
Which USA do you work in? - taytus
http://blogmaverick.com/2012/08/16/which-usa-do-you-work-in/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogmaverick%2FtyiP+%28blog+maverick%29
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205guy
Very interesting article, and a point-of-view I'd never really considered. I
had always assumed the "intelligence" that was being added by software was an
addition to the existing business processes. I hadn't thought that some of it
was originating from and replacing employees.

However, much as the ideas make intuitive sense, I'm having a hard time
thinking of concrete examples. How does using Square take away from what
Starbucks employees could've brought to the job? Ironically, the only example
I can think of is IT work, both helpdesk and sys-admin. Lots of software seems
to be replacing the craft of troubleshooting. Good if you have a bad IT dept.;
bad if you have a good one.

And finally, I don't think the overlap is complete. A company may automate a
lot of things, but there are other things, or even the automation itself where
employees can still give valuable input. It may be like the manufacturing in
the end: companies come back around to the other intangible values once they
see the true cost of only optimizing for the bottom line. Sad that it always
takes a whole cycle of outsourcing, downsizing, losing customers, and crappy
products/service before the industry comes around and rethinks the strategy.

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chmike
With square you don't anymore need people who can work as a cashier. This is
not just counting money. It means people who won't steal, etc. This is more
difficult to find than people who just keep the shop clean, and thus they are
more expensive. The consequence is that well eucated people (moral) and
intelligent people will move away or be pushed away. (appologize for my bad
english. I'm french)

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oddthink
Wow. What an awful read. The topic should be interesting, but this guy comes
off as an idiot: basic grammar errors, sentences that trail off into the void,
etc.

Required "job skills" classes sound like insanity. What would they teach? A
semester of Excel is not a computer science / statistics double-major going to
make, nor will a semester of Hadoop help anyone without the background to use
it.

Yes, increased use of centralized analytics in large businesses is polarizing
the job market. Some things that once required a layer of middle-management to
comprehend can now be done directly on the raw data. This is the layer that's
at risk.

However, not all companies are big. Some things focus on actual personal
relationships. Some things require actual creative output (design, either
engineering or artistic). All of that is still around. And none of that will
be helped by "job skills" classes.

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azmenthe
First off, This is Mark Cuban, who is in my top 3 list of intelligent public
figures and influential enough to me that I definitely feel the need to defend
him a bit here.

I think what he meant by "job skill" classes is more along the lines of
codeacademy because this is a very direct skill that can be applied instantly
to industry problems, whatever those might be.

The author feels that universities should promote these types of resources
with some sort of incentive because what's working in the job market now is
real applicable skills... something a Business Admin/Liberal Arts major might
not have.

Having Javascript on your resume is looking attractive to more and more
employers.

Also the premium on personal relationships with employees of a firm is
decreasing in the sense that the best customer support relationship I can have
is none at all, the product just works.

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raldi
What's this alternate definition of "pig latin" that he's referring to?

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a1k0n
I'm guessing he's referring to Apache Pig, for doing map-reduce database
operations (e.g. joins) in Hadoop.
<http://pig.apache.org/docs/r0.7.0/piglatin_ref2.html>

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cmancini
I'd be interested to ask Mark about the tier between "brick and mortar" and
"digital." Sometimes even engineers get sick and need a doctor. Or sue each
other and need lawyers. Or remodel their home and need a contractor. It's nice
when these people are smart, and fortunately many are, even if they never
write code. It's still ridiculously hard to get into medical school--our
doctors are the kids who got straight As in university. Perhaps that's an
extreme example, but there are many industries that do not have "the
intelligence sucked out" in a human asset notion, though perhaps in another 10
years big data will write prescriptions.

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netcan
I think the best way to think about this is rate and direction of change.

Even in these professions that are starting with a high base of smarts in
"brick and mortar", the ratio of "digital smarts"/"brick and mortar smarts" is
growing. Where are big improvements in diagnosis going to come from? Smarter
GPs or smarter diagnostic tools? It doesn't mean GPs will get less smart or
that there will be fewer of them, but the ratio is going to grow.

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techdmn
Indeed. We may not have full "Artificial Intelligence" in the short term, but
longer term (not much longer) it seems like a bad idea to bet against the
computer revolution. There was a time not so long ago when people thought
computers would never be better than people at /chess/.

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chmike
I understand the author had a point to make, but my analysis is diferent. I'm
trying to look a little further away in time. We will still need brick and
mortar work to be done and we'll have a very stronger pressure on energy
optimization. So I'll foresee the next revolution (after digital) as a robotic
revolution. That is what I would say to young people. Keep your eyes and ears
open on this domain to become the experts in that field.

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lifeisstillgood
I agree, to an extent, but a robotic revolution is still software eating the
world - for example house building.

Robots can currently 3d print in concrete, and the roof stays on, what is hard
is the software and architecture to design a window cavity that is printable,
functional etc etc, and the software needed for balance, precision location

I think what I am saying is that hardware is only 33% of the robotic
revolution - the rest is same as we discuss here

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jacques_chester
I'm in the USA that wishes it was in the USA, so it could get access to
cheaper everything.

(Which is another way of saying I'm in Australia).

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vacri
Would you take the cut in pay that goes along with that?

I have a friend in an Australian software company that is starting to consider
outsourcing to the US to cut down on programming costs.

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jacques_chester
Huh? Programming salaries in Australian hotspots are lower than those in US
hotspots.

But the rent is higher, the petrol more expensive, the food more expensive,
imported electronics more expensive and so on and so forth _in spite of the
soaring dollar_.

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vacri
Minimum wage is also twice what it is in the US

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jacques_chester
The rent, the petrol, the food and the imported goods are not primarily driven
by the Australian minimum wage. Domestic labour forms only a small part of
their cost.

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vacri
I think you're missing my point. It's about the proportion of the wage spent
on -foo-. When I was in the US, I found that food was cheap, but in a weird
way. The cost of a _meal_ was similar to here, but the portion sizes were a
bit bigger. Obviously if you make your own food you'll save a bit... but given
the differences in minimum wage, the poor in the US will need that comparative
'savings'.

Similarly, the costs of doing business in Australia are paid in Australian
dollars. Need a new roll of paper for the fax machine? You're paying
Australian prices for it. Need a business lunch? Australian dollars. Phone
line? Australian dollars. Just because the dollar started soaring five years
ago doesn't mean that all this pricing will be reset down. How would you take
your boss saying "Because the Aussie dollar is strong, we're adjusting your
salary downwards now that you can buy more with it"?

Sure, it annoys me that digital downloads gouge based on IP address, but the
other goods you mention are more complex than "dollar strong, so they must
become cheaper".

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jacques_chester
You've misread me.

I don't expect everything to get cheaper because of the dollar. I do expect
_some_ things to. And they haven't.

Stuff is more expensive in Australia because there are fewer of us. The market
is smaller, there's less competition and less economies of scale. Mix in the
odd combination of almost unlimited land and almost unlimited restrictions on
land release and you can see why just about everything in this country is,
dollar or no dollar, more expensive than the USA.

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m1ck
Both Marks say the same thing one year apart.
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html)

