Career OverDrive!
  • Career Stack
  • COD Channel
  • PsycheOS Channel
  • Blog
  • Content Archives

The Accelerating Assault To Digitize, Automate, Mechanize & Roboticize Your Job (podcast +text)

10/20/2014

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

Picture
Listen To This Podcast
The digitization, automation, mechanization and roboticization of work, of our work, and of our jobs is really nothing new.  In fact, from automated weaving looms and factory canning lines to harvesting combines found in agriculture to voicemail, and from automated telephone switchboards (ever seen videos of the old manual switchboards and the supervisors who flew around on roller skates?) and word processors to robotic palletizers and depalletizers, this has been a present albeit slowly accelerating reality for many, many decades.

On the whole it has enormously contributed to our rising wages, our collective rising standard of living and the creation of more and more professional jobs which in turn have required higher and higher skills sets which in turn also have often provided enormous psychic pleasure for the workers through the intellectual stimulation provided by such work (it's probably also fair to say that such required rising skill sets and often consequential stress have also lead to insomnia, ulcers, GERD and so forth if we are willing to honestly consider the downside of this).

However, over the last two decades all of these separate trend lines (digitization, automation, mechanization and roboticization) have been converging and soon they will completely converge as they hit an aggregate inflection point which will first consume and then destroy far, far more jobs than will be created going forward. Simultaneously this will set a new, extremely high bar for those that seek any employment, thus, breaking the old knowledge-employment paradigm we've experienced and, for the most part, enjoyed to our benefit in the past.

This means that going forward, even more so than now, there will be huge differences in the skill sets required between those who are deemed employable-desirable, those deemed employable if one hold's their nose  and those are who are deemed unemployable.

Being "good enough" will no longer be enough. 

In fact, with the current and accelerating fierce global competition for jobs found today, being "good enough" is not enough and, in fact, it hasn't been enough to secure employment in most professional fields since the 2008 financial implosion. Worse, this competition is only becoming more severe and more fierce with each passing year.

This aggregate inflection point will also enable those who possess in-demand knowledge or very specialized skills to make or earn large sums of money, while those who are only marginally or barely employed or employable will be forced to fight it out for table scraps among huge masses, huge throngs of people who possess fungible, non-differentiated and completely commoditized skills and abilities.

The resultant fierce competition will, of course, quickly and brutally drive down the wages of the few workers in the fungible skills category who are even lucky enough to be employed. Meanwhile, the unemployable will be relegated to a lifetime of unemployment save for any work they can land through "make work" charity gigs or the perennial government "make work programs" such as making or maintaining trails in national parks or picking up trash along the freeway.

Coincidentally and perhaps fortuitously, Computerworld recently ran an article titled, One in three jobs will be taken by software or robots by 2025 in which the well-known research group, Gartner, predicted that technologies such as robots and drones will replace about a third of all workers by 2025.

Now, depending on your point of view, this prediction may strike you as provocative, thought-provoking or perhaps just plain laughable.

(As an aside, if you are one of the persons who finds this to be laughable, why not do yourself a favor and save or print out this article. Then in the near future you can use it to wipe away your tears or the tears of your kids, your grand kids or your friends who will soon discover that their just "good enough skills" or worse,  fungible/commoditized skills are not viable, not demanded in the job market at hand.)

While we can haggle over the specific numbers, the regions, the industries and the job functions which are or which will be most affected by this as well as the estimated time frames (short-term, mid-term and long-term) before most of us will feel this convergence, we need to be aware that at some point this aggregated inflection point will take a huge bite out of our own employment prospects and/or brutally drive down our wages. The fact remains that this trend of convergence and automation is most certainly happening right now,  it's been happening for some time and it's only going to continue to accelerate in the near future and well beyond that.

And to be crystal clear, the trend we speak of is the ever accelerating wave, the ever accelerating assault which is digitizating, automating, mechanizing and roboticizing you right out of a job.

Your job.
My job.
Everyone's job.

This will continue until we may eventually find that most of our neighbors, perhaps even most members of our immediate family are adversely affected or simply unemployed. 

Therefore, unless, unless, we take very clear, strategic, fast and decisive action to fully and completely understand what it is we face and are facing, why we face it and unless and until we resolve to improve ourselves to the new level and levels required to be competitive against these inexorable forces both our earnings potential as well as our very employability, our employment prospects are at risk, are in grave danger.

Although this may well be shocking for some, if not many, I'd like to think that for regular reader's of this blog this line of thought and discussion is really nothing new. It may be more complete and deep but really nothing new than our previous discussions. 

In fact, you may well remember some of our earlier discussions regarding which can be found here (Our Robotic Future Accelerates) and  here (How To Jump-Start Your Career In Japan (or Anywhere Else)). These are just two examples of many.  

To quickly summarize and bring everyone up speed on those earlier discussions, we considered and analyzed what several aspects of the (local and global) job market will look in the near future (as we approach 2020 and 2025), and how that will affect both currently employed workers as well as those who are now or will be seeking employment.

