another 20 years and just retired from there this year. The other was a software engineer who got tired of playing the corporate game and quit. He got a job at the post office as a fill-in while he was starting his consulting business, and decided to keep doing it while running his business, since rural carriers only work about 4 hours per day, he can still get quite a bit of programming work done in his off hours.

Yeah. The idea that people take postal jobs because they're ill-equipped (or not educated enough) to do do higher-skilled jobs doesn't really hold water. Not in the US, anyway. People of all education levels clamor for postal jobs because the pay's more than adequate, the benefits are fantastic, and the workload light. People stay with the Post Office because they want to, not because the have to.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yeah. The idea that people take postal jobs because they're ill-equipped (or not educated enough) to do do higher-skilled jobs doesn't really hold water. Not in the US, anyway. People of all education levels clamor for postal jobs because the pay's more than adequate, the benefits are fantastic, and the workload light. People stay with the Post Office because they want to, not because the have to.

Lucky them over there. Over here in the Netherlands, taking a job as a postman or package delivery guy is almost the last thing you want to do. Benefits are bad, pay is low, and working hours are idiotic.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Nothing new under the sun here. Where did the Buggy-whip manufacturer's employees go to work when cars came along? This is the way of the world. Always has been. I just don't get the angst.

The problem is that you need to know more and more to stay working; and even if you don't need to know more, companies require degrees. More and more people are getting to the point where they don't have, or can't acquire the needed knowledge or degrees wanted by companies.

Switching to a field outside of your expertise is slowly becoming impossible, at least in the Netherlands. I've got more than a decade of software engineering experience, and I've programmed in everything from assembler to C, C++, C#, Javascript, PHP4 through 7, and several PLC-related languages. I've been doing PHP7 and PLC's for the last couple of years, but when trying to switch to a job requiring C or Python or whatever, I'm treated as some sort of just-out-of-school kid and get told that I don't have enough experience 'with the required tools'.

Try to convince a recruiter that learning a new programming language takes like... well... half a day or so. And a few weeks to get up to speed with the default libraries and frameworks. That's the entire problem: you don't have, or get those few weeks.

If it's hard to switch *within* your own expertise (different versions), then try switching *out* of it. For example, me trying to get a job as a lawyer... or mechanical enineer. Not gonna happen.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Lucky them over there. Over here in the Netherlands, taking a job as a postman or package delivery guy is almost the last thing you want to do. Benefits are bad, pay is low, and working hours are idiotic.



The problem is that you need to know more and more to stay working; and even if you don't need to know more, companies require degrees. More and more people are getting to the point where they don't have, or can't acquire the needed knowledge or degrees wanted by companies.

Switching to a field outside of your expertise is slowly becoming impossible, at least in the Netherlands. I've got more than a decade of software engineering experience, and I've programmed in everything from assembler to C, C++, C#, Javascript, PHP4 through 7, and several PLC-related languages. I've been doing PHP7 and PLC's for the last couple of years, but when trying to switch to a job requiring C or Python or whatever, I'm treated as some sort of just-out-of-school kid and get told that I don't have enough experience 'with the required tools'.

Try to convince a recruiter that learning a new programming language takes like... well... half a day or so. And a few weeks to get up to speed with the default libraries and frameworks. That's the entire problem: you don't have, or get those few weeks.

If it's hard to switch *within* your own expertise (different versions), then try switching *out* of it. For example, me trying to get a job as a lawyer... or mechanical enineer. Not gonna happen.

So you are saying if the choice was starve or go into a lower level field, you would starve.

No, you could not go into a field that required a totally different education, but I am assuming you could work retail or some other non-technical field.

Let me tell something young man. My husband worked in the oilfield until the bottom fell out. He didn't have a degree of any kind. He lost everything, cars, house etc.
His taxes show that one year he made X. The following year he made 10% of that. Barely enough to eat.
He finally found a job running a crappy motel for a place to live. Luckily the owner of the motel hired him to do construction on another business. He wound up working the in the new business. The company he wound up working for has been through 3 buyouts and at least 4 different operating systems. He has been doing this job for the past 28 years. It literally took him 20 years to get back to even close to where he was when he lost everything. It pays way less than the previous field too.

