Weekend Update: Soccer and Robots

I spent the weekend on two things, (really three if you add in making some BBQ) - watching way too much soccer (it is awesome to have the EPL back and to watch my Liverpool Reds open with a win) and reading about robots and automation.

I want to call out two longish pieces on automation and its potential impact on work, workplaces, and society that are definitely worth your time to check out. The first, and useful to set some historical context, is an essay from Daniel Askt titled, 'What Can We Learn From Past Anxiety Over Automation?', a really interesting look at what many leading scientists, economists, and other wonky types were thinking and predicting about the 'threat' of automation in the middle part of the 20th century.

It turns out that in the 50s and 60s the worries over the increasing pace of technological advancements and the potential disruptions to many forms of work and workers sound much like those same concerns about modern innovations and increased automation. Check out this passage from the piece, and ask if this exact same argument made in 1966 could be reasonably accurate today:

In 1966, the Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress issued a sensible report rejecting the argument that technology was to blame for a great deal of unemployment, although, with the wisdom of Leopold Bloom, it recognized technological change as “a major factor in the displacement and temporary unemployment of particular workers.”

And who were those workers? The answer will be all too familiar: “Unemployment has been concentrated among those with little education or skill, while employment has been rising most rapidly in those occupations generally considered to be the most skilled and to require the most education. This conjunction raises the question whether technological progress may induce a demand for very skilled and highly educated people in numbers our society cannot yet provide, while at the same time leaving stranded many of the unskilled and poorly educated with no future opportunities for employment.”

It all sounds pretty familiar, right? Technological advances tend to reduce the demand for unskilled or relatively lower-skilled forms of labor, as better, faster, cheaper forms of capital are introduced as replacements for human labor. The macro-education system is called upon to adapt and adjust, as the aggregate skills of the workforce need to shift towards those higher order and more technical skills that employers are demanding.

Fast forward from the 1960s to the present day where the disruptive nature of technological progress on the workforce remains a subject of intense debate, interest, and importance. And that leads me to the second longer form piece I'd like to highlight which comes from the Pew Research Internet Project and is titled AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs.

Pew conducted a survey and produced a detailed report that covers numerous experts’ views about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and their impact on jobs and employment. And interestingly enough, these experts were split almost down the middle on whether or not the inevitable continued advances in AI and robotics would displace 'significant' numbers of both lower skilled as well as higher skilled, or 'white collar' workers. Here is an excerpt from the Pew report:

Half of these experts (48%) envision a future in which robots and digital agents have displaced significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers—with many expressing concern that this will lead to vast increases in income inequality, masses of people who are effectively unemployable, and breakdowns in the social order.

The other half of the experts who responded to this survey (52%) expect that technology will not displace more jobs than it creates by 2025. To be sure, this group anticipates that many jobs currently performed by humans will be substantially taken over by robots or digital agents by 2025. But they have faith that human ingenuity will create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Similarly to the divided opinions of 'experts' in the 50s and 60s, there is simply not a consensus leading technology thinkers today about the ultimate effects of technological progress on work and the workplace - at least in an overall, society-wide sense.

There is however, general agreement, (and there was back in the day as well), of the micro or individual likely impacts of increased automation, AI, and robotics on workers. Perhaps these comments from Robert Cannon  in the Pew report sum up these predictions the best:

Non-skilled jobs lacking in ‘human contribution’ will be replaced by automation when the economics are favorable. At the hardware store, the guy who used to cut keys has been replaced by a robot. In the law office, the clerks who used to prepare discovery have been replaced by software. IBM Watson is replacing researchers by reading every report ever written anywhere. This begs the question: What can the human contribute? The short answer is that if the job is one where that question cannot be answered positively, that job is not likely to exist.”

So again, the way we describe the types of effects and the nature of the impact of technological change on work and workers hasn't really changed all the much in the last 50 or 60 years. Machines disrupt work, particularly work that is process-defined, repetitive, and where words like initiative and creativity are missing.

But was has changed, and some modern commentators argue that the pace of this change is accelerating, is that the definition of jobs that are process-defined, repetitive, and non-creative is getting closer and closer to home for many folks that have always considered themselves 'knowledge workers' or 'professionals.' 

In the 50s and 60s, automation (mostly) threatened manual laborers and lower skilled manufacturing workers. The advances in technology hadn't yet infiltrated the professional offices of that time. Watch a few episodes of the TV series Mad Men and you will see lots of office workers typing up notes, filing things, preparing correspondence for other people, and more of less passing around papers. Today's offices? Well not so much. 

The difference today, and to some the more profound worry, is best summarized in this observation from the piece from Akst:

Instead of automating repetitive tasks, technology today is climbing the cognitive ladder, using artificial intelligence and brute processing power to automate (however imperfectly) the functions of travel agents, secretaries, tax preparers, even teachers — while threatening the jobs of some lawyers, university professors, and other professionals who once thought their sheepskins were a bulwark against this sort of thing. Maybe this time, things really are different.