Now, it can be expected and even predicted that naysayers, especially those who have studied economic and technological history, will immediately point to previous technological revolutions or economic tectonic shifts such as those found in the Agricultural Revolution, the First Industrial Revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution, the Information Age and so on. Specifically, they'll point to the empirical evidence which clearly shows, and demonstrates without a doubt, that although in the short term certain industries suffered (or even entire economies suffered), in aggregate, the long-term net gains from these economic revolutions and technological tectonic shifts were always producing greater wealth while fostering the development of more "better jobs" which paid better wages and benefits although these new jobs also required more skills and training to perform properly (or even to qualify for).

Although I don't disagree with this analysis for past economic and technological revolutions, I am here to tell you , right now, that this time it's different.

This time it's very different.

And here's why.

If we look at certain jobs in the past, say prior to the first Industrial Revolution, most everyone was involved in some sort of agricultural activity like farming or animal husbandry.  Sure there were tailors, sword makers, prostitutes and cobblers but by and large agricultural focused work was crucial to the economy as well as the survival or individuals and their immediate or extended families or loved ones. And even before that or concurrently with that, some type of hunting, gathering, foraging or combination thereof was critical as well and for the same reasons.

Within the agricultural field, skills varied as did access to planting knowledge, crop rotation schedules or even the importance of it. Equally as varied was the work ethic of the individuals involved. And just as today, there were certainly a range of persons some of whom were super motivated people, some of whom were lazy people while still others might be characterized as "work an honest day for an honest wage" sort of people (aka "work to live, don't live to work").

As the industrial revolution spun up and took hold, it was the marginally productive workers who were the first to be attracted to or forced to take these new industrial jobs -- these factory jobs included mining jobs, laying railroad tracks driving or servicing a steam locomotive or building or maintaining a steam boiler and so on.

During the First Industrial Revolution we can see that for those moving off the land and into the industrial based jobs, they most often easily had sufficient skills to do so as the leap or jump, the gap in skills possessed of the agricultural worker to skills required for the industrial worker was non-existent at best or at worst was very, very minuscule as to be meaningless (see figure 1) .
Picture
In other cases, such during the Second Industrial Revolution, an agricultural owner, for instance, may well have possessed skills and abilities that were greater than what an industrial revolution job required at the time, in terms of skills required to do said industrial job  (see figure 2).
Picture
And even in the later years of the Second Industrial Revolution, evolving technological changes which may have doomed the Livery Worker also created new but very similar jobs, very analogous jobs such as the Valet Parking Attendant or Auto Detailer. These jobs really didn't take much more ability or intellect than what was already possessed and demonstrated by the current or former Livery Workers.

In fact, in some cases moving from the old, technological obsolete occupation to the new occupation required no new skills. It was simply a slam-dunk, direct transfer of skills or in some cases it may even have actually required fewer skills (see figure 3).
Picture
And near the tail end of the Second Industrial Revolution we can clearly see that even the proverbial Buggy Whip Factory Worker could easily have made the transition into the, then high-tech, Age of the Automobile as a factory worker producing Gas Pedals (accelerators) which, by the way, are very analogous to buggy whips.

They make one's transportation, either a horse, mule, donkey or automobile move forward and accelerate.

And while the production of gas pedals (accelerators) may have taken take a bit more skill in some cases (or even fewer skills in others) the fact remains that there was really nothing about making gas pedals that a former buggy whip factory worker would have found difficult let alone insurmountable (see figure 4).
Picture
However, now we are in the Information Age albeit a wee bit past the early years.But we are still in the very, very early stages of it.

And from here on out this is where the job market in general, and the employability of specific people, and skill sets in particular, goes absolutely haywire.

Bonkers may be a better word.

Huge gaps have already arisen in the required knowledge and requisite skill sets that determine who is gainfully employed, who is categorized as a member of the working poor and who is a tagged, bagged and warehoused as completely unemployable. 

Already today, huge gaps exist in the acquisition of these requisite skills and in their subsequent monetizability. These skills and the monetization of these skills (by the employer)  determines who is employed and unemployed and for the employed it determines what level of total compensation they can command, negotiate or dictate.

This trend, these gaps, and the resultant gap between the wages commanded will continue to quicken, widen and deepen.

And yet if we were to look back at the early days of the Information Age (1970's through 1990's) we can see that given an occupation such as a Taxi Driver or Delivery Driver a huge jump in skills and intellect were required to earn even an entry level  position as a basic technology worker, say for  technology work writing Cobol programs or just administering a mainframe, minicomputer or a pool of workstations.

And although the skills required to enter the early Information Age were perhaps an order or two of magnitude greater than what was required to be a Taxi Driver or Delivery Driver, the required skills needed to enter the information age as a Cobol programmer or system administrator (sys admin) were completely, absolutely and utterly laughable compared to what is required today to be even marginally employable the IT industry let alone what is required to land and hold a good job at what is considered a strong technology producing or technology-based firm like Google, Oracle, SalesForce, Facebook and so on. (see figure 5).
Picture
And yet these early Cobol programming jobs (to focus on just one functional area) were very well compensated, very prestigious and offered many excellent perks as well as what I called a Golden Career Path.

So given all of these benefits as well as the fact that it was so relatively easy to obtain the skills needed to land such plum jobs, why didn't all (or even most) the Taxi Drivers or Delivery Drivers just skill-up and become Cobol programmers? 

