
Made redundant by automation, tech workers in India are embracing online therapy - lnguyen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-10/fired-indian-tech-workers-turn-to-chatbots-for-counseling
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abalashov
Isn’t the more interesting story that half of India’s IT workforce is going to
be structurally out of work in the near future, if this article and McKinsey
are to be believed?

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nerdponx
It sounds like there's a big shortage of competent, trained therapists,
however. Not even being snarky. Therapy is like an oil change for your brain,
humans seem to need it in order to function 100% over a long period of time.

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crdoconnor
"People accustomed to holding down prestigious jobs and pulling in handsome
salaries are losing out to automation, a _shift away from long-term legacy
contracts and curbs on U.S. work visas._ "

It's funny, in the US when jobs get outsourced, robots get blamed.

In India, when jobs get insourced _back_ , robots get blamed.

The key takeaway seems to be never, ever, ever blame trade policy made by a
politician/lobbyist if you can shift it to robots made by an engineer.

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tonyedgecombe
To be fair the low hanging fruit for outsourcing is also the low hanging fruit
for automation.

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crdoconnor
I think that's being completely unfair. Outsourcability is purely about how
easy it is to extend a supply chain to another continent without impacting
quality control and lead time. Automation is purely about how easy it is to
program a computer to do the work.

The two have very little to do with one another. In fact, the more
automateable a job is, the _less_ likely it will be pushed offshore because
managing a highly automated process means that quality control becomes much
more difficult (bugs, etc.).

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jordanb
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. You're right.

For instance, take the garment industry: the big gains in productivity were
made a long time ago. It now takes about as many people to make a pair of
jeans as it did 30 years ago. But those jeans are very easy to transport.
Consequently, the industry is constantly searching the globe for the cheapest
possible hour of human labor.

If the garment industry where still seeing big productivity gains then they'd
have less pressure to seek low labor costs and there'd be less interest in
outsourcing. If jeans went bad when packed into a container then there'd be
less _ability_ for them to outsource (goods less tradable) but tradability is
orthogonal to automatability.

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gaius
_Not sure why you 're getting downvoted. You're right._

Not entirely. One company I worked for had an office in India where workers
had 2 screens on their desks and their job was to re-key from one app into
another. It was cheaper to do this than to integrate those two apps. Tho' not
really because of the re-work needed due to typos, but senior management will
never have realized that.

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happy-go-lucky
Most of these tech workers are too lazy to keep up with what’s going on or
learn new skills, and their compensation is out of proportion to their
usefulness. Their employers are no different. Both are always haunted by the
fear of being made redundant by their clients. They suffer from aversion to
change. As a matter of fact, the automation that the article says has taken
the place of these workers should have happened long ago. Given a folder of
thousands of files, tasked with deleting every 10th file in it, I would rather
write a couple lines of code that does the job for me. Who wouldn’t approve of
automating such jobs?

One of Henry Ford’s quotes comes to mind: _anyone who stops learning is old,
whether at twenty or eighty_.

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mistermann
What's your opinion of presenting speculation as fact?

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robbyt
It's called "empirical evidence" probably from experience and observation.

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senthil_rajasek
Or anecdotal.

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iovrthoughtthis
Empirical evidence is just many anecdotes.

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senthil_rajasek
Sorry, no. Just went back to wikipedia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence)

and empirical evidence is not just many anecdotal evidence.

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iovrthoughtthis
Are anecdotes not "the knowledge received by means of the senses, particularly
by observation and experimentation", often used such that it "verifies the
truth (that which accurately corresponds to reality) or falsity (inaccuracy)
of a claim"?

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im3w1l
I think it's sad how we are getting further and further away from genuine
human interaction. I guess we can't afford each other anymore.

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pax
That's arguable. Digital platforms are both facilitating and changing human
interaction - for both better and worse.

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coldtea
But mostly, between echo chambers, fake news, cyber-bullying, shallow social
media, etc, for worse.

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TeMPOraL
> _But mostly, between echo chambers, fake news,_

But is it really so? Echo chambers and fake news are as old as civilization,
only we used different words for them in the past. The villages in which our
great^n-grandparents lived were _even more_ of an echo chamber - all the
opinions you've ever heard were the ones of a few dozen people you could
communicate with. "Fake news" existed in the form of hostile gossip then.
Newspapers gave us access to more information, and with it, organized fake
news - and the choice of which paper you read created your echo chamber.

The real problem is, the world is just too complex for our minds to handle.
It's only becoming apparent because progress of technology gives us more of
the world to see.

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megaman22
I've worked with a lot of Fortune 500 companies, and never have I heard a
story of where they outsourced IT work and it actually went well. Maybe it
saved a few dollars, but invariably it added mountains of inconvenience,
delay, wastage and frustration.

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gaius
_I 've worked with a lot of Fortune 500 companies, and never have I heard a
story of where they outsourced IT work and it actually went well_

It only needs to save money for long enough for the executive who proposed it
to get their next bonus or promotion. Then they swan off to greener pastures
and leave the rest to pick up the pieces.

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psergeant
> “conducted a quarterly review of chatbot content“

...

I don’t like the implication here

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Erazal
Does somebody know what types of task are "losing out to automation" or where
the "long term legacy contracts" left to ? EDIT : typo

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imtringued
Primarily IT support.

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NTDF9
Every time I hear/read about automation, all I can think about is the movie
"Her".

Humans are weak and companies are just waiting to exploit that.

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philjohn
The problem is ... unless there's a universal income, or new jobs for all
these people, who in the hell is going to buy your products?

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tobbyb
That's why products are becoming progressively more expensive including things
which traditionally became cheaper with generations.

Why focus on the 'fluff' who have lower incomes and will have soon have even
less, when you can focus on the 'cream' with high margins, hence $1000 phones
and $800 billion cash reserves with no use.

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Kurtz79
"That's why products are becoming progressively more expensive"

Examples ?

Since you mention 1000$phones, in tech you see more and more "premium"
products, accompanied by very basic ones that are still quite funcional and
dirt cheap, and everything in between.

You can buy a fully functional laptop or smartphone for 100 bucks, and I can
remember times when they were both "premium only" products.

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LeeHwang
The bigger concern is here is the clear link between automation and increased
worker mental instability.

Will automation lead to more populists revolts ? I don't know but we need
research into more solutions (besides just basic income), the problem is too
big to ignore.

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jstewartmobile
Canary in the coal mine, and not surprised. Most IT jobs only exist because
Windows and commodity hardware are so thoroughly awful.

It was only a matter of time before that was addressed, if only by erosion.

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gaius
Where were these services when jobs were being lost in the West due to
outsourcing...?

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pjschlic
It looks like a combination of semantic analysis not being there for the
automation to work at the time and maybe some regulations issues (with each
state probably having their own, I imagine compliance is/was more difficult)?

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manoj_venkat92
You turn to automation when you get screwed by automation. Seriously?

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manoj_venkat92
This is kinda sad

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purplezooey
Reminds me of the time I hooked up Eliza to IRC.

