February 10, 2017 at 9:50 am
Eric M Russell - Friday, February 10, 2017 8:13 AMThis article lists 13 jobs that were once staples but today no longer exist due to automation.
http://ijr.com/2014/09/173651-13-jobs-used-important-longer-exist/
In the UK we still have milkmen, street sweepers and rat catchers. There may not be a profession of "knocker upper" but if you have teenagers you are probably in the role of "dedicated amateur".
We also have Falconers. One of our local Falconers cross bred a couple of different species of hawks and now has the feathered equivalent of the African Killer Bee. There are noticeably fewer birds around the airports that it patrols! I'm just waiting for the swine to attack a Cesna.
February 10, 2017 at 9:56 am
David.Poole - Friday, February 10, 2017 9:41 AMj_e_o - Friday, February 10, 2017 8:21 AMIs this really going to be true Steve?Some companies may even eliminate certain jobs, like the Database Administrator, but they don't really eliminate people.
I had not noticed that databases were self-administering as of yet (maybe I haven't been paying attention). And if something unexpected happens, who is going to fix it? They better keep some sharp people around for that. But maybe the databases will be able to handle 99.9% of the "unexpected" catastrophies.
Look at AWS RDS instances. A lot of what DBAs do just goes away if you are using a managed DB instance. There is a gap where certain DBA knowledge is making that transition relatively painless. Specifically we know how to tune a DB and what will and won't work and we apply our experience to the use of the RDS instance. Once DBAs have gone that background info will be lost so developers will be a bit stumped when trying to find out why a DB app is performing slowly.
My background is both database development and database administration, and I context switch between the two roles based on whatever employer or project I'm working on. In my current job, I context switch between the two roles throughout the day. Honestly, I find the routine operational tasks of a DBA job to be mundane, boring, and fraught with risk. I'd much rather spend my time optimizing stored procedures, automation, developing ETL packages, or designing the data model for a new database. I hate it when I miss out on the opportunity to build something new because I happen to be mired in the muck of some production issue. I can do the Regular Joe DBA stuff, and often times I can do it better and improve on the process because of my development background, but I just don't like it. It's boring, and I'd rather hand it off to a 3rd party hosting provider, assuming they can do a competent job. Maybe that's why I get assigned to a lot of the automation projects; I'm an eager Stormtrooper who loves to kill off legacy processes.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 10, 2017 at 10:34 am
David.Poole - Friday, February 10, 2017 9:50 AM...There may not be a profession of "knocker upper" but if you have teenagers you are probably in the role of "dedicated amateur"...
I have to admit that it is so true but I remain more ambitious than that.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
February 10, 2017 at 12:19 pm
David.Poole - Friday, February 10, 2017 9:50 AMEric M Russell - Friday, February 10, 2017 8:13 AMIn the UK we still have milkmen, street sweepers and rat catchers. There may not be a profession of "knocker upper" but if you have teenagers you are probably in the role of "dedicated amateur".
.
True you Brits have some interesting jobs, some deeply mixed in tradition.
This one is pretty cool....
http://mashable.com/2016/07/06/hedgehog-officer-job/#iIek99CsTsqy
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
February 13, 2017 at 1:43 am
Hi,
the article basically sums up the known quote "the only constant thing in life are changes".
I've been first a system analyst migrating, programming applications (Cobol, C, etc). Then in 1996 I became a DBA due to a huge expansion of the company I was with (and still am) . Up until the first company takeover. After that all I could here in the IT department was that all systems will be in the end be scrapped and replaced. Redundancies followed. They called it "synergy", "consolidation", we all know the story. Those new systems came into place in one company which I left, however I moved to another division another country. Up until 2013 those old systems (mainly Oracle and Forms) were migrated and maintained. I am in the UK now. In 2009 there was another takeover and another announcement that we will be migrating and replacing old systems. The funny thing is that newer and more up to date systems have been replaced with 20 year old technology. Yes, kind of a joke isn't it? I won't mention all the redundancies that followed.
The main frustration on our line of work though is the amount of effort (an unimaginable waste of human resources) we put into migrating all the applications because of the mergers. We move our systems, databases and hardware around so many time it becomes a comedy show. The mergers are also very often a cost cutting exercise, which gave me some real headaches, as I had to fiddle around downgrading databases from Enterprise to Standard Editions. Then there is this thing about one group of servers in company A not in the right IP address range as company B. So we put a lot of effort into moving stuff yet again.