What's the reason?Anyone want to venture a guess?

Was it because they just loved driving a cab or delivery truck too much? 

Was it because  they knew they could do the tech job but they didn't feel comfortable or were afraid to be paid vastly more money for this programming work?

Or was it because the prospect of having a superior career path complete with a Golden Career Path laid at their feet was just too much to take, too scary or too overwhelming?

Or could the explanation simply be that they were lacking not just the proper attitude and motivation to get the requisite skills such a job and career change dictated but that they further lacked the intellectual aptitude to do so?

Now, of course, many will simply blame the public school system for not teaching these skills (I can hear the complainers and perpetual excuse makers now) but such an excuse isn't good enough (and I'm not buying it). And even if it were the public school system that was "at fault" or "behind" who suffers from this? And can you ever tell me or point to a time when the public school system wasn't behind the curve?

In fact, the only time I think the public school system wasn't behind the curve was when it was churning out templated factory workers to work in the high-volume pre- and post-world war "stamp and assemble economy".

I do want to be clear.

The reason I ask this question, these questions, is not to hurt someone's feelings or  denigrate anyone's job, occupation or career.  No. Not at all. All jobs have value and all workers that do their work have dignity and honor and I respect that. 

The underlying reason, in fact, the root cause of my questions and questioning is driven by the pundits who see this relentless onslaught of robots, software algorithms, automation and mechanization, which is consuming and now destroying a huge percentage of the manual and lower-level jobs currently in existence, as not just our collective future but they see it as a very good thing.

They see it as something to be lauded and applauded.

They see this destruction of these jobs as something which will "free" up these currently or formerly "repressed" laborers from their current "drudgery" and which will enable them to do "greater things", to supposedly take on work which is far more challenging in terms of the creative, psychological, emotional or intellectual skill sets than their current work now requires of them.

These pundits further believe that by "freeing" these workers from their "wage slave" jobs (i.e., trading time for money) and their apparently "miserable existences", these workers will then be able quickly and effortlessly "move upstream" in their skill sets to such an extent that these workers will simultaneously be moving up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs towards  Self-Actualization as well as much higher total compensation.

                             Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Picture

In theory, the pundits are most probably correct about all of this, that the workers could skill up, they could learn, they could earn far, far great salaries and they could move towards self-actualization.

And personally, I wish they were correct in that.

Imagine if all humans strove to reach their true potential. Imagine the benefit to mankind of what we could collectively accomplish if everyone were truly working to their God-given capacities. 

Image if all the time now endlessly spent watching tv shows, perusing youtube, playing video game or chasing skirts in a bar could be collected or reclaimed and then applied to producing and creating rather than simply consuming, criticizing and complaining.

That would be close to nirvana in my mind.

But in reality, the pundits are nowhere near correct.

In fact, the pundits are dangerously incorrect on this topic. This is especially true given the current, and dare I say sorry, state of the current skill sets and knowledge possessed by the very persons who will be most negatively, most adversely, most tragically affected by this coming onslaught of mechanization and job market changes.

If you then couple this aforementioned reality with these folk's seemingly weak attitude and aptitude to pick up all of the new skills and knowledge they need, right now at this moment, to just have even the smallest hope of gaining employment in any of these "higher level jobs", this knowledge work, it quickly becomes painfully and tragically clear, it becomes abundantly clear that the promise these pundits offer is not just sorely and dangerously mismatched with the reality of the situation at hand but grossly unfit for consumption.

Consider the inconvenient fact that if these Taxi Drivers and Delivery Drivers couldn't muster themselves to acquire the basic skills needed to move intellectually upstream, even when it meant simply learning basic languages like Cobol or Fortran, how the heck can we ever expect them to be able to do it now that the employment requirements in the same field are so massive and getting higher by the year? (see figure 6) 
Picture
Moreover, in this current economy, knowledge workers cannot afford to rest on their educational laurels. They need to have a strong propensity if not an active bias to devote themselves to life-long learning. This is not just learning for learning's sake although many such folks get enjoyment or excitement out of it. No, this requirement of life-long learning is mandatory for such workers to simply remain employed and employable.

Talk to just about any in-demand knowledge worker and you'll find that they all devote huge amounts of their time, energy and resources to the task of trying to stay relevant and current. They constantly work to acquire new skills, knowledge, apply new techniques, take new classes and earn new certifications.

Among this group, it's not unique. It's not even special. 
It's simply  a given. An expected reality.

The fact is that given the state of not just our "official" educational system (primary, secondary or college or university) but more importantly the general public's attitude towards identifying and acquiring monetizable skillsets  as well as developing the aptitude needed to efficiently and effectively acquire it, all of this "move upstream to a world of knowledge, creativity and intellectual challenges" talk is really just a delirious and dangerous hallucinatory dream.

Think about it. Carefully.

Do you doubt any of this? Okay, let's just take a quick survey and kick the tires a bit.

How creative are the workers you personally know? The people you personally know? The neighbors you personally know? How many taxi drivers, delivery drivers, factory workers, heck, even knowledge workers like accountants or lab techs, do you personally know who have written books, created podcasts, written software, produced songs or participated in an art exhibition let alone organized their own showing?

