
The jobs of the future are already here, and some are weird - imartin2k
http://meshedsociety.com/the-jobs-of-the-future-are-already-here-and-some-are-really-weird/
======
shiftpgdn
Almost all of those jobs are jobs (other than e-celebrities, but you can't
call that a job) that are outsourced to extremely low wage off shore workers.

Not exactly a bright future.

~~~
gizmo686
>other than e-celebrities, but you can't call that a job.

I think this job catagory hides a lot. E-celebtrities do not gain a following
for doing nothing. They do something that gets them followers, and that
something is their job. I also do not see a reason to exclude
sponsorship/Patreon from this catagory; as that just seems to be another
method of monetizing the same work. I also do not see why podcasts and
webcamming do not fall into this catagory.

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sverige
Earlier this year, I began looking at youtube subscription and view numbers a
lot. A younger family member said something about a very popular youtuber who
had been accused of racism and being a nazi, so I looked at it to see what the
fuss was all about.

It turns out this person has the most-subscribed channel on youtube and made
$4 million last year from ad revenue. Four million dollars for reviewing video
games and making lame jokes...!

Anyway, that led to some exploration about how people make money off of
youtube, and then a little more about how people make money off of social
media. It is a truly strange world, where "influencers" become influential via
means that now make me automatically distrust all of them until proven
otherwise that they have some actual skills or abilities or knowledge.

I'm not looking forward to this new world. I guess I'm an old curmudgeon. Oh
well.

~~~
yoz-y
$4 million is a lot of money but nothing in comparison with what an “old
world” celebrity earns for a fraction of work. Earning money on YouTube is
very hard because the ad Payments are ridiculously low.

PewDiePie happens to be one of the first to tap into the most popular genre on
YouTube, hence the volume. But if you dig into some very specific channels
with high production values you can see that the potential is huge.

~~~
adventured
$4.4 million is close to the average Major League Baseball salary now (the
median is closer to $1.5 million). A mediocre relief pitcher can yield that.
125 players are earning $10 million or more now.

Or another perspective on it. All NBA player salaries combined - roughly $3.2
billion for ~420 players - is higher than the total salaries (not total
compensation) of all the Fortune 500 CEOs combined. Maybe ~1,200 NBA players
total over the next ten years, will take home $35 to $40 billion in income
combined.

The value of having any consequential spot in a massive platform.

~~~
yoz-y
If anything, this shows that YouTube is actually spreading the wealth somewhat
more. If the salary of the biggest YouTuber with the most sought after
audience earns as much as an average baseballer. Or probably what some first
class footballer would get for a 15 second spot on tv.

~~~
lovich
I don't see how it's spreading the wealth, youtube/google just keep more of
the value created than the MLB/NBA/NFL.

~~~
tempay
Do they? I think the creator/YouTube split is approximately 50/50 which seems
reasonable as both parties provide value.

I have friends just about managing to live off YouTube money (with other
related revenue streams like blogs) with a "small" following in some niche
area. The few people I know of in "minor" sports have a full time job to pay
their bills.

~~~
petra
What kind of traffic do you think your friends bring ? and with that in mind,
what's your estimate to the number of people making a living from YouTube ?

------
MrBuddyCasino
Most of these jobs look very familiar. Is arbitrage and speculation so much
different just because its about Bitcoin? For most of these examples there are
very similar old-school equivalents.

~~~
pavement
Yeah, trolling and counter-trolling? Gee...

Also, note that there’s mention of specific political groups exclusively as
trolls, but who are the professional counter-trolls? As my mom used to say,
when it comes to fighting, it takes two to tango. Aren’t both just trolls?

Internet fights are pretty tedious to witness. Just ask HN’s moderators. But
why trust them, when you can read plenty on your own.

One person’s moderator is another person’s censor. Trolling and moderation go
hand in hand, and moderation is the true counter-troll.

~~~
sandworm101
>>> ... but who are the professional counter-trolls?

The actual journalists, at least the ones that wade into the swamp of comments
sections. The vast majority of real journalists shirk any duty to respond.
That's a big mistake imho.

Also google and other search engines, at least insofar as they are looking to
revamp search results to promote actual stories and drive down junk news. But
there is another link on HN today about the dangers of allowing search engines
to become the arbiters of truth.

~~~
pavement
So, news, _fake_ news, trolls, _counter_ -trolls, _content farms_ , _revenge
porn scanning_ (?), surveillance and censorship, _large-internet-property_
moderation (special classes for special sites), content _curation_ ,
“influencers” (???), _propaganda_ production...

All these mind crimes should just fall under a single umbrella class of worker
called “ _motherfucking internet bullshit artistry (all levels)_ ” ...and oh
yeah, the article neglects one of the most recent sub-classes: child video
troll (and of course child video troll _moderator_ (scanner?) AND coming soon
( _!!!_ ) child video _counter_ -troll, as discussed over here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670109)

When will we get to see child news and _fake_ child news?

Seriously though, if 90% of everything is bullshit [0], where’s the
distinction between good and evil? It’s just regional sports teams from what I
can tell, and just as pointless.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law)

------
sandworm101
No imagination:

Hacking-insurance adjusters: This is just starting to become a thing. Once the
insurance market matures, and claims become more routine, an industry of
adjusters/inspectors will emerge.

Autodrive car rescue: When the robots get confused they will need specialized
people to sort them out. Your average tow-truck driver doesn't want to
approach a Tesla stuck doing a perpetual loop in a roundabout. I'm waiting for
the 911 caller stating "I'm heading west on I-94 at 70mph and the car won't
stop."

Space imagery analyst: Once the domain of the NRO/NSA, as space imagery
becomes cheaper and more available even small corporations will need people
who know how to read and interpret sat data.

~~~
petra
Also:

I think many more product types could target smaller niches through some auto-
scaling like service. For example, let's talk about food. it's possible to
imagine Amazon starting a cloud for manufacturing food, where you send the
recipes of what food to make, and you get a batch of it made(maybe not so
large), and this gets distributed/sold via Amazon's grocery section.

Same for restaurants, you upload you recipe, and some chain restaurant makes
your food and give you royalties.

And of course it could happen to clothes(already with printed t-shirts),
electronics, shoes, etc. Maybe even houses, if housing gets done at a factory,
modular fashion, using a set of standard blocks and software verification.

And there are all kinds of new technologies, like hyperloop, bio
manufacturing, etc - that would require building a lot of infrastructure. and
the fastest the rate of change goes up, maybe infrastructure we'll get
refreshed faster.

And clearly we could use more teachers.

Or people at command centers for self-driving cars.

------
culturalzero
I think the jobs listed are simply ephemera of the current state of the
internet, technology, and media rather than a reflection of 'the future'.
Although, I do agree that with the thread that jobs of the future have little
promise of widespread prosperity, which Tyler Cowen details very, very well in
'Average is Over'

------
wonderous
Most of these jobs sound exactly like the types of jobs AI will replace.

------
thisisit
Moderation has been a job, if you can even call it one, since the dawn of
internet. Discussion forums had their own moderators ensuring content quality.

Podcasts, curation and automated content farms have also existed for a long
time to actually qualify for the list. The content farms were previously
heavily focused on low quality blog posts have now moved towards video.

As for gig economy, check this discussion from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15669454)

------
aoruz
Pretty good listing.