Oh and he lost his first wife too. Apparently, she couldn't handle the stress of life anymore.

He lost her roughly 4 months before we met.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

The problem is that you need to know more and more to stay working; and even if you don't need to know more, companies require degrees. More and more people are getting to the point where they don't have, or can't acquire the needed knowledge or degrees wanted by companies.

There's people getting obsoleted every day that never got obsoleted before. I certainly have sympathy ... but not enough to expect the world to pause all innovation and automation just to maintain a warm and fuzzy status quo. That's its own kind of death. Life's always been tough. No real surprise that it's getting tougher.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

So you are saying if the choice was starve or go into a lower level field, you would starve.

Of course not.

No, you could not go into a field that required a totally different education, but I am assuming you could work retail or some other non-technical field.

The only sort of jobs I could take when not working as a software engineer would be network engineer or server admin (if I'm lucky and people actually believe a can do that, as I don't have any formal education in those fields, but know my fair share about them), or else, work in a job that requires no education.

Let me tell something young man. My husband worked in the oilfield until the bottom fell out. He didn't have a degree of any kind. He lost everything, cars, house etc.

While I didn't lose *that* much, I've had to restart once already, a few years ago. Lost all the savings I had for first downpayment on an apartment, and ended up in a job that paid only 60% of what I earned previously. While my job and salary have improved, I'm still not back to where I was back then, not in salary, and not in savings.

I don't care to do it again, if I can help it.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Of course not.



The only sort of jobs I could take when not working as a software engineer would be network engineer or server admin (if I'm lucky and people actually believe a can do that, as I don't have any formal education in those fields, but know my fair share about them), or else, work in a job that requires no education.



While I didn't lose *that* much, I've had to restart once already, a few years ago. Lost all the savings I had for first downpayment on an apartment, and ended up in a job that paid only 60% of what I earned previously. While my job and salary have improved, I'm still not back to where I was back then, not in salary, and not in savings.

I don't care to do it again, if I can help it.

We still aren't back in savings either. But wouldn't want to do it again either. Good or bad, we are within just a few years of him retiring.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

We still aren't back in savings either. But wouldn't want to do it again either. Good or bad, we are within just a few years of him retiring.

Hm... my retirement age is 70 years, 8 months under current Dutch retirement legislation. From 2022, it is slated to rise with 3 months every five years 'to keep pace with extending lifespans.'

And I still have a few decades to go (and then some) if it DOESN'T rise.

That's going to be fun.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

So you are saying if the choice was starve or go into a lower level field, you would starve.

I think you are unfairly simplifying his statement.

As far as I could tell, he was saying being a mailman in the Netherlands doesn't have the same level of pay/benefits that being a mailman in the U.S. has.

*EDIT: Should have refreshed before posting

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I think you are unfairly simplifying his statement.

As far as I could tell, he was saying being a mailman in the Netherlands doesn't have the same level of pay/benefits that being a mailman in the U.S. has.

Deleting my response due to your edit.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Not so. In general, automation in agriculture does not create jobs, it takes them away. It's obvious, really.

Too obvious to be true.
Especially where it relates to US farming which is a very different business than European farming.

As the article I linked to makes clear, US style precision farming is about increasing (near-zero) profit margins and the automated gear isn't displacing the operators but rather ensuring higher precision for lower waste, less environmental impact, and a better product out the door.

The Guardian piece is dealing in projections and hypotheticals.

To date, US precision farming is all about achieving greater yields and better quality, not labor reduction.

[Pajamaman]

Blame Displacement of Jobs on Automation, Not Offshoring and Immigration

High-profile personalities such as Stephen Hawking, as well as economists, have begun to shine the spotlight on this issue of technological unemployment—the displacement of human jobs by increasingly sophisticated means of automation.

In a column published in The Guardian, Hawking points out that, “[…]the automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.”

[Katsunami]

I rest my case. If Stephen Hawking says it, I won't even ask for proof.