I feel safe betting that the answer is very, very few to absolutely none.

So pray tell me how are these people going to successfully make this painful, costly and treacherous transition in skill sets and knowledge? And remember with everything coming down at once (from factory automation, machine vision, digitization of data, machine-to-machine (M2M) applications, the Internet of Things, the semantic web, autonomous vehicles, enhanced mechanization and roboticization) we can expect huge swaths of jobs to be slashed and then eliminated very, very quickly while the competition for the remaining jobs is driven sky high. 

Then entire Econ 101 and realize that there will be massive downward pressure on the wages of these jobs.

If you are one of the folks who thinks my predictions about the unprecedented number and types of jobs which are first to be decimated and then eliminated, well, just take a quick gander at this short list I put together.


Feel free to click on the links for some short videos or in some cases a short article laying it all out.

Jobs Currently The Sights of Robots & About To Be Roboticized:
  • Taxi drivers
  • Delivery drivers
  • Long haul truck drivers
  • Warehouse workers
  • Factory workers
  • Janitors
  • Security guards
  • Police officers
  • Soldiers
  • Commercial Pilots
  • Cargo Pilots
  • Military Pilots
  • Bartenders
  • Maids
  • Food prep workers
  • Ticket Takers
  • Cashiers
  • Miners
  • Train Conductors
  • Accountants

And it just goes on and on and on. 

Remember, these are just a few of the applications I picked. There are literally hundreds and hundreds that I didn't list including robotic surgery, robotic lovers, robotic nannies and so on. Also remember that these are just a handful of the companies working on any one fields or on any one of these applications.

In reality, there are dozens of companies all around the world who are working to improve the sensors, the software algorithms, the energy sources and the  electro-mechanical mechanisms in just any one field or application. In total there are hundreds and hundreds of these again to consider. I have only just very barely scratched the surface.

And as the industry grows and matures there will be even more market entrants producing this automation and roboticization technology.

I would also add that while it is just seems so easy to laugh at or pooh-pooh this current generation of robots as being too slow, too clumsy or just lame, you need to remember that this industry is still in a very, very nascent state and the market for robots is still emerging.

However, with the amount and quality of scientific brain power and electronic computing power available coupled with the literally "obscene" profits that the winners in this space are expected to make (and the economic signaling value of that), it is only a matter of time (10 to 15 years max) until you may well be working next to a robot or all robots or being served by one either in a restaurant, delivering your room service or placing chocolates on your pillow before giving your turndown  service at the ritzy hotel you are staying at on your business trip.


And please note, that by robot I don't mean the ancient "caged robots" we are used to seeing on the Discovery Channel or television commercials that just did the welding or other very simple work on automotive assembly lines. I'm talking about modern, agile and often autonomous or nearly so robots.

Toyota Automotive Factory: Body Weld Robots
I'd also like to throw in two quick quotes and observations you need to understand.

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."
- William Gibson

That's right, the future is all around us. But it might not be clear to you yet. For example, if we consider M2M (Machine to Machine) infrastructure, this may well be invisible to you unless you work for a communication company like Vodafone or a supplier of the technology. If we are talking about automotive robots or machine vision, this may again be invisible to you unless you work in the field.

And on and on it goes.

In other cases, if you do look at it, you won't "see" it, because there won't be sufficient "density of deployment" to catch your attention, even if you do look at it.

And this is because, initially, you won't see an entire city of all of these robots. Or even enough of any particular robotic application.

Rather you'll see the bartender robots in parts of New York City, you'll see the security robot in a jewelry store in Chicago, you'll see the food prep robot working in a hospital cafeteria in Los Angeles. You'll come across the janitorial robot roaming the halls of a prestigious university in Europe. These robots will be scattered across different industries, applications, states and countries, thus, making the immediate impact extremely easy to miss until it's right on top of us. And yet we must keep in mind this:

"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
- Ray Amaro

On the somewhat bright side, in the short run and even perhaps through 2025 or 2030, there will still be some workers in warehouses, some security guards and so on.

In fact, there may always still be some humans in those fields or many fields.

Yet, it is an absolute certainty that the absolute numbers of people employed in these fields will be an extremely small fraction of the numbers that used to be employed in these field while the competition for the few human jobs which do remain in these fields will be even higher and more fiercely ferocious than ever. Moreover, the actual requirements for said jobs in these fields will continue to rise dramatically while downward pressure on the wages offered will intensify.

Very soon being able to sit at a desk and watch a security camera video feed or being able to make an occasional  foot patrol will no longer be enough to land a simple security job, let alone hold it for any reasonable amount of time.

Nope. You'll need much, much more skill and knowledge than that.

You may need years of management experience of people (this will be true for all of the people who remain in these jobs)  vendors,  projects and budgets. You may need to write programs or troubleshoot the software for the robots -- this may be the technical equivalent in the future as writing a formula or making a macro in Microsoft Excel is today.

If you can't do these things, well, you may find yourself most unwelcome in that field and 100% unemployed.

And this is just one example.

To see where we are now, and how fast we are moving to the future I have shared with you, it's very helpful to consider the very near past and where we came from.

