Hacker News Reader

Comment by walshemj | Hacker News Reader

Most of the entry level white collar jobs that can be automated have been.

Those that remain would require some major and I mean order of magnitudes improvements in AI.

Can you give me some examples of white collar jobs that you think can be automated?

I worked at a large tech company that had an enormous finance department. They did everything in Excel. Our job was to automate their work. The tools we built were routinely more accurate and faster than the finance people were.

When our work was less accurate, it was because the input was bad. The input came from the finance team. The only reason they didn't disappear entirely was because they'd convinced management that there were things that the software couldn't do that only humans could futz with. The one or two percentage points their adjustments improved their results by were easily outpaced by the overall improved accuracy of the machines.

People are already fighting back against this. I'm a SWE and my EX worked at the finance department in a huge robotics company.

Their department did everything by copying and pasting stuff in excel in a painfully slow and cumbersome way.

She told me their challenges, so I wrote some python scripts to automate their work.

When she showed it to her boss, hoping to get a positive response, his reaction was "Put that away if you like your job here!"

This is the nightmare of every middle manager. They won't be able to justify their existence if their teams get automated away so they will actively fight against it.

The solution is to keep your scripts private, automate your job, and work on whatever you want while making sure you always look busy when your boss walks by.

If you roll over like you suggest and let your boss tickle your belly, what do you say to yourself when you look in de mirror?

"Mmm. I look good. I mean, really good. Hey, everyone! Come and see how good I look!"

More importantly, what will you tell your grandkids, presuming you have any? "I was doing an unnecessary job instead of not wasting resources and doing anything productive"?

Maybe maximizing efficiency to increase shareholder value is not the sole metric for a life well lived.

Every story like that is a company with a bullseye on its back, just waiting for a lean and mean competitor to put it out of business.

> I worked at a large tech company that had

How big is their finance department now?

I don't know, I don't work there anymore. But my understanding is that it's essentially the same size.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com