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Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. S

Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot. It is unreasonable to hold the entire population back to continue employing those in a specific field. If we consistently did that, we'd be in the stone age and our quality of life would be far poorer. This will help future generations drastically even if it hurts us a bit.

CaptSpify 9y ago
Although I agree with you, the problem (in the US at least) is that pivoting is nearly impossible for a large group of people. Our educational system is expensive and generally has terrible quality, and we don't have very good social programs to help float people while they are getting re-educated. If we push innovation without changing these problems, it's not gonna be pretty.
- smsm42 9y ago
  If you don't need shiny credentials, educational system is much less expensive - there are community colleges, courses, free or low-cost online education, etc. Most costly educational requirements arise when coupled with licensing requirements - if you need an official paper, you're gonna pay.
txsh 9y ago
When I graduted high school during the .com bust my father told me not to major in CS in college because there wouldn’t be any jobs for me when I graduated.
antihero 9y ago
Despite being a coder, I almost desire tech work to become replaced by machines at some point, with the only options of retraining to be prohibitively hard and leaving us in the dreadful position of these workers, just so I can watch people with attitudes like this get it handed to them. The attitudes we have towards the unskilled, low-skilled, or those who are being replaced and made redundant by the systems we develop is sickening. Describing someone spending extensive amounts of time and money retraining and having to abandon a career they've done for decades as "pivoting". Will you provide for their family in the years it takes them to be proficient at a skill that they can use to replace their income and support themselves? Or are we just all snidely sitting here with our tech know-how preaching to those who grew up in a different time, or with different opportunities, or who couldn't have ever predicted the scale to which their livelihoods would become obsolete? "Hurts us a bit". Don't even speak like you're in the same boat as these people. Don't get me wrong, progress will happen, but we need to make it socially aware and compassionate progress, not tough luck you didn't pick a the right career and now your life is fucked progress.
- orthecreedence 9y ago
  JUST PREDICT 40+ YEARS INTO THE FUTURE AND PICK THE RIGHT CAREER GOSH IT'S NOT HARD DERR.
  - mlvljr 9y ago
    d o w n v o t e t h i s
- p2t2p 9y ago
  I don’t really understand you mate, what are you suggesting, stop technical progress? Sure it harsh and one day we will be next but so be it, it’s life.
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    I'm not sure where your confusion is arising from. antihero included a preferred alternative: > Don't get me wrong, progress will happen, but we need to make it socially aware and compassionate progress, not tough luck you didn't pick a the right career and now your life is fucked progress. That alternative is not stopping technical progress. It's providing for those whose jobs have been made obsolete by that progress, so that they can rebuild themselves. And keep in mind that not doing so carries the cost of having members of society who are unable to provide value beyond their physical existence.
  - antihero 9y ago
    Did you read my comment? Progress is awesome and inevitable, but how we deal with it and how we deal with the people who's careers are made redundant by it is what we need to discuss. We need to give people options, whether that's retraining and financial support, universal basic income, or whatever. Currently the money just goes upwards - the progress, innovation are owned by the elite as intellectual property. We need to find a different way where the fruits of this progress are distributed to benefit humanity as a whole, not used to further exploit the masses.
a3n 9y ago
If you could actually predict and pick with more than random success, you'd make more money predicting and picking then you would working in whatever you predicted.
sol_remmy 9y ago
Absolutely. Automated trucks will allow shipping costs to be much cheaper which will stimulate the economy in 1000 different ways
- jaf656s 9y ago
  What percentage of a trucking company’s costs do you think are paid to the driver? It won’t lower shipping costs that much.
  - kevan 9y ago
    There's plenty of surveys on this[1]. In this one driver wages and benefits make up around 40% of total cost per mile. That's why self-driving trucks are so lucrative. [1] PDF warning, see page 23 http://atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ATRI-Operational-Costs-of-Trucking-2016-09-2016.pdf http://atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ATRI-Opera...
    - jaf656s 9y ago
      This is a great resource, but there are a few things wrong: 1. Fuel prices were low in 2015 and have been rising since then, so 39% of marginal costs is likely a peak. 2. The chart you referenced is only for marginal costs, and doesn't include fixed costs associated with a trucking company. The actual percentage of driver pay to the overall operating cost of a trucking company will be lower once fixed costs are factored in. 3. Automated truck companies will also want to capture a fraction of that 30-40% that is paid to drivers. So in the end, shipping costs will likely drop in the 10-20% range, which is substantial, but it isn't enough to be revolutionary. My point wasn't to the value created by having automated trucks, but to counter the point that shipping costs would drop significantly. Also, since shipping costs are a small percentage of the price of most consumer goods, everyday purchases will not be affected much either.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  "Stimulate the economy" and "provide prosperity" correlate only very weakly, if at all.
iak8god 9y ago
> Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Isn't it lucky we humans are so very good at predicting the future!? When I was taking computer vision courses little more than a decade ago, self driving cars were pure science fiction. Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away, just so everyone in forums like this who are so impressed with their own excellent life choices can see what it's like to be on the other end of this.
- hanbura 9y ago
  >Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away We are hard at work automating software development. Thanks to massive advances in programming language design, IDEs, the invention of module systems in combination with the massive success of OSS in that space and the proliferation of massive frameworks, something that took a year of work two decades ago is now at best a weekend project of a much less skilled person. The thing that keeps us all employed is the incredibly elastic demand. And of course that the work to find and describe requirements is unlikely to be automated away anytime soon (and already often takes more time than actual implementation)
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    > Thanks to massive advances in programming language design What massive advances in programming language design have we had since 1998!?
    - 0942v8653 9y ago
      While a lot of the real advances in language design are not new, popular adoption of stuff like functional programming has happened in large part in the last twenty years. E.g. list comprehensions in Python were not introduced until Python 2.0 (2000, which just squeezes into your range). And Java is starting to get similar features, which is great for companies who have invested in the language.
- snoman 9y ago
  It's not far from it. Software development is in small company with respect to the need for constant re-education and skill maintenance. The vast majority of developers with skills from just 10 years ago are wholly unemployable right now.