The first video below is footage of a Ford auto factory, circa 1949 and it shows the assembly of very simple, very non-complex automobiles compared to the high complexity automobiles today. Remember today's automobiles are primarily constructed of a unibody and they have extremely narrow tolerances which require high precision wields and assembly work.

In the second video footage, which was taken in 2012, we see a modern Ford auto factory. Does anything strike you as very, very different in this second video?

Ford Factory 1949: Automobiles Being Assembled
Ford Factory 2012: Automobiles Being Assembled By Robots
As I have said many times here, changes, tectonic changes are well afoot. And the entire jobs market along with the social systems as we know them are about to get turned over.

Jobs are about to become very, very scarce, especially jobs that pay a solid wage.

Now, before you say that all of this is patently unfair and that companies somehow should and need to hire more people and/or create more jobs, let me set you straight.

Businesses don't create jobs, they are not in the business of creating jobs.

As Peter Drucker observed many years ago:

The purpose of business is to create and keep customers.

That's it. Period.

And before you tell me or before you blurt out that the poor Taxi Driver in question, whom we have so bullied here, could actually do the work and gain the knowledge required for these modern tech jobs but can't because he or she either doesn't have the money to go back to school, I'll tell you that the Taxi Driver doesn't need to go to school as he or she could learn all they need from free online.

There are countless free resources on the internet in these areas. These range from Khan Academy to Open Source Software to online websites that tutor and teach you (self-directed and self-paced) how to program or develop software in any number of languages

If you then go on to tell me that, well, the Taxi Driver doesn't have time to learn all of this using the online resources talked about, I would then ask you how does he or she find the time to watch the SF Giants, Boston Red Sox,  Nascar or just hang out in the bar with  friends?

If you then tell me that the Taxi Driver needs to rest and can't be learning all the time then I'll tell you, straight out,  they cannot now and cannot never expect to make it in tech because in tech you must be a lifelong learner to make it. You need to be devoted.

And soon every job will be tech. Every job will be "intellectually upstream".

The fact is, tech (like so many other industries and/or functional areas today), moves extremely fast and it's only accelerating.  There's no slowing down. There's no going back.

And if you don't find a lifetime learner's program to be kosher then don't even waste your time trying to get in. Instead try to find a comfortable room in the Government Unemployment Warehouses (GUW) which will most certainly be constructed by robots to house the unemployed and unemployable.

In addition, if you tell me that the Taxi Driver needs a teacher to hold his or her hand to learn or that he or she doesn't know how to use a basic search engine to find this information, well, again that is just immediate proof and a litmus test that he or she won't ever make it in tech because not only does tech require an attitude and disposition which favors intellectual curiosity and life time learning but it requires a person be a self starter.

All the skills and technologies one needs to get a foothold in or even thrive in the tech market and industry exists right now for free. 

From the software (Python, PHP, Linux, BSD, Javascript, MySql, Java and on and on) to the online learning of how to program in various languages to advanced support and industry communities to help you along, it's all there.

Again all of this is not an effort to belittle or pummel Taxi Drivers, Manual Laborers, Cashiers or even customer service or tech support people or another group of workers mentioned or not mentioned in this article.

Rather it's a brutally honest effort to expose the lie that "this new tech revolution is going to be great for laborers" and that this "new tech revolution is no different from any other". 

Anyone that tells you that is either (a) stupid, (b) incompetent, (c) a liar or some combination thereof.

It isn't going to be great. And it's 100% different.

The purpose of this is to expose the lie that there's a place for all or at least a place for the majority of these soon to be displaced workers in the new economy which we will all face soon enough.

And it's a lie because there isn't a place. And there isn't a place because the public schools (private as well) will never change in time if at ever. And the people who most need these changes and skills are the very ones with the lowest attitude and motivation to take the action and learn. There are also most often the ones with the lowest or weakest aptitude to do so and least likely to make the massive, required changes in their life - no more bars, no television, throw away video games, turn off the ball game.

This is not a value judgement but an observation.

What is needed is the ability and propensity to read. Study. Apply. Make mistakes. Improve. Learn. Rinse & Repeat.
By the way, let's talk about some of the other drivers for this replacement of humans for these jobs.

This is probably politically incorrect which is exactly why you won't read of it in many other places and exactly why it's true. Political correct was primarily developed to defend lies while suppressing truths.

Much of the impetus to replace humans with machines and/or software comes right down to ROI and legal exposure. All of the current government regulations and taxes on the books make human workers extremely expensive as does having to contend with labor unions, civil complaints, the legal exposure from possible sexual harassment or power harassment (which by the way, your firm could be liable for even if no one in your firm engages in such behavior. It only takes an outside contractor, vendor or even key client to do this to one of your employees on your premises or even their own while your employee is there).

With robots these worries, fears, costs, legal liabilities and exposure are all a thing of the distant past. Mostly certainly, we'll see the same thing happening the fast food industry as workers and labor unions try and push for a $15 USD per hour minimum wage which is not economically viable.

Expect to see the introduction of automated ordering and cash handling systems and robots (Baxter, etc.) who can assembly burgers, sandwiches or even throw pizza pies.

