
Jobs that no longer exist today - jacquesm
http://www.vintag.es/2015/01/10-jobs-that-no-longer-exist-today.html
======
dewitt
I thought this post looked familiar, and sure enough it's a straight copy-and-
paste from an identical piece on a different site last year:

[http://www.boredpanda.com/extinct-jobs/](http://www.boredpanda.com/extinct-
jobs/)

Not sure if it's licensed copying or blatant plagerism, since they technically
give "credit" at the bottom, but if it's the latter, it would nice to see
links to vintag.es banned from HN, since this is the sort of thing that just
sucks the air out of the web.

~~~
jbhatab
100% agree. Tasteless. I want to believe that there will be some sort of
traffic consequence from this but I'm not sure.

For instance, will Huffington Post have issues later for starting to not care
about the quality of their posts? Maybe.

------
VieElm
Switchboard operators still exist. They're used in the field in infantry units
and they're part of the communication platoon in a Marine Corps infantry
batallion's H&Q company, MOS 0612:
[http://usmilitary.about.com/od/enlistedjo2/a/0612.htm](http://usmilitary.about.com/od/enlistedjo2/a/0612.htm)

In a combat situation, wires from fox holes that go to HQ or artillery are
super important. These guys have to run over to fox holes laying or repairing
wire from the switchboard during enemy fire. This type of communication cannot
be jammed or intercepted remotely. At the switchboard they're doing exactly
what you see in that picture, connecting lines to another manually, with like
a SB-22:

[http://www.prc68.com/I/SB22.shtml](http://www.prc68.com/I/SB22.shtml)

Although there are more modern switchboards now, they aren't used by infantry.
These things are sturdy and very simple to repair.

~~~
nraynaud
I know lectors also exist in cuban cigar factories.

------
patmcc
The reason Log Drivers don't exist anymore isn't because of logging trucks,
it's because the quality wood adjacent to rivers is mostly gone. Water
transportation and sorting of logs is still very much a thing; come up to
coastal BC Canada and you'll see it frequently.

~~~
speeder
Here in Brazil Log Drivers still exist, mostly in the Amazon Rainforest (lots,
lots and lots of rivers, even between cities most transportation is by boat).

But usually it is done for illegal logging companies (it is illegal to log
near a river, because the soil falls on the water and makes the river
shallower).

~~~
marincounty
Is there a reputable non-profit that works on stopping this illegial activity?
This a good site to mention a legitimate charity? It would be great to hear
from someone who lives in Brazil?

~~~
speeder
I think there are some non-profits, but I think they are mostly foreign.

First, Amazon rainforest is HUGE, VERY HUGE, dense, hard to navigate, among
other things, this make patrolling it effectively impossible.

Second, there are still uncontacted tribes there, and they are very violent
(it is the reason why they are still uncontacted, they DON'T want contact, and
are not afraid to turn white or black people stalking around into arrow
pincushions), and some other tribes that deeply distrust white people for past
transgressions, thus wandering around is dangerous (including for the loggers,
it is not uncommon to see natives vs loggers wars that leave a couple of
people dead, also natives vs miners happen frequently too, Amazon rainforest
soil is rich in very valuable minerals).

It is a very hairy problem, the brazillian government has two specialized
agencies working on this (Funai, that works with native americans, and Ibama,
that is the envionmental agency), has satellites dedicated to that (Brazil
builds satellites to track deforestation, and I believe China launches them
for us, since we exploded our launch platform and rocket), and there is the
police and the army working with this.

That said, it is still not working, not because of the loggers, or miners, but
because of corrupt politicians that own land there, there is a huge problem of
politicians (and some other high power people, like judges) that "somehow" end
with huge tracts of land that have only forest in it, then they clear the land
to put cattle in it, the activity of illegally clearing forest to put cattle
in its place is making the deforestation rate rise (instead of declining
despite all the efforts).

Finally, a couple of non-profit workers and Ibama workers were murdered around
the area, seemly usually by politicians, one notorious case two Ibama workers
were murdered by a city mayor, that even after conviction and arrest still got
re-elected (yay for democracy), and Dorathy Stang case
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Stang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Stang)

------
mxfh
Click-bait editors of sloppy lists on random topics will very soon be obsolete
as well, if they aren't already.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations)

Snarky meta-commentors who insist on proper attribution soon to follow.

[EDIT] It's worse, no editor here, only copy-paste operator:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8949065)

------
jonnathanson
I'm a little disappointed they didn't mention "computer." In the original
sense of that word:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer)

The computer put the computer out of work.

~~~
JasonFruit
I've always wondered if there were techniques of parallel computation used to
maximize the effectiveness of a roomful of human computers that would be
useful for electronic computers with multiple processors.

~~~
jonnathanson
I mean, it's a stretch, but if you think about it, this is essentially what
the chalkboard/whiteboard/shared surface concept is about.