CaptSpify 9y ago

Although I agree with you, the problem (in the US at least) is that pivoting is nearly impossible for a large group of people. Our educational system is expensive and generally has terrible quality, and we don't have very good social programs to help float people while they are getting re-educated. If we push innovation without changing these problems, it's not gonna be pretty.

smsm42 9y ago
If you don't need shiny credentials, educational system is much less expensive - there are community colleges, courses, free or low-cost online education, etc. Most costly educational requirements arise when coupled with licensing requirements - if you need an official paper, you're gonna pay.

txsh 9y ago

When I graduted high school during the .com bust my father told me not to major in CS in college because there wouldn’t be any jobs for me when I graduated.

antihero 9y ago

Despite being a coder, I almost desire tech work to become replaced by machines at some point, with the only options of retraining to be prohibitively hard and leaving us in the dreadful position of these workers, just so I can watch people with attitudes like this get it handed to them. The attitudes we have towards the unskilled, low-skilled, or those who are being replaced and made redundant by the systems we develop is sickening. Describing someone spending extensive amounts of time and money retraining and having to abandon a career they've done for decades as "pivoting". Will you provide for their family in the years it takes them to be proficient at a skill that they can use to replace their income and support themselves? Or are we just all snidely sitting here with our tech know-how preaching to those who grew up in a different time, or with different opportunities, or who couldn't have ever predicted the scale to which their livelihoods would become obsolete? "Hurts us a bit". Don't even speak like you're in the same boat as these people. Don't get me wrong, progress will happen, but we need to make it socially aware and compassionate progress, not tough luck you didn't pick a the right career and now your life is fucked progress.