So while we have been as a society collectively worried (and changed) by advances in technology and in the automation of some kinds of work for at least 100 or maybe 150 years, we still struggle in predicting what these changes might mean.

It seems comforting to fall back on the 'Technology always changes work, but it always creates lots of new opportunities as well' argument and try to cling to the notion that after the turbulence of change, things will turn out all right in the end. After all, proponents of this line of thinking say, technology has displaced millions of farmers and factory workers in the past, and the overall economy did not implode.  

In the past, the former agricultural workers were able to (largely) migrate to manufacturing jobs. When the manufacturing jobs began to get displaced, many of these workers ended up in service jobs, lower paid and less secure kinds of jobs. Now that automation is threatening these service jobs, (have you seen the burger-making robot?), where can these workers go? Especially when more and more of the 'white collar' jobs that might have been reasonable landing places, (clerks, claims processors, customer service agents), are themselves increasingly becoming the realm of technology, algorithms, and machines. Every displaced worker can't suddenly become a coder.

What if, indeed, this time things really are different?

I might hit some of the possibly answers to that question in a follow-up post later in the week if I can.

Have a great week everyone, and definitely read the two pieces that I linked to and cited in the post, I think you will find them both incredibly interesting.

The best 'Out of the Office' message might be this one from Germany

Regular readers (and people who have the occasion to want to get in touch with me) probably know that I have a troubled, difficult, and often non-productive relationship with email. Honestly, email and I should have broken up a long time ago, as clearly it is just not working out for either of us.

So it is from that point of view that I offer up what I think might be the best (partial) solution to one of the biggest problems with email today for the busy professional - just how much of it piles up when you are away from it for some time, like when you are out on holiday or if you are traveling for business, or even if you just need to turn off the email incoming fire hose for a while and actually do some work.

Check out what the German automaker Daimler is offering up to its 100,000 or so employees to help stem the tide of email when they are out of the office on holiday. Note: these excerpts are taken from a piece on FT.com, it is free to read but requires registration to get access to the article.

The Stuttgart-based car and truckmaker said about 100,000 German employees can now choose to have all their incoming emails automatically deleted when they are on holiday so they do not return to a bulging in-box.

The sender is notified by the “Mail on Holiday” assistant that the email has not been received and is invited to contact a nominated substitute instead. Employees can therefore return from their summer vacation to an empty inbox.

“Our employees should relax on holiday and not read work-related emails,” said Wilfried Porth, board member for human resources. “With ‘Mail on Holiday’ they start back after the holidays with a clean desk. There is no traffic jam in their inbox. That is an emotional relief.”

An 'Out of the Office' that not only lets the person know that the intended recipient is actually out, but also deletes the incoming email entirely? 

Sign me up for that right now!

Email and the never ending battle to not allow email to sap productivity, destroy morale, and turn into your job instead of a tool you use to help you do your job is likely to continue to be a contentious subject as long as email remains the primary tool for business communication and collaboration.

And that kind of stinks, because in 2014 when we have robot butlers, self-driving cars, drones that can make package delivery, and digital assistants that can guide us and help us navigate our days that most of us have to stare at and wade through hundreds of seemingly random messages every day before we actually get to 'do' anything.

I am going to be on vacation/holiday for a few days in a week or so, I wonder if the good people at Daimler would be willing to license out their little 'Out of the Office' auto-delete tool to me.

I definitely would use it.

Have a great day! (And if you are waiting for an email from me, be patient a little longer....) 

Summer Fridays (probably should have waited until Friday to post this)

A week or so ago I had the chance to talk to Kirsten Fleming from the New York Post about work schedules, workplace flexibility, and perks, (particularly in industries like tech, advertising, and fashion). The resulting piece, How Summer Fridays became the most divisive issue in NYC, ran about a week ago, and is a fun, informative take on what organizations are doing with respect to 'Summer Fridays' and more workplace flexibility in general, and is peppered in classic HR Capitalist style with a cool series of Instagram embeds of NYC workers enjoying their Friday afternoon freedom.

Here is a snippet from the piece, (which includes what might be the apex of my professional career, a quote in the awesome New York Post), and you can read the rest of the piece here:

Owens is one of the fortunate New Yorkers who have a coveted Summer Friday work schedule, which means beating the scrum of weekend warriors to the roads and rails. And while he relishes his early exit, he gets just as much of a thrill from ribbing his pals who toil away in traditional industries that require them to work a full day on Fridays.

After all, once the summer calendar is under way, the Big Apple becomes a tale of two cities — the people who have Summer Fridays and the rest of the working schlubs. The liberal policies vary from allowing employees to leave early to giving them the day off entirely. The lucky “haves” tend to work in creative industries like fashion, public relations and media...

Catch the rest here...

Oh and by the way, are you slacking off taking off any time on Friday afternoons this summer?

