Compared to the prospect of there being no job at all because software ate the whole thing, at the societal level this is barely interesting at all. Yeah, it sucks if you get caught in that moment where the problem hasn't quite become acute enough for the field to realize it needs to do apprenticeships instead of expecting experience, but, well, there isn't necessarily a better solution than waiting for the field to figure it out.
Yes, hire a temporary worker with an H-1B visa or outsource it outright.
No one is entitled to be the only person that gets to do a job that many other people can do.
I didn't say anything that disagrees with this statement, I simply said that for the last decade the way to increase profits has been to bring in migrant workers from overseas, and lay off skilled domestic workers, and there's no reason wh the approach won't continue to be the same in the face of a hypothetical domestic skills shortage.
In fact, the idea that there are "other countries with people [...] that can program" is a strong disincentive to have an apprenticship/training program, and reinforces that the primary solution to expanding hiring is going to continue to be H-1B visas and not education.
(Modulo one's faith in the (in)competence of government interventions and its degree. obLibertarian objection noted -- so please expand and not just repeat if you are commenting in that direction.)
Well, yes. Nutters are louder everywhere. Not sure if it's worse over here. Not sure if there's as much pandering to the nutters all across the political here as elsewhere. On trips abroad, I did detect that many Europeans were aghast at our politics in the early 2000s and were still (but for different reasons) as of 2014.
> The problem is that we are eating entry-level jobs, and in turn, creating an artificial scarce supply of "experienced" workers.
On the other hand, it is easier than ever to get cheap, basic education in a variety of things, with the Internet and MOOCs making information widely available. So entry-level jobs may be less necessary these days. On the other hand, it means the people who can afford to spend time acquiring this knowledge without receiving pay will have a bigger advantage than ever. Yet another argument for basic income, I guess.
Also, would edit my original reply if I could to say that things seem to be heading this direction, not that they definitely or inevitably are.
When employers use education as a minimum bar, it may often be the case that the actual bar is the history as qualification, rather than the actual content of the information. It's similar to how a degree in theory would prove the employer that the person has some discipline to finish a degree.
Entry-level jobs are absolutely necessary, first for learning to get to work on time daily, then for the job-specific education needed to work up to something actually productive and which cannot be simply taught by an independent "expert".
Those advocating "basic income" need to go look up the phrase "going Galt" (upshot: given enough unproductive leeching off the productive, the latter are apt to say "screw this" and disappear from society).
"Going Galt" appears to primarily be a fantasy scenario. People largely tend to consumption rates which are smoothed and that factor in long-term expectations of income as opposed to marginally increasing rates that follow short-term signals like a linear input-output device. So it seems that tax burdens alone are not enough to cause massive "dropping out of society", as rational actors have determined that participation in consumer society in light of regulations and other externalities is still preferable to the costs of off-the-grid living. Not that taxation can't cause disincentive, but it's more complicated than just that.
Was I excited to get an analyst job right out of school for $28K/year (many years ago), after earning a math degree from a prestigious school? Uh, not really. But...
- Only about 50% of my job was actually excel nerf-herding
- The other 50% was a mix of research projects and building the department budget...this allowed me to meet everyone in the building and learn a little bit about how their area worked (and how the company made money)
- Better yet, I was one of three analysts in a 50 person marketing unit...so it was expected my next role would be outside of analytics and I was trained/coached accordingly. The company put less focus on my excel wrangling skills (low value) and more on me as a future program manager or senior tech (high value).
- Ah yes...and we were sufficiently small, I had to learn how to pull my own data (SQL and some light SAS scripting)
The net result? Pretty much everyone in my 10 person class of recruits amounted to something, professionally. Most are manager/director level, about half technical, half business.
The same company today splits the same work into a couple of specialist teams, consolidated across the company, with minimal cross training. You don't join as talent, you join as an Excel monkey. And dang it, we're gonna make you a very productive Excel Monkey. No need to learn the other stuff.
The results have been disappointing...
Are unpaid internships a symptom of this flow perhaps? They read a lot like apprenticeships (but with a significant burden of responsibility missing).
I'm not sure I agree, but it's interesting that very young people and their families are beginning to question the established educational model in such a bold fashion.
I've been wondering about a similar (far more narrow) dynamic around the C programming language. There are still a number of places C is the best fit, but those are increasingly in places where expert knowledge of C is required.
There are presently enough legacy projects where people can cut their teeth usefully that this isn't soon a major issue, but if we continue to displace more but not all uses of C, this could get interesting in the long term (maybe).
Also, this is a perspective I've not considered or heard of before. Thanks for that.
But to get to the higher-quality jobs, you generally need experience. Not many employers are willing to hire someone and put him in a responsible position based off their potential alone. It follows, then, that we need substantial number of entry level positions to, so to speak, open the door for future potent workers.
But those doors are closing at an alarming rate.
Consider law firms. Discovery work(going through past records to find cases of relevance, law clauses of relevance) that used to be the "first year" work, is almost exclusively done by software. It's cheaper and more accurate. We may still need more quality lawyers, but as we remove the uses for inexperienced lawyers, we are decreasing the number of future experienced lawyers.
Translation used to be a very non-trivial work. Not just for heavy-publishing prose or fiction, but even for simple phrases, if the need was great enough, we would hire an entry level translator. Now we would generally use Google translate for a phrase or two because it was "good enough" at a marginal price.
The problem for prospect high-earning society isn't that software is eating jobs. As long as we are vain and greedy to aspire for higher quality, we will have those sophisticated jobs. The problem is that we are eating entry-level jobs, and in turn, creating an artificial scarce supply of "experienced" workers.
And those "experienced" workers, now that they have put their foot into the door, and with the huge demand for work to be done, will enjoy the job market(aren't we all, as developers?), but what of those that are left, for no fault of their own?