orthecreedence 9y ago
JUST PREDICT 40+ YEARS INTO THE FUTURE AND PICK THE RIGHT CAREER GOSH IT'S NOT HARD DERR.
- mlvljr 9y ago
  d o w n v o t e t h i s
p2t2p 9y ago
I don’t really understand you mate, what are you suggesting, stop technical progress? Sure it harsh and one day we will be next but so be it, it’s life.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  I'm not sure where your confusion is arising from. antihero included a preferred alternative: > Don't get me wrong, progress will happen, but we need to make it socially aware and compassionate progress, not tough luck you didn't pick a the right career and now your life is fucked progress. That alternative is not stopping technical progress. It's providing for those whose jobs have been made obsolete by that progress, so that they can rebuild themselves. And keep in mind that not doing so carries the cost of having members of society who are unable to provide value beyond their physical existence.
- antihero 9y ago
  Did you read my comment? Progress is awesome and inevitable, but how we deal with it and how we deal with the people who's careers are made redundant by it is what we need to discuss. We need to give people options, whether that's retraining and financial support, universal basic income, or whatever. Currently the money just goes upwards - the progress, innovation are owned by the elite as intellectual property. We need to find a different way where the fruits of this progress are distributed to benefit humanity as a whole, not used to further exploit the masses.

a3n 9y ago

If you could actually predict and pick with more than random success, you'd make more money predicting and picking then you would working in whatever you predicted.

sol_remmy 9y ago

Absolutely. Automated trucks will allow shipping costs to be much cheaper which will stimulate the economy in 1000 different ways

jaf656s 9y ago
What percentage of a trucking company’s costs do you think are paid to the driver? It won’t lower shipping costs that much.
- kevan 9y ago
  There's plenty of surveys on this[1]. In this one driver wages and benefits make up around 40% of total cost per mile. That's why self-driving trucks are so lucrative. [1] PDF warning, see page 23 http://atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ATRI-Operational-Costs-of-Trucking-2016-09-2016.pdf http://atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ATRI-Opera...
  - jaf656s 9y ago
    This is a great resource, but there are a few things wrong: 1. Fuel prices were low in 2015 and have been rising since then, so 39% of marginal costs is likely a peak. 2. The chart you referenced is only for marginal costs, and doesn't include fixed costs associated with a trucking company. The actual percentage of driver pay to the overall operating cost of a trucking company will be lower once fixed costs are factored in. 3. Automated truck companies will also want to capture a fraction of that 30-40% that is paid to drivers. So in the end, shipping costs will likely drop in the 10-20% range, which is substantial, but it isn't enough to be revolutionary. My point wasn't to the value created by having automated trucks, but to counter the point that shipping costs would drop significantly. Also, since shipping costs are a small percentage of the price of most consumer goods, everyday purchases will not be affected much either.
knieveltech 9y ago
"Stimulate the economy" and "provide prosperity" correlate only very weakly, if at all.

iak8god 9y ago

> Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Isn't it lucky we humans are so very good at predicting the future!? When I was taking computer vision courses little more than a decade ago, self driving cars were pure science fiction. Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away, just so everyone in forums like this who are so impressed with their own excellent life choices can see what it's like to be on the other end of this.

hanbura 9y ago
>Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away We are hard at work automating software development. Thanks to massive advances in programming language design, IDEs, the invention of module systems in combination with the massive success of OSS in that space and the proliferation of massive frameworks, something that took a year of work two decades ago is now at best a weekend project of a much less skilled person. The thing that keeps us all employed is the incredibly elastic demand. And of course that the work to find and describe requirements is unlikely to be automated away anytime soon (and already often takes more time than actual implementation)
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  > Thanks to massive advances in programming language design What massive advances in programming language design have we had since 1998!?
  - 0942v8653 9y ago
    While a lot of the real advances in language design are not new, popular adoption of stuff like functional programming has happened in large part in the last twenty years. E.g. list comprehensions in Python were not introduced until Python 2.0 (2000, which just squeezes into your range). And Java is starting to get similar features, which is great for companies who have invested in the language.
snoman 9y ago
It's not far from it. Software development is in small company with respect to the need for constant re-education and skill maintenance. The vast majority of developers with skills from just 10 years ago are wholly unemployable right now.