Ask HN: My industry's becoming commoditised and I'm scared

I've seen reports that up to 70% of workers are in jobs that could eventually be automated. This is a pretty scary statistic when you think about it, which is why I'm also a huge proponent of the idea of a basic income guarantee. With numbers like that, pretty much every job is going to be overcome by competition for the position, no matter how intricate it is, as long as we have this notion that everyone HAS to work in order to earn the right to live—even if there's no work available.

But if you're looking for jobs where your likelihood of being outsourced is negligible, look for the ones that are hardest for machines to do. These, by the way, aren't necessarily those at the top of the knowledge spectrum. Doctors as a profession, for example, will eventually fall to machine learning systems like Watson, and medical school will become more a technician's school than anything else. Nurses, however, perform a wide variety of functions that are difficult to automate safely, nor can they be offshored. Its difficult to outsource sticking a needle in someone.

Last thing: I'd argue with the idea that web development is commoditized. At the lower end of the spectrum, sure—tons of wordpress themes out there, its easy to offshore something like that, basic development provided by good software. But higher up the food chain, where you're at the end of the market where you actually DO stuff like write original javascript, or develop some new server platform, or whatever it is on that end of the spectrum—those jobs aren't going anywhere for awhile.

Thanks for your comment, I appreciate your insights - and the way you've insightfully looked for jobs that are less likely to be outsourced.

One point I wanted to reply to:

> But higher up the food chain, where you're at the end of the market where you actually DO stuff like write original javascript, or develop some new server platform, or whatever it is on that end of the spectrum—those jobs aren't going anywhere for awhile.

I agree, but I feel this part of the market is shrinking as more people squash into it. More and more of my current clients - and I could well have ended up in a backwater of sub-$18000 projects - are considering that 'good enough' is good enough while money's tight and there's a recession on. Perhaps the interesting jobs will move away from agencies and into the tech players (Google, Facebook, Oracle etc), and the self-employed market will struggle as anything other than contractors?

Despite what I hear myself say I know other industries have gone through this doom-and-gloom over the last few centuries, and not all have become like manufacturing...

Productivity increases (including robotization/automation) mean that the US economy can produce the same goods with less work or more goods with the same work. If we're in a situation where the prospect of being able to produce more goods or work less is "pretty scary", then we're doing something wrong as a society. These sorts of changes should be Pareto-efficient.

"Should be" is a pretty strong phrase in that last sentence. There's also a big difference between being able to work less (when productivity gains translate into wage gains) and having to work less (when productivity gains translate into shrinking labor demand).

Newsflash: we're doing something wrong as a society. Because socially we're not going to accept that people should be working less—not because they need to work more, but because idle hands offend.

Since when is right to live equal to a basic income guarantee? That's like saying all bacteria, whether benign or malignant, should be given free agar solution so that they can grow and prosper in the world. It just doesn't make sense.

Well, all organisms have the right to try to live, so it might not be a bad idea to pay off the angry peasants.

The difference between humans and bacteries, is that humans a higher order than bacteries. In humans, you have intelligence and self consciousness, and consciousness of the univers, and the ability (very very tiny small for now, non withstanding the proponent of human made climate heating), to act retrospectively, introspectively and consciously on the universe.

AFAIK, no other entity is able to do so, and therefore we are an essential part of the universe, giving it an entirely different ontology. You could eradicate some kind of bacteria, and the universe wouldn't change of essence. If you eradicated humanity, it would (at least, until and IF, it can evolve another sapiens sapiens specie, which is probably, but still seems to take a lot of time, even at the scale of the universe).

But even without taking into account those mechanistic considerations, as a human agent, you can choose to build around yourself (and ourselves), any kind of society you want. So the question is whether you want to build a Nietzschean or a Christian or some other kind of society. Do you want the rule of the Jungle, or do you want some kind of higher civilization? Do you want the brutal application of natural selection, (don't provide any medical care, let the strongest survive and multiply), or would you prefer to let the humanity choose its evolutive path, by applying artificial selection and having even ill-fitted members survive and prosper?

Finally, occidental civilisation, ie. greco-roman civilization, always has been about, and been developed by, citizen having a lavish life of leisure and culture, provided by hordes of slaves. Thanks to the judeo-christianism influence, we now know that slavery is bad, and thanks to the technical progress, we're about to be able to replace it entirely by robots and other computerized systems. The result is that instead of having 2000 citizens, we'll have seven billion citizens, and instead of having a million slaves, we'll have trillions of little robots and computers, to provide us the leisure and culture we want.

Could you please source some of the reports that talk about the automation of the workforce? I agree with the gist, but I lack sources to defend the point.

Technology will continue to commoditize and move fast. The trick is to operate in that spread between what is commoditized and what is custom.

