- override367
- Apr 29, 2013
-
|
I am about to become an automation engineer at a software company. How long will it be until my job is automated?
It depends how good you are at it
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2016 17:03
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2024 15:39
|
|
- override367
- Apr 29, 2013
-
|
There would have been a time when people thought checkout work couldn't be automated so it was safe. Now one staff member runs ten auto checkouts and no one bats an eye. ATMs layed off thousands of bank clerks. What I'm getting at is that automating tasks doesn't need to be making a robot that does exactly what the human equivalent does. You can train customers to have a new set of expectations that is automated.
Also just quickly automated workers do not need to be anything like a human. Doors can have electronic latches and locks that will open for the robot. Making robots climb stairs is also a non issue use tracks or stair climber wheels like on movers trolleys, or don't be a twit and realise that if a company goes automated then they will take the cost of ramps as part of the automation. Yes automating will be a large short term cost but if goes on saving for its entire life.
Automated checkouts are garbage though and responsible for amounts of shrink in excess of the cost of keeping cash registers staffed, they seem to be an interim step to software just charging you as you put poo poo in your cart and you walk out the door with it and it finalizes the transaction
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2016 21:26
|
|
- override367
- Apr 29, 2013
-
|
You think I post on this forum from home? I'm fulfilling my patriotic duty as we speak.
For real though it's hosed up that I could probably do my work most days in 5 hours instead of 8, and a computer could have the people on the other end entering poo poo instead of making them write it, fax it, then have me type it back in.
2/3 of my team could probably get cut with the right setup, and the rest would catch mistakes and follow up on them instead of doing any data entry by hand. hosed up that this is seen as a bad thing because of capitalism, instead of and excuse to just let people work less
100% of my work is remote (remote IT work for clients) but I'm not allowed to do it from home ever
They give me a laptop but I can't VPN from home and work with it, so there's no point taking it out of the office, if there's another Chicago blizzard I'm still expected to make the commute and be in at 7 am sharp
I hate American business culture so much
override367 fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Dec 6, 2016
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2016 14:15
|
|
- override367
- Apr 29, 2013
-
|
Automation would be pointless if it meant replacing twenty minimum-wage burger flippers with five well-paid autonation engineers and fifteen decently-paid robot fixers. The whole point of automation is to reduce the number of employees necessary to do the same amount of work.
Your friends would likely respond that rather than doing the same amount of work, the business would use the cost and efficiency savings to expand their operations, doing so much more work that they end up with the same amount of employees as before (doing other work that expanded along with the main business) because they're so much more profitable. To that, though, the answer is simple: where's the demand? That answer works okay for manufacturing, where demand is pretty elastic, buying more than you need is no big deal, and oversupply just drives down prices and makes the company have to pay for warehouse space. Not so much in food service - the demand for food isn't nearly as elastic, so the room for market growth and capacity increases is somewhat more limited. And a lot of non-capacity investments, like building improvements and marketing, are also things that can be largely automated. The core assumption of automation as a public good is that the productivity improvements will lead to economic expansion that gets invested back into non-automatable labor. As more and more work gets automated, and the labor market and economy both get sicker and sicker, that critical principle gets less and less true.
The conundrum to me is that if automation replaces any significant portion of the work force without an alternative, the resulting economic collapse will gently caress all those companies that just bought robots because nobody's buying their poo poo anymore
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2016 14:39
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2016 17:03
