[ennui2]

The general narrative from die-hards here is that the actual state of the economy sucks and there's no middle-class left. Just rich banksters and people on foodstamps, and that this is the real reason why oil is cheap (nobody's using it because they're poor).

Well, there's a shift in the workforce taking place, and it isn't the kind of thing Transition Towns anticipated. It's the tech bubble. I tried to explain to people that me not retreating to the doomstead wasn't such a bad call after all, and so far it's paid off. Here is an article that reinforces the idea that what's left of the middle-class is firmly in IT. If you've got a skill that works within IT, you can get a job right now, period. If you're even half-way good, you'll get paid really well, because demand is sky high and jobs are NOT just being outsourced to India the way you'd think.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/techn ... .html?_r=0

There is sort of a Darwinian situation going on where people are sinking or swimming based on how well they can use technology. If you can't get into this club, you're a lot worse off than you were before. But the age of the blue-collar manufacturer worker is over. I even read an article about 100% automated factories in China, so even in China they are trying to get out of doing manufacturing by hand.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 238331.cms

[GHung]

Sounds great, ennui, if you want to sit in traffic part-time, sit in a fucking cubical some of the rest of the time, make plenty of fiat currency so you can spend the rest of your time being the consumate consumer, althewhile contributing to this post-industrial madness. This, from a former IT guy (a pretty good one at that) who had enough imagination to figure out it was a helluva way to waste a life.

Go for it....

.... "and someday you may ask yourself; MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE???"

[StarvingLion]

The title of the thread should be "Proof the USA is a Fraud Based Economy".

The entire NY Time article is about people who:

"took a three-month course in computer programming and data analysis. "

making big bucks on web programming. Do you think any of those overpaid hackers are of any use at all in coming up with a better battery, nuclear reactor, or room temp super conductors?

Do you think they can address the challenges of deep sea oil drilling?

Those web programmers are useless in a serious economy.

[ennui2]

Sounds great, ennui, if you want to...

Considering the gloomy narratives about the end of the world, falling back to a position of "yeah, great, if you want to wait in traffic" is, well, a little weak of a retort. I mean, all life's inconveniences are relative.

I mean, people have been doing the Green Acres thing to escape the rat race for a long time. Not the same motivation as bugging out to escape the zombie horde.

[ennui2]

Do you think any of those overpaid hackers are of any use

This is the 21st century. The bits and bytes that move through the internet don't get there on their own. This is what BAU looks like in 2015 and those who fare best will realize that and be able to adapt. This transition colors the employment charts, because it wasn't that long ago that being considered a computer geek growing up was essentially a social death-sentence, and therefore kids didn't study computer science. So in the last generation or so, basically, the geeks have inherited the earth, and those who didn't pursue these fields are being phased out by automation.

[StarvingLion]

Ads on Peakoil.com

Russian Hookers.

LOL.

But they better be free because thats what the web is about: free shit. Take the free shit away, and whats left?

The "expert" analysts who don't know shit.

[SeaGypsy]

Anyone want to do the maths on how a statistically significant 'middle class' (I guess that means at least half of the US population= 150 million people with at least 1/3 working in sustainably well paid jobs) in IT???? You must be kidding! The US must remain the world leader in manufacturing or it is on a fast track to becoming a 3rd world country. There is no way 50 million Americans can either sustain middle class lifestyles on IT jobs or that even if they could, no way known can they keep a trade export balance, totally laughable.

[americandream]

As the working class bicker amongst themselves about what is likely to take therr livelihood, machine or outsourced worker, the owners of capital move about the globe with ease employing here, automating there, as suits the context.

[Cog]

There are a lot of middle class jobs in the USA besides IT. Construction provides that very lifestyle for many.

[onlooker]

Have to agree with Ennui, the economy is transitioning rapidly to high-tech not just in IT but health care industry, agriculture, manufacturing etc. My question though taken to it's logical conclusion it seems some of these IT duties can now be done by computers themselves and more tasks will be done by computers as they become more sophisticated. So the seeds of it's own demise is inherent in the Information Technology sector. Not only that I think most here rightly are transitioning not to a different field within the work force but a different world because that is where we are headed quite rapidly as well.