And never forget that these systems and robots never get sick, never file worker's comp claims, they don't sexually harass or power harass others  (so the legal exposure is low to non-existent), they don't complain, they don't steal, they don't embezzle, they don't unionize, they don't strike and they don't get tired.

Even more importantly, they can learn quickly by downloading new programs or in some cases they can be programmed much like the old macro recorders in spreadsheets whereby an operator simply moves the robots arms, legs, etc. in the desired directions or sequence and it is recorded for later playback.

Those playback scripts or recordings can then be edited, combined or reused in a library of programs.

In addition, these programs and this knowledge is also immediately accessible by all robots within a community, between communities and even intergenerationally. 

Therefore, there are never any "entry level" robots. All robots on the job begin at the highest level of seniority, knowledge and expertise as the most senior and knowledgeable robot already on the job or who has already done the job.

But what will and what can all of these displaced workers do for a living, for an occupation?

We'll talk about all of this in future blog posts but for now the operative concept is Future Proof.

You and/or your children need to Future Proof yourself starting now.

We've discussed this before but we'll get into more detail of exactly what this means, what you should be doing and how to do it.

Until then, thanks for joining us!
0 Comments

What's My Shelf Life And Why Does It Matter?

10/6/2014

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


You've just started your career or perhaps you've been rolling along smoothly or at least fairly smoothly in your career for some time.

If you've been working for some time, sure, you've perhaps been pushed out of one or two companies or felt that it didn't feel like you were growing (no promotions) or the atmosphere changed (a new co-worker or new boss arrived with a bullying attitude).

But overall life is good.

And that's the danger. Life is good now. But have you stopped to consider given your age, career to date, skill set and the industry you are in what your shelf life is?

Shelf life? What's that? Isn't that just related to things like food? Well sure, but it goes beyond that and for our purposes allow me to define it :

Shelf life: The period or length of time for which an item or good remains fit or usable for consumption, or remains salable.

Think of this not as the expiry date (the date where it's not salable or that consumption is not possible) but as the freshness date.

If I eat that day old bread, sure I won't get sick but it won't taste as good as fresh bread nor would I pay as much. In fact, I would buy almost any fresh bread of any variety (french baguette, sour dough, etc.) before I would consider a day old bread of my favorite variety.

And that, my friends, is how shelf life works in the employment and business field.

So we need to think about our shelf. In general, most of us are safe until age 40. But at age 40 (it used to be 50 to 55), boom! We are given no quarter.

Our entire career, every move, every company and so on is scrutinized. If we are looked at at all.....mostly we may just be passed over.

This is why up to the age of 40 it is critical that you carefully determine your career moves as well as the work you do at each company you are employed at -- you must work to build a visible and proven portfolio, create cumulative advantages while decreasing or destroying cumulative disadvantages.

We almost all start in "technical positions" but along our career path we must move from being a "doer" to a manager -- whether we manage people, products, projects or plans.

The "P"s" as I call it.

It's equally critical that we don't just run and jump ships at the first sign of bullying or poor management, because we will face more and more of that the older we get, especially after age 40, so we must learn to engage and fight -- office politics, influencing, persuasion...

Sure, at some point it's time to move but it's a lot less than you might think and only after certain goals or objectives are realized.
Learn More: Crush Any Career!
0 Comments

Our Robotic Future Accelerates (09/13/2014)

9/13/2014

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


We've previously discussed the massive impact (both opportunities and negative downside risks) of what can only be described as the inexorable march towards not just a robotic future but a future which fully and pervasively embraces the broader category of "bits and atoms" as Peter Thiel calls it.

This broader category includes not just caged robots working in a predefined space running a small set of canned routines but robots which can safely work side by side humans, robots with dexterity and the ability to utilize varied devices, pickup and wield small and varied objects and do and responds to varied tasks and situations.

Beyond that, there is the inexorable push forward with the broader space of factory automation (FA), autonomous systems and autonomous vehicles, machine vision, 3D printing and, of course, powerful, software based algorithms and expert systems.

This technology will not only fill industries and spaces where there is a shortage of labor but it will quickly and then massively erode industries, taking over any industry where there is a financial case leading to increased ROI by replacing human labor with these robots, systems and machines.

What's the impact?

Well, think: Delivery vehicles, drones, taxi's, school teachers, factory workers, cleaners, assemblers, bar tenders and on and on.

Here's a quick smattering of related news from within a few weeks time:

  • Ships without crew set for the seas
  • Robot capable of handling unfamiliar objects unveiled
  • Japan plans robot revolution
  • Robot Bartenders
  • Baxter, The Robot Safe Enough to Work Near People

 


Certainly this is nothing new and is captured very nicely by William Gibson in his quote: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."

And yet, this is true as well.

Since the future is unevenly distributed it is extremely easy for us to miss the short-term, mid-term and long-term impacts.

This is sometimes referred to as Amara's Law:

"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
- Roy Amara 

What does all this mean?

Simple. 

Be ready for not only endless changes but be ready for earth shattering changes.

Make sure you're FutureProofed to not just survive but to thrive and then triumph.

