It’s a dreary winter night in London. You’re making your rounds with torch and tub of oil in hand. Cold and wet, but comfortable in the fact that The People need you. How else will they navigate the dark streets and find their way home?
8 more years and you will retire on a pension and hand the job down to your son.
Yes, the life of a lamplighter and his family was a good one.
Right up until the electric lights were installed.
The American Factory
How about all those factory jobs that used to be all over the United States? People working (sometimes around the clock) cranking out shirts, towels, cars, air conditioners, refrigerators, bulldozers, motorcycles, and so on.
It all moved offshore.
I spent last week out in Bloomington, Indiana. A really cool college town with plenty to offer.
The drive from Bloomington to Indianapolis is an eye-opener though.
Beautiful area. Wide open spaces, plenty of room to roam.
There are also what appears to be a lot of food manufacturing “factories”.
I’ll need to do more research into what these places produce, but it smelled great so I’m assuming pre-packed food and maybe frozen dinners or something.
The buildings are gigantic. The parking lots are maybe 10% full.
I’m going to bet that the people that the owners of those cars are the people that maintain, calibrate, and feed the machines.
Automation.
Automation Is Here To Stay
I’m a software developer by trade and have been working professionally in that capacity since 1993.
I’ve heard “programmers are going extinct” since I started working but it hasn’t happened.
Yet.
But could computer programming be completely automated?
Probably.
Particularly the implementation phase. The process of actually nuggin’ through the design and specs and writing code. “Requirements to Code” generators have been around a while, they’re not that good but are getting better.
Refactoring? There are plenty of tools that will review your code and make recommendations on how it could be better. I mean hell, even your editor will recommend refactorings. Might not be perfect, but getting better all the time.
No-code? This is where the rubber meets the road. Not really automation, but tools like Bubble make creating and deploying apps much easier.
There might be a day when large companies don’t need an army of programmers on staff to create and maintain their systems.
That day is likely coming faster than any of us can imagine, boosted by inflation-triggered cost-cutting and the cry of “Do more with less!”
So What Do We Do?
Sit back and do nothing?
Nah.
I’ve been preparing for the worst ever since I entered the field.
Competition used to come from development shops in Ukraine and India. Someone smarter than me was always available to do the coding.
But we always needed someone back here to do the customer work, requirements analysis, design, integration, test, and delivery.
I’m a programmer that got into systems engineering and business.
Someone is always going to need to think and solve problems.
I also look for tasks that me & my team performs on a regular basis. We try to identify things that can be automated and then automate them.
Are we working ourselves out of a job by automating our own jobs away?
No, we are saving the organization time and money (and reducing errors along the way which also saves time and money).
Think
What do you do in your job that can be automated? A task that doesn’t really need you to do, but you do them anyway. Those tasks that can be automated are where the risk is.
This really requires you to step outside your head and be objective.
Just because "you're smart" doesn't mean your smarts can't be captured and reproduced at zero incremental cost.
I’m Available
Do you ever wish you had someone to:
Bounce an idea off of
Ask for some unbiased advice or recommendations
Talk to about your career
Brainstorm
Play devil’s advocate to your wild ass schemes
I’ve been mentoring and coaching for a while and have a limited number of openings available for monthly private email mentoring/coaching. Ask me anything at all and I will get back to you in 24 hours or less. Speedier turnaround and live sessions can be scheduled as well.
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Reach out if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Travis