[ennui2]

some of these IT duties can now be done by computers themselves

If the automation creeps into IT then we should see the impact with a reduced demand for labor. I am not seeing that currently. Not saying it can't happen, but it isn't right now.

Also, it's now easier than ever to start a business and try to benefit from the automation. You know, write the next "Yo" app or something. So it's not like there's this hard separation between rank and file IT worker and entrepreneur. The barrier to entry is low.

[onlooker]

That is correct Ennui, look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs they started from nowhere and look where they reached. So like always the world favors the bright and persistent.

[JV153]

Onlooker - speaking of IT duties, a lot of computers can develop serious problems when the thermal paste dries up under the cooling fan and/or the cooling fan gets clogged with dust and causes the fan to not perform its cooling job.

[onlooker]

I personally am not in the field but I imagine JV, that computers being complex machines must develop many type of hardware problems. So like mechanics with cars, computer hardware technicians must be in demand. Their are many cars and many computers around.

[Outcast_Searcher]

some of these IT duties can now be done by computers themselves

If the automation creeps into IT then we should see the impact with a reduced demand for labor. I am not seeing that currently. Not saying it can't happen, but it isn't right now.

Well, I guess they can call some trading bots "automation" for IT, for those who want to spend their lives "efficiently" bidding on EBAY items, etc.

As far as serious automation for IT, I have my doubts based on past experience. For about 20 years during my IT programming career, I watched 4GL (fourth generation languages) come and go. In every case they were supposed to be some remarkable productivity tool, requiring only inputs and "simple" prorgramming in a new language. However, in EACH AND EVERY CASE they ended up:

0). Occasionally, if management would listen, be thrown out on the lack of real world merit before the project went mainstream.
1). Basically not working (being quite buggy and VERY poor performers).
2). Causing such a mess as far as real world throughput, that the application had to either be rewritten with a real 3GL, scrapped, or had an order of magnitude more computer hardware thrown at it to barely make performance tolerable.
3). Schedule and budget wreckers.
4). Consumers of lots of ongoing maintenance due to unforseen problems, generally in the area of performance.

One way they were wildly consistent though -- everyone involved resolved to never use THAT technology again.

....

Aside from having automation do things like mount tapes and respond to simple messages on mainframes, I'm not buying the idea of automation eliminating complex IT jobs until I see a meaningful numbers of actual success stories (and those NOT being some sort of fake article being actually marketing for an automation product). Given the track record, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Keith_McClary]

The NYT article reads like a press release for the private coding schools. Starting salaries will of course be less than these figures:
Average Salary for Industry: Information Technology (IT) Services

[SeaGypsy]

"Oh look at Steve Jobs & Bill Gates! Wow! IT is the way to riches beyond your wildest dreams! (Onlooker)
Really how stupid!

None of a bunch of people I know in IT have seen any sustained real wage income in 10-15 years. Run of the mill IT jobs have flatlined for that long. My 4 year old daughter knows her way around an iPad, my 6 year old is doing graphic design on one, neither were taught how, they just picked it up & continue to learn as kids do.

IT is not going to be a specialty by time my kids are working, only a tiny fraction need to know coding, the rest can do everything on standard platforms.

The wow factor to computing is a boomer/ genX/ thing, millennials don't have that, for them this stuff is mundane. The pen & paper of the 21st century.

[onlooker]

Okay I should revise a little my opinion. The Jobs and Gates reference is one in a million. How many Jobs and Gates have their been? Precious few, in fact the dot-com bubble burst, so that having a website and being online does not guarantee business success. I think both Sea and Outcast bring up interesting points about the limits to computers both in what they can do and also in the necessity of being specially trained to use them. I personally love them because of the Net and all its marvelous uses. So to stay on topic, do others see the Internet has having contributed to job creation or the opposite instrumental in job destruction? Overall in my opinion automation has been a net job destroyer. Note of course automation and the Internet are not the same.

[Cog]

Techtopian nonsense. Siri and her friends at Apple are the end of the techie-revolution. There will be no household robots, no AI, no autonomous anything, no more computer revolution. That notebook gathering dust in the corner is the end of it all. Your $200/month pocket-gadget will not save you ennui. So sorry

I am not a doomer but I am forced to agree with you. If we power down as a society, whether forced or voluntary, tech is going to be one of the first things that goes bye-bye.