Which USA do you work in?
blogmaverick.com
blogmaverick.com
However, much as the ideas make intuitive sense, I'm having a hard time thinking of concrete examples. How does using Square take away from what Starbucks employees could've brought to the job? Ironically, the only example I can think of is IT work, both helpdesk and sys-admin. Lots of software seems to be replacing the craft of troubleshooting. Good if you have a bad IT dept.; bad if you have a good one.
And finally, I don't think the overlap is complete. A company may automate a lot of things, but there are other things, or even the automation itself where employees can still give valuable input. It may be like the manufacturing in the end: companies come back around to the other intangible values once they see the true cost of only optimizing for the bottom line. Sad that it always takes a whole cycle of outsourcing, downsizing, losing customers, and crappy products/service before the industry comes around and rethinks the strategy.
Required "job skills" classes sound like insanity. What would they teach? A semester of Excel is not a computer science / statistics double-major going to make, nor will a semester of Hadoop help anyone without the background to use it.
Yes, increased use of centralized analytics in large businesses is polarizing the job market. Some things that once required a layer of middle-management to comprehend can now be done directly on the raw data. This is the layer that's at risk.
However, not all companies are big. Some things focus on actual personal relationships. Some things require actual creative output (design, either engineering or artistic). All of that is still around. And none of that will be helped by "job skills" classes.
I think what he meant by "job skill" classes is more along the lines of codeacademy because this is a very direct skill that can be applied instantly to industry problems, whatever those might be.
The author feels that universities should promote these types of resources with some sort of incentive because what's working in the job market now is real applicable skills... something a Business Admin/Liberal Arts major might not have.
Having Javascript on your resume is looking attractive to more and more employers.
Also the premium on personal relationships with employees of a firm is decreasing in the sense that the best customer support relationship I can have is none at all, the product just works.
Lawyers are a good example -- protected by a (not as powerful) union, but more and more of the "digital" parts of law are becoming free (useful legal advice, services like legal zoom, etc.), or global markets (e discovery, etc.)
Even in these professions that are starting with a high base of smarts in "brick and mortar", the ratio of "digital smarts"/"brick and mortar smarts" is growing. Where are big improvements in diagnosis going to come from? Smarter GPs or smarter diagnostic tools? It doesn't mean GPs will get less smart or that there will be fewer of them, but the ratio is going to grow.
Robots can currently 3d print in concrete, and the roof stays on, what is hard is the software and architecture to design a window cavity that is printable, functional etc etc, and the software needed for balance, precision location
I think what I am saying is that hardware is only 33% of the robotic revolution - the rest is same as we discuss here
(Which is another way of saying I'm in Australia).
Well anyway, as far as the "Australians emulate Americans" thing goes, I hope Australia has a DIY scene akin to the US Maker faires soon enough and so on ..
(Disclaimer: I am Australian. Haven't lived there in years, but I do enjoy a yarn.)
I have a friend in an Australian software company that is starting to consider outsourcing to the US to cut down on programming costs.
hire expensive programmers who can do the work of twenty
and mostly the do the work of twenty is about building infrastructure, automation and not going down rat holes not to do with ability.
But the rent is higher, the petrol more expensive, the food more expensive, imported electronics more expensive and so on and so forth in spite of the soaring dollar.
Similarly, the costs of doing business in Australia are paid in Australian dollars. Need a new roll of paper for the fax machine? You're paying Australian prices for it. Need a business lunch? Australian dollars. Phone line? Australian dollars. Just because the dollar started soaring five years ago doesn't mean that all this pricing will be reset down. How would you take your boss saying "Because the Aussie dollar is strong, we're adjusting your salary downwards now that you can buy more with it"?
Sure, it annoys me that digital downloads gouge based on IP address, but the other goods you mention are more complex than "dollar strong, so they must become cheaper".
I don't expect everything to get cheaper because of the dollar. I do expect some things to. And they haven't.
Stuff is more expensive in Australia because there are fewer of us. The market is smaller, there's less competition and less economies of scale. Mix in the odd combination of almost unlimited land and almost unlimited restrictions on land release and you can see why just about everything in this country is, dollar or no dollar, more expensive than the USA.