When computers came onto the market and could automate a large percentage of office jobs, what happened to the job market for office jobs?

▲

cogman10 18 hours ago | parent [-]

They changed, significantly.

We lost the pneumatic tube [1] maintenance crew. Secretarial work nearly went away. A huge number of bookkeepers in the banking industry lost their jobs. The job a typist was eliminated/merged into everyone else's job. The job of a "computer" (someone that does computations) was eliminated.

What we ended up with was primarily a bunch of customer service, marketing, and sales workers.

There was never a "office worker" job. But there were a lot of jobs under the umbrella of "office work" that were fundamentally changed and, crucially, your experience in those fields didn't necessarily translate over to the new jobs created.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qman4N3Waw4

▲

slopinthebag 18 hours ago | parent [-]

I expect something like this will happen to some degree, although not to the extent of what happened with computers.

But the point is that we didn't just lose all of those jobs.

▲

cogman10 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Right, and my point is that specific jobs, like the job of a dev, were eliminate or significantly curtailed.

New jobs may be waiting for us on the other side of this, but my job, the job of a dev, is specifically under threat with no guarantee that the experience I gained as a dev will translate into a new market.

	▲	slopinthebag 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think as a dev if you're just gluing API's together or something akin to that, similar to the office jobs that got replaced, you might be in trouble, but tbh we should have automated that stuff before we got AI. It's kind of a shame it may be automated by something not deterministic tho. But like, if we're talking about all dev jobs being replaced then we're also talking about most if not all knowledge work being automated, which would probably result in a fundamental restructuring of society. I don't see that happening anytime soon, and if it does happen it's probably impossible to predict or prepare for anyways. Besides maybe storing rations and purchasing property in the wilderness just in case.