I agree that things in the IT are moving to a new direction, we recently started scrapping another 20 year old unsupported system for a new off the shelf product. So now not only have to know how to maintain Oracle and SQL servers, but there is now Progress added to the bunch of products we have. The only good news is that what I have learned over the past 20 years is paying off, after all Oracle, SQL Server and Progress share a similar concept. I spent the past 12 months brushing up on my SQL-Server skills, not necessarily because DBA skills are my main activity.
My only comment is around mergers. There is another one coming now in 2017 in my place. The only worry is the amount of time wasted on adapting IT infrastructures, because there is no possible way that now 3 huge companies merging will keep 3 IT departments in place. Changes are yet again inevitable. So much of our work and experience is simply very often just thrown out of the window because one IT managers assume a position that can be described as "my stuff is better and the other has to go" or "we need to consolidate and streamline". Never in my life over the past 20 years have I seen so much waste.
February 13, 2017 at 12:32 pm
jay-h - Friday, February 10, 2017 8:48 AMJobs change, but things like the move to the cloud mainly eliminates the gruntwork of keeping the hardware healthy. The biggest place where IT help is needed is building and improving the interface (applications, data, customer service, etc) between the actual business and the cloud. I don't see this disappearing, probably will increase.
Actually, I would say that the move to the magical "cloud" doesn't "...eliminate(s) the gruntwork of keeping the hardware healthy" but instead shifts the responsibility for keeping that hardware healthy to someone else. It more akin to off-shoring the work of managing and maintaining the hardware to another company. Now, the cloud provider may, as has been suggested, treat those physical servers as "cattle" instead of as "pets," simply pulling a failed server from the rack and slotting in a replacement, but they're still handling the gruntwork of the hardware.
Really, I don't see IT as a generalized profession going away any time soon. It's no different than any other sort of knowledge, there's always a little bit (or a lot) more just over that next hill, from companies releasing new features with new versions, or new companies coming up with something new or what have you. The only way to get "eliminated" in IT is to specialize completely on one particular product / method / language and flat out refuse to ever learn anything new.
How many FORTH programmers are still running around? (I'd have used COBOL, but I'm pretty sure a lot of big businesses still use it somewhere...)
February 17, 2017 at 6:32 am
David.Poole - Friday, February 10, 2017 7:14 AMOnce you start asking what would be required to achieve something then you have already subconciously moved beyond the "it is not possible" stage. I have to say that I'm finding the answers scary because I am ultimately designing myself out of existence.
You think so? I start to think that when I design things, I start to actually find more I nee to do, so I'm getting more done, needing less mundane help, but not sure how much less help overall.
What I think is that I can design a job out of existence, like the DBA that checks logs, backups, security, and instead I can automate lots of that, but I now need a smarter DBA that evaluates whether security is correct, or we're under attack. Or tunes more code, assuming backups always run.
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February 17, 2017 at 6:40 am
jasona.work - Monday, February 13, 2017 12:32 PMjay-h - Friday, February 10, 2017 8:48 AMJobs change, but things like the move to the cloud mainly eliminates the gruntwork of keeping the hardware healthy. The biggest place where IT help is needed is building and improving the interface (applications, data, customer service, etc) between the actual business and the cloud. I don't see this disappearing, probably will increase.Actually, I would say that the move to the magical "cloud" doesn't "...eliminate(s) the gruntwork of keeping the hardware healthy" but instead shifts the responsibility for keeping that hardware healthy to someone else. It more akin to off-shoring the work of managing and maintaining the hardware to another company. Now, the cloud provider may, as has been suggested, treat those physical servers as "cattle" instead of as "pets," simply pulling a failed server from the rack and slotting in a replacement, but they're still handling the gruntwork of the hardware.
Really, I don't see IT as a generalized profession going away any time soon. It's no different than any other sort of knowledge, there's always a little bit (or a lot) more just over that next hill, from companies releasing new features with new versions, or new companies coming up with something new or what have you. The only way to get "eliminated" in IT is to specialize completely on one particular product / method / language and flat out refuse to ever learn anything new.
How many FORTH programmers are still running around? (I'd have used COBOL, but I'm pretty sure a lot of big businesses still use it somewhere...)
Ahhhh FORTH. I remember the FORTH users group. The fun (and danger) of being able to modify the interpreter on the fly from code.....
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
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