~~~
pavel_lishin
How do you mean?

~~~
jonnathanson
I'm actually trying to unpack what I meant. I had one of those rare, sober
bursts of the kind of trippy insight that usually occurs to people when
stoned. :)

I'm guessing what I mean here is that chalkboards serve as a shared resource,
on which multiple humans can perform operations together, or with larger
problems addressed in smaller chunks in tandem. It's not "parallel computing"
per se, but it's an analog analogue.

------
ovis
I actually met an ice cutter fairly recently. He made a sizeable portion of
his living hacking off chunks of icebergs from tidewater glaciers for fancy
cocktails. He sold the ice to upscale Anchorage hotels and bars.

~~~
dalke
Here's a picture of an ice cutter from 2010, building the Icehotel in Sweden -
[http://www.arcticphoto.co.uk/supergal/JJ/JJ03/jj0324-19.htm](http://www.arcticphoto.co.uk/supergal/JJ/JJ03/jj0324-19.htm)
.

Here's one for the "Hotel of Ice near the glacial Balea Lac in the Romanian
Carpathians" \- [http://www.depotpicture.com/2014/08/italy-romanian-balea-
lac...](http://www.depotpicture.com/2014/08/italy-romanian-balea-lac-hotel-
made.html)

------
ZanyProgrammer
It'd be a lot more interesting to see a list of these jobs from much later in
history, rather than most being circa 100 years ago or so.

As for jobs that surprisingly still exist, how about the people who _manually_
, in San Francisco in 2015, set the Caltrain reader boards for each train at
4th and King.

------
bishun
Apparently there are still 5 lamplighters on the payroll of British Gas.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/15/377470376/carr...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/15/377470376/carrying-
the-torch-for-londons-last-gas-lamps)

~~~
ZoFreX
We still have gas lamps in Malvern, I wonder if that's why - or if we still
have gas lamps anywhere else?

~~~
Symbiote
Düsseldorf still has many gas lights. I found a map of them, the information
is recorded in OpenStreetMap:
[http://www.itoworld.com/map/69?lon=6.77375&lat=51.22517&zoom...](http://www.itoworld.com/map/69?lon=6.77375&lat=51.22517&zoom=12)

------
pbhjpbhj
How common was use of stilts in the past?

Several of these jobs seem to involve poles. Other similar jobs, like [tree]
fruit-picking, seem to lend themselves to use of stilts.

Stilts can be dangerous - but there are surely advantages too, a knocker-upper
could knock on the window until they hear movement, they could also sell them
a morning paper/loaf/whatever through the window; I'd imagine they could do
their round faster too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilts)

~~~
DanBC
Stiltmen working hop fields.

[http://www.britishpathe.com/video/stiltmen-aka-stilt-
men](http://www.britishpathe.com/video/stiltmen-aka-stilt-men)

My mother and her family used to pick hops. It was a holiday for them. They'd
travel to the countryside for a week, work to pick hops and get a bit of money
for it.

EDIT: thinking about stilts in an orchard are a bit scary. You have all that
pressure on one skinny little stilt-foot, on mud which might be soft, walking
through grass which might be long. I don't know if that's difficult or if I
just have terrible coordination.

EDIT2: a google image search for [stilt-men orchards] returns many interesting
images of stilts being used in orchards.

------
osconfused
Aren't exterminators, aka rat-catchers, still around?

------
Shivetya
I figure in the next ten about any job requiring a driver may be automated out
of existence, excepting last mile delivery. Freight,buses, and the like.

While a lot of jobs won't vanish the numbers needed should be drastically
reduced.

------
slashnull
Let us have a thought for the the profession of longshoreman, eliminated by
the commercial viability of the shipping container in the 60's and subsequent
total automation of port operations.

------
civilian
#10 still exists, it's podcasts and the people who make podcasts!

------
wingerlang
2\. Human alarm clock

Don't they still do this within, say, hotels?

~~~
waitwaitwhay
I actually use such a service at home sometimes. If I am supposed to take an
important early flight, I use a service called "Personlig väckning" \-
Personal wakeup. Its been around forever. You call them, tell them that you
want to be woken up at 04. They call you at that time. Its a bit safer option
than the alarm clock for me. Because I actually have to answer the phone, say
good morning and say my name to confirm they called the right number. One time
they called me again because I didnt sound fullt awake.

Of course there a modern solutions to this problem but I kind of like the
"human contact aspect" of it. It costs like $5.

~~~
wingerlang
That's pretty neat, is it Eniros? Never knew it existed. I like the personal
aspect of it. And on that topic I remember the recent app "Wakie" [0] that has
a similar concept, maybe more towards the fun aspect.

[0] [http://wakie.com/](http://wakie.com/)

------
megaman22
The thing that really jumps out to me is how gaunt everyone looks, aside from
the one woman who is apparently waking people up with a blowgun.

