| My brother's electrical company needed hundreds of Schaltpläne (circuit diagrams).
Drawing each by hand = 5 hours per plan
100 drawings = 500 hours = 12 weeks
Professional CAD work? Unbezahlbar (unaffordable).
The secret weapon: AutoLISP
A programming language built into AutoCAD
The Result: 99.5% time saved
100 drawings: 12 weeks → <1 hour
This is a general pattern of how automation (including the recent wave of gen-AI) reshapes the labor landscape. Automation rarely replaces jobs wholesale (i.e. very few people get fired because their position was "outsourced" to automation). Rather, automation lets people who are proficient in Domain A who need some work done in Domain B become proficient enough in Domain B with sufficient ease that it's cheaper for them to pick up the requisite Domain B skills themselves versus hiring a Domain B specialist. |