0 Comments

Speaking Event: How to Jumpstart Your Career In Japan (or Anywhere Else)

6/20/2014

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive


I had the privilege last night of talking with a large group of visiting high school students from The Harvey School of Katonah, New York on the subject of "How to Jumpstart Your Career In Japan".

We discussed quite a bit about not only developing your value and ROI as a candidate but how one can future proof themselves in the face of the impending tectonic societal and economic shifts that will occur and are occurring from the adoption and diffusion of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), expert systems, machine vision, robots, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, etc.

Picture
Picture
0 Comments

Pinterest, Box, Splunk & Millennial Media @ Mitsubishi Estate's EGG/Tokyo 21C

1/27/2014

0 Comments

 
Fun night at Mitsubishi Estate's EGG/T21C New Year's Kickoff Party (Shin-nen-kai). in Tokyo.

Heard great presentations from the Country managers of Pinterest, Box, Splunk and Millennial Media. 
0 Comments

Being Good At "Doing A Job" Isn't Being Good At "Landing A Job"

1/18/2014

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


On an almost daily basis I'm contacted by or, during the course of the day, I come across individuals who express frustration that they either (a) have the proper credentials to do a particular job or (b) have proven experience at doing a particular job, yet they somehow have great difficulty in finding or landing not just that particular  job but often any job.

There are a number of very granular reasons as to why this is, but for now, takes take a 20,000 foot view of what's going on here:
  • Being good at "doing a job" isn't the same as being good at "finding a job". 
  • Being good at "finding a job" isn't the same as being "good at landing a job" (i.e., receiving an offer and joining the company).
  • Being good at "landing a job" isn't the same as  "doing the job", let alone "keeping it".
  • And even if one is good at all of those, it doesn't follow that one is also automatically good at planning and managing a career.

Below are the 5 broad areas in which some level or core competency is necessary for an individual to establish, nurture and enjoy a long vibrant and fruitful career. 

It should also be noted that each of these 5  areas can also be analyzed on a much more granular basis. 

For instance, finding a job and landing a job would together include activities such as job discovery or job creation, resume design and development, locking down interview opportunities, closing down the interview, receiving a written job offer, negotiating a "proper" starting salary and package, onboarding and so on.

Five Broad Areas Of Career Competency:
1. Do a job
2. Find a job
3. Land a job
4. Keep a job
5. Plan and manage a career

Do you agree or disagree with this view? Which areas do you find yourself strongest in? Which areas do you find your skills to be uneven or perhaps in need of a boost if not a tear down and rebuild?
0 Comments

Not "Peak Oil" But "Peak Jobs": And Being Local Is Irrelevant

12/6/2013

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Silicon Edge

Recently Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune, sat down with Marc Andreesen to discuss The Future of Work, Cars and the Wisdom in Saying 'No' (full, unabridged version on Forbes Magazine here: Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen).

In this interview, I was particularly struck with Marc's views on the impact of the ever-accelerating and widening technological adoption on the job market, and the elimination of entire categories of jobs as well as his comments on education and the need for re-training.

Andy Serwer: We all understand that the Internet revolution is inevitable at this point, but it’s also kind of controversial. There are scads of new jobs at Facebook and Twitter and other places, but what about the ones that are destroyed by the inroads of technology into every industry? Are you actually creating more than you’re destroying?

Marc Andreessen: Jobs are critically important, but looking at economic change through the impact on jobs has always been a difficult way to think about economic progress. Let’s take a historical example. Once upon a time, 100 percent of the United States effectively was in agriculture, right? Now it’s down to 3 percent. Productivity in agriculture has exploded. Output has never been higher. The same thing happened in manufacturing 150 years ago or so. It would have been very easy to say, “Stop economic progress because what are all the farmers going to do if they can’t farm?” And of course, we didn’t stop the progress of mechanization and manufacturing, and our answer instead was the creation of new industries.

From my vantage point, this is completely off track for one main reason -- in the earlier stages of mechanization and automation we had far, far, far fewer people on this planet so that these productivity increases could support and sustain larger and larger populations. In addition, the rate of change was far lower and more localized. It was the difference of seeing single family home burn, to the firebombing off an entire city with no where to run to the simultaneous firebombing of an entire country if not world. 
[Read more] Not Peak Oil but Peak Jobs >>
0 Comments

Stop Being Anxious About Your Career & Learn How To Future Proof Yourself

11/8/2013

0 Comments

 
By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


"I'm worried (anxious, unsettled or flat-out scared) about my future. What can I do to protect my job or career and my future? And more specifically what skills should I be focusing on?"

This is one of the most frequent questions I get from not only new graduates and mid-career executives but also from current students and for very good reason -- the labor markets are changing on a daily basis. 

Not only are the labor markets being impacted (flooded) by the continuing globalization (and easy access) of talent but they are also affected by the ever quickening development of technology-based productivity namely: software, algorithms, factory automation, expert systems, 3D Printing (although it's a very nascent industry and technology) and so on.