~~~
freehunter
I wonder if that's an artifact of the camera producing harsh shadows on the
people's cheekbones. Also, some of them are wearing very poorly fitting
clothes, which, on a skinny person, could cause them to look even skinnier.

------
Zitrax
When I was in Thailand at a bowling alley they had people manually raise the
pins, so pinsetters do at least still exist there.

------
gghootch
9 out of 10 have explanatory text. Curious that the 'switchboard operator' is
apparently a 'modern' enough occupation not to warrant an explanation. Funny,
because I don't think many currently five year old kids will ever know what a
switchboard operator did without websites like this teaching them.

------
nether
Office art departments that just made charts for people to use in reports and
poster presentations.

------
whizzkid
Would it be ok add "Webmaster" to no longer existing positions list? :)

------
andymacd
flash developer

~~~
Alupis
No, unfortunately there's still quite a few of those lurking around.

~~~
jacquesm
Old platforms never die, they just go into maintenance. Even mumps is still
around in quite a few hospitals.

~~~
nawitus
The upcoming Finnish patient information system will apparently be written in
mumps. The total estimated cost of the system is 1.8 billion euros.

~~~
jacquesm
That, for want of a better word is absolutely incredible. I keep using that
word and I think I know what it means but really, what were they smoking?

MUMPS (har har) has it's origins in the medical world so there are a lot more
people versed in mumps in that world that have domain expertise regarding
hospitals but you'd hope that that chapter of the Cambrian explosion in
programming was closed by now and that someone would come to their senses and
would say: absolutely no more new development in MUMPS. (And 'Mapper' for that
matter.)

They were dead-ends 30 years ago, they're not magically going to be better in
2015. Of course it would be hard to get rid of 1.8B euros using any other
available technology so maybe that's were we can find part of the answer of
why this happened.

Maintaining MUMPS code is an interesting exercise in pasta consumption, the
language more or less dictates it.

See also:
[http://thedailywtf.com/articles/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/A_Case_of_the_MUMPS)

~~~
steventhedev
Hmmmm....

Anyone want to build an LLVM backend + FFI module? Probably worth a small
fortune to shops that want to migrate out of MUMPS

~~~
jacquesm
Good luck with that. MUMPS is an interesting beast. Before you embark on that
I suggest you look into some medium sized MUMPS based project to get an idea
of the kind of flavor of madness you'll be engaging.

But I agree with you that if you can pull this off you'll be doing well
financially.

Even better: a MUMPS -> Java automatic translator (or maybe Python or Ruby,
but I think the Java would be an easier sell in that market).

------
jacquesm
One thing that struck me as I read through the list that 'programmer' will be
the first one to go once we do reach that 'hard AI' goal. We'll be the first
profession to make ourselves obsolete, I guess that serves us right for doing
the same to lots of other professions.

~~~
SerpentJoe
What jobs do remain relevant, though, assuming hard AI? Is there anything a
human person can do better than a software person if the latter can duplicate
itself, requisition a larger brain to work on a hard problem, and communicate
hundreds of times faster?

~~~
kyllo
None--in the presence of strong AI, then by definition machines could do
anything humans can do, but faster and more consistently, so machines would
eventually make human labor totally obsolete.

I don't see it happening in my lifetime, though. I think we're still millenia
away from that.

~~~
wtallis
Is the term "strong AI" generally considered to imply that it's faster and
more efficient than humans? I usually only think about it in terms of breadth
of capabilities, and I expect that when we do build it, it will initially be
extremely power-hungry and not necessarily real-time by human standards.

~~~
kyllo
Perhaps, but then because it's strong AI, wouldn't it be capable of gathering
and applying resources toward improving and reproducing itself? Even if it's
very expensive and slow at first, theoretically it would be smart enough to
work on making itself faster, cheaper, and better.

Perhaps I've seen too many science fiction movies, like Transcendence, but I
thought that was basically what was meant by "strong AI."

~~~
wtallis
It's _assumed_ that strong AI will be able to improve itself, in an
exponential fashion according to Moore's Law. But an AI still has to overcome
the same very real challenges that we humans face in trying to build ever-
faster computers. A strong AI can only work magic on the software problems; it
can't make ultrapure silicon crystals grow any faster and it can't make
electron leakage just disappear. It still faces the same risk of silicon
semiconductors being fundamentally unable to scale to the performance level
required, forcing humans or AI to start over with an alternative computing
substrate. It can't solve any of these hardware challenges overnight because
they require physical experimentation.

So I think it's reasonable to think that the development of a strong AI _won
't_ change things overnight and we could see _decades_ of lag between first
having a computer capable of strong AI at any speed and having a strong AI
that outpaces humans.

------
madorb
Koz's Minibowl in milwaukee still has pinsetters. fun place!

------
aaronchall
The more jobs technology makes obsolete, the better, amiright?

------
JoeAltmaier
Director developer