If you want to stay with web/consumer-facing development, find the parts that are in demand but not commoditized yet. Right now that appears to be mobile development - responsive web, apps, etc. There is still no good development process for high quality responsive websites.

Computing has always grown towards abstraction - can't remember the last time I wrote a routine to manipulate video memory directly, but I can do things with graphics in 15 minutes that blows away anything I could do in hundreds of hours when that sort of work was required and profitable. Same will happen with web.

Alternatively, the business value of spreading a client's message has not changed and the technology landscape is becoming more complex. Maybe focus more on the strategy and value of the messaging than the technology used to transmit it.

I have seen this happen in a couple different industries. I did web development from 96 to 06 and I felt the same forces at work over that time.

After that I spent 6 years in AAA game development. Again, many custom systems were replaced with middleware.

It's my opinion that these trends are driven by the needs of business, generally. Technology (and other disciplines) are a means to a business goal. Imagine a game designer with an idea (or anyone with an idea). They want to execute the idea with as little pain between conception and execution. They don't care about linear algebra or DMA. It's this force that leads to commoditization of tech.

IMHO you can't avoid this, and it is not necessarily bad. It's also been my experience that you can find places that do the work you want to do. But you might have to move.

Best of luck to you.

The rush to build big desktop sites is largely over, and the stragglers / late adopters are the most likely to value lower-cost, lower-risk solutions than the early customers. None of that should be surprising.

There's another wave coming: although most top-tier web sites have already done it, a lot of these SMB web sites are going to need to adopt to a mobile-first world where more of their traffic is coming from phones.

I'd suggest that's the right place to look, but you should always expect that any industry so close to technology is going to evolve continually towards greater automation, because it's populated largely by software developers who are the exact group likely to implement that kind of automation.

If you want a job / industry that doesn't evolve quickly, you need to be somewhere with large amounts of physical implementation and low risk tolerance. Like bridge building, or oil drilling, or mining. People can go their whole careers in those industries in largely the same role, because they're more about repeating the same process exactly and dependably than attempting to quickly innovate.

It's a good thing that some parts of design/development are being automated. We can now spin off new products increasingly faster and for a substantially lower cost.

That said, at a certain level of competency automation stops. While you can buy a design template to try something out, it won't give you the same tailored experience as something that was created by a professional. While you can download a jQuery plug and strap it to a html page, that won't give you the same power as code written by the best engineers...etc.

Instead of thinking of a different industry to join, think of ways that you could elevate yourself from the masses. If you're currently coding in PHP, learn Node and try Meteor - then go work with people who find these new methods attractive. If you currently design t-shirts and logos, understand iOS, learn Android, explore Google Glass, and then go work for projects that are in demand.

All said and done, commoditization of labor will weed out the under-performers, but it will give even greater power to those creatives that can go above and beyond.

Technology will always march towards cheaper solutions. Either the technology itself will become cheaper, or you'll face competition from people that know the newer technology or are willing to work for less than you charge. Furthermore, technology has been successful because of its promise of automation and cost-savings.

I've seen a similar pricing-trend with client-work. It's encouraged me to pursue product development. You sound like a capable developer, so why not consider using your skills to build something that can generate its own revenue stream.

There are many industries that won't be commoditized ... healthcare being one of them ... but something like that probably isn't aligned with your expertise. Stick with what you know, and apply it towards building a product rather than a handful of products for other people.

You're starting from the premise that there is a job that will not be commoditised for the remainder of your career. This is a faulty premise. It's up to you to learn the things you need to remain relevant, be that additional technical skills or "soft skills" like management.

I disagree I can learn my way out of the problem and remain relevant. Additional technical skills only keep me another step ahead of the commoditisation, and if people don't want to pay money for these skills, it hasn't helped. Management skills I need to improve, but if the workforce reduces in size, there's less need for managers too...

Minister of Religion is the only job I can think of that is hard to commoditise...

Good luck!

I don’t fully agree. Take the chartered accountant thing. It means you can find an audit/internal audit job today and that’s still something with status. I bet you are not considering other markets to apply your skills. Custom software for many company makes no sense no more, but then who is building the standard software? And can you outcompete them? I was looking yesterday for a small CRM for a company I am advising, the “cheapest” solution costs USD 24 monthly per agent. What about building something that costs USD 5 per agent? There have to be other ways for someone with your skillset.

If you can't get over your competitors, join them! Start automatizing things... This could be a good start for a web developer: www.theclientrelationsfactory.com

But you are absolutly right. Things change fast, and the thing is changing fastest is the change itself.

Things that require creativity won't be commoditised, hopefully. Art, music, research, game design, writing, etc.

But > 95% creativity "workers" (Art, music, game design, writing) get very little money

Dan Brown gets little money?