On top of that, many jobs and industries that were normally protected either through the presence of asymmetrical information (legal, real estate, recruiting, etc.) or regulatory capture (venture capitalists, brokers, banking, taxi drivers, hotels, etc.) are finding themselves under assault as both technology and nimble, steel-nerved startups which are highly attracted to above market returns offered in these captured markets which together in concert are working to ultimately "free" this information and break the regulatory capture and the rent-seeking corporations and incumbents that have worked to protect these markets. What startups would these be? Well, think of names like Craigslist, Uber, Airbnb,  Kickstarter, Redfin, and AngelList among many startups.

So what is the answer to the original question? Well, to start with we should heed some advice from Canadian hockey great, Wayne Gretzky.

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."
-- Wayne Gretzky 

A good hockey player doesn't concern himself where the puck is. A great hockey player is concerned with where the puck is going to be and then works to position himself to be there before the puck is.

Therefore, wherever we are in our careers or in our career path, we need to look out at what we might expect our industry (automotive, information tech, food, pharma, banking, etc.) and functional area (sales, marketing, accounting, finance, customer service, engineering, etc.) to look like 5, 10 and 20 years down the road. In particular, we need to consider what social, market and technological trends are on the horizon.

One thing we should all be able to see very clearly and is that not only is automation of all industries and facets of society increasing but we seem to have reached an inflection point where given the huge world population and the ability to quickly tap into needed skill sets and/or engage in wage arbitration, technology is now eliminating more quality jobs (define quality, I know...) than it is creating for the current labor pool. This requires any candidate or person in the current labor pool to skill up in value-add skill sets (will take later what those skill sets should be).

It's hard to believe but if you could just think back (or Google) just a few decades ago word processors weren't ubiquitous and in many cases they weren't even around. In fact, in the early 1980's if you wanted to write  a resume you typed it, on a typewriter (remember those?) and that often meant paying a typist to do that. The same thing happened  for graduate and post-doctorate papers or theses. You paid someone to type it.

ATM's were not ubiquitous either. Some people didn't like using them. They were optional. Email in the corporate world was quite new, if it was used at all. In fact, many of the large companies was allergic to email even up to the late 1980's/early 1990's and would distribute paper-based (hard copy) memos and documents and then send a separate email - which no one would read. And the list goes on. Telex, faxes, voicemails and so on.

There are two main groups of skills needed:
A) The skills to do the job and keep the job 
B) The skills to find a job opportunity (or create one) and package, present and close on that job.

A) Jobs Search Skills:
1. You need the skills to do the job.
2. You need the skills to find the job.
3. You need the skills to land and close the job.
4. You need the skills to maintain and keep the job.
5. You need the skills to plan and manage your career.

B) The Skills To Do The Job: (broad level skills, but we can get more granular)
1. Communication skills
2. Negotiating skills
3. Influencing skills
4. Persuasion skills
5. Assertiveness skills
6. Leadership skills

As an added bonus, I would suggest:
7. Critical Thinking and Analysis skills
8. No Box Thinking skills
0 Comments

    About

    Career OverDrive™ is your platform for career acceleration and expert advice. Together we'll explore high-performance career development, acceleration, transitions and change, job searching, interviewing and salary negotiations, Psychological Jujutsu™ and office politics and organizational power dynamics.

    Picture

    Archives (by date)

    June 2018
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    February 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    Approval
    Approval Seeking
    Asia
    Audio Guides
    Autonomous Systems
    Autonomous Vehicles
    Career Advice
    Career Advice
    Career Damage
    Career Damage
    Career Overdrive
    Career Overdrive
    Career Overdrive Announcements
    Career Overdrive Announcements
    Career Overdrive Website
    Career Overdrive Website
    Changing Careers
    China
    Coaching Advice
    Coaching Advice
    Communications
    Conferences
    Criticism
    Crush Any Career
    Crush Any Career
    Crush Any Interview
    Crush Any Interview
    Decision Making
    Decision Making
    Deprogramming
    Education
    Energy
    Entrepreneurs
    Entrepreneurship
    Events
    Factory Automation
    Failure
    Favors
    Fire Your Recruiter
    Fire-your-recruiter
    Fortune Cookie Inspiration
    Fortune Cookie Peddlers
    Frameworks
    Future Proof
    Hamster Wheel
    High Impact Resumes
    High Impact Resumes
    High-impact Resumes
    Hope Peddlers
    Humor
    Japan
    Job Candidate
    Job Candidate
    Job Search Lifecycle
    Job Search Lifecycle
    Leadership
    Liberal Arts Degree
    Machine Vision
    Memes
    Mental Chains
    Mental Conditioning
    Mistakes
    Modeling Success
    Modeling Success
    Myths
    Nbt
    Negotiations
    No Box Thinking
    Office Politics
    Opportunity Cost
    Organizational Power
    Passion Peddlers
    Phfc
    Philosophies
    Promotions
    Psychological Jujutsu
    Quotes
    Rituals
    Robots
    Salary Negotiations
    Silicon Valley
    Situational Awareness
    Speaking Conferences
    Speaking Events
    Startups
    Success Modeling
    Success Stories
    Tech Firms
    Tech Startups
    Testimonials
    Time Management
    Tokyo
    Unlearning
    Validation
    Work Life Balance
    Work-life Balance

    RSS Feed

Picture
© Copyright 2007-2023 SiliconEdge™ Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Picture