Somewhere at the very beginning of my career, the second year I think, I was part of the team that visited a location of the company we were selling our SaaS solution to, in a branch that was back then still dependent on Excel sheets.

The owner of the company lead us to a large open office with about 30 people working in there, mostly women, and whispered to us that he expects he'll only need three of them after subscribing to our product.

That's when I realised the brutality of what we are doing, and the sales guy I was with realised we should be charging significantly more.

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StilesCrisis 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As much as it would suck to be one of the 27 unemployed, I don't think the answer is to throw away our calculators and start doing our bookkeeping by hand again. I don't think you need to feel too bad about this. The accountants didn't all disappear when Excel showed up; they just got to work on the more interesting parts of the job, instead of rectifying arithmetic.

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lkey 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We could create economic systems that prioritized workers over immediate profit.

In this case, a system that aided the displaced workers in finding new positions and acquiring skills that are not simply doordashingfor rent (and still counting that as 'full employment').

In this latest disruption, highly skilled workers are being underemployed in low skill labour and we all lose out. PhD and JD to baristas and uber driver economy.

The federal funding and employment disruption alone will take decades to fix, if ever.

Anywho, you should notice when you participate in creating a massive disruption in many people's lives (to create super-profit for a couple of already wealthy men).

You are never just following orders, don't close your eyes to what you are doing with your life.

And before you 'what about' me. I have refused orders and lost jobs because of it. My only regret is not organizing with other workers beforehand.

	▲	mitxela 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Heck, a good start would be ensuring displaced workers still get food and shelter as long as we want. Those coal miners? They carried the industrial revolution. We should be treating them as retired heroes when we replace the plant with a solar field, not as disgraced losers!

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TeMPOraL 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are many things that could've happened to those 27 people. The company might've decided to reinvest savings into expanding business, and shift those 27 into different roles. Or may have just plain fired them. We can't tell in every case.

But it is worth remembering that the latter is a probable outcome, and that is what our business is, overall. Automation. As in, automating work so it doesn't need people to be done.

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ThrowawayR2 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What's the evidence for that? Did the horses get to work on more interesting parts of the job when the automobile showed up?

	▲	StilesCrisis 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're right. I said "the accountants didn't ALL disappear" but surely, some of them had to endure a career change. But what's the alternative?

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limagnolia 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And you didn't say "cool, after they are no longer needed for this task, what other exciting oppurtunities will you be able to employ them pursuing that will grow your company?"

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_DeadFred_ 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I once built a product that optimized waste. I was so proud of myself, it was going to save so much money. Did a site visit to a beta site and was talking to staff. One woman asked me if I knew what happened to that waste. I answered no. She told me it was bagged up and sent to third world countries where it saved lives. That is how I killed people to save money. Yes, if you are dependent on that waste it is very precarious. Doesn't change the reality for the people who it no longer went to save. I don't know the lesson to take from it. Still haunts me. Saving the money kept services in underserved communities in the US and touched tens of thousands of lives. But it also cost lives. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

	▲	eks391 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've just accepted that there is no action which has the intended effect in full. Kinda like how entropy forces mechanical energy to not be transferred in full to the form desired. Electrical to light? Some transfer will be heat. Optimize to be more light than heat? Light bill goes down, heat bill goes up in winter. That's a disconnected parallel from real choices that have much more drastic effects. I don't think what you did was wrong, but it did have unintended consequences. Every new technology brings opportunities for both good and evil intents too, but the outcome is judged by those effected, regardless of the intent of the agent.