The Intersection Of Automation And Greed

Are we in a tricky place?

Written a couple of times about automation — here’s one — and a little bit about re-training programs as well, which sadly don’t work as well as we think. Because automation is a big, complicated topic that people tend to bury their heads in the sand about, I won’t go too deep here. Rather, let’s start with a little story.

In late 2019, I was pretty broke and it was quite depressing. I managed to secure a gig with an apartment locator company, which I ended up liking a lot, because I got to research real estate trends for basically a year. I kinda knew revenue on that gig was eroding because the main boss man stopped responding to my texts, emails, and calls … and sure enough, on New Year’s Eve Day, I got the old heave-ho.

Following the tradition of most heave-hos, here’s what happened: within about 11 minutes of him telling me “revenue erosion…,” my payroll and benefits were cut off. Gone. Meanwhile, it’s a week later now and I still have access to the back-end of his website, his social media profiles, his company’s Mailchimp, etc.

Essentially, I could still do my job, but there’s no mechanism for me to get paid for it or have benefits. And the ending of that part took 11 minutes.

Now, this guy is actually very nice and was supportive of me at a time when I was floundering financially, so all props and prayers to him. That said, the story is indicative of how most top dogs, i.e. “job creators,” think: even if they’re cool to BS with, you are a number. The number needs to get off the books. All the other stuff, where an angry person could tank your brand? Eh, that can wait.

What does all this say about where we might be headed in terms of jobs?