Have a great week!

NEEDED: The universal "Out of the Office" notifier

I took a day off yesterday (a real day off, not that fake kind of half working/half not working but still checking email every hour kind of day).

And since I am conscientious, I activated the requisite "Out of the Office" auto-responder on both my corporate email account, as well as on my Gmail account (where I do have lots of 'official' work-related correspondence going on as well). My OOO message basically said I was offline and if you had an 'urgent' matter that needed immediate attention to text me, otherwise I would get back to you as and when I could.

For the most part, the strategy was successful - I did of course get a bunch of emails to both email accounts that my OOO auto-responder handled. Three people saw the OOO message and did indeed decide their issue was 'urgent' and elected to text me during the course of the day. Putting aside the fact that in the work that I do nothing is truly ever 'urgent' in strictest terms (no life or death decisions, etc.), let's just say that I had a slightly different take on the relative urgency of the items that were texted to me yesterday. But that's fine, I offered that up as a way to get in touch with me even when I was out, so it is really my bad if I truly did not want to be contacted all day.

But what I didn't have a good way to address were the other 4 or 5 ways people seem to like to try and contact me these days. LinkedIn messages, @ messages and Direct Messages on Twitter - heck someone even sent me a Facebook message that was work-related. Aside - please do not send me a Facebook message about work. That is terrible. 

I even got pinged with a message informing me I had a voicemail left on Google Voice. I did not even realize I had Google Voice.

What I really wanted yesterday is a kind of universal, covering all potential ways of getting a message to me, "Out of the Office" auto-responder. So no matter if it was an email, a Tweet, even a random Google Voice (still can't figure out how that happened), anyone trying to contact me would have been informed that at least for one day, I was probably not getting back to them.

Unless they sent me an urgent text. Then I guess I would have to. Even if it wasn't urgent.

Have a great day!

How far would you commute each day for your dream job?

How far would you be willing to commute, (to keep it simple let's assume we are talking about commuting via driving your personal car), in order to work at your dream company/job?

I have to admit it is not a question I have personally thought about very much these last few years as my 'commute', if you could call it that, has typically been taking a short flight of stairs to my lower-level office/lair/Fortress of Solitude.  But lots of folks, heck still the large majority I think, are making the pretty much daily grind to an office, store, warehouse or whatnot. Despite how much we like to talk about the nature and practice of work and workplaces changing, for most of us 'work' remains a place we physically go to just about every day.

So how far of a drive is too far?

I only thought about the question this week after reading a post on the LinkedIn blog titled, Inside Story: LinkedIn’s VP of Mobile on Driving in the Snow, Houzz and Anticipatory Computing. I clicked through to the piece because of the 'Anticipatory Computing' phrase, that just sounded really interesting and cool, but as it turns out the more interesting nugget from the post was about how this VP from LinkedIn (Joff Redfern) had a ridiculous commute his first four years with the company.

How ridiculous? Check this Q and A from the piece:

Q: What’s not on your LinkedIn Profile?

A: During my first four years at LinkedIn, I had one of the longest commutes. I lived in Lake Tahoe, California, but worked out of headquarters in Mountain View, California. It’s about 250 miles each way, so I put over 110,000 miles on my car. That’s the equivalent of driving around the world more than four times. It gave me lots of time to think and one of the benefits is that I’m pretty awesome at driving in the snow. 

Did I read that correctly? 250 miles each way to get to the office? Even taking into account the fact that there was probably no way Mr. Redfern was making a 500 mile round trip every single work day, even still, just a couple of times a week that kind of a grind will be almost impossible to sustain.

How someone could manage a commute that crazy, and not go insane is kind of an interesting question I think, and you could substitute '500 mile commute' with, 'Has to work 18-hour days for a year in order to ship our first product'. I think there are at least three key elements you'd have to have in place in order to make it work:

1. The work itself has to be an ideal (for you) combination of challenge/excitement/opportunity/reward that will set you up perfectly for the next 10-15 years of your career such that you simply have to bite the bullet and devote yourself to that work for a year or two (or four).

2. You either have to have just about zero responsibilities outside of work (no spouse/significant other/kids/dog etc.) that might either literally starve (in the case of a dog) or be starved for attention (every other person in your life), since you are working all of the time. Or, you have someone in your life who has decided that they will take care of everything outside of work for you while you are working all of the time. I suspect it would be really tough for anyone to pull off a regular 500 mile commute if they had a spouse, a couple of kids maybe, at home that they actually wanted to see awake once in a while.

3.  You have to be (reasonably) healthy before taking on such a grind. The combination of working crazy long hours and a long commute will start to break you down physically (and likely mentally too). You will eventually start eating poorly, not getting enough exercise, definitely not enough sleep and that combination starts to take a toll. If you are not set up to reasonably handle that kind of physical punishment you are more likely to end up in an ER somewhere than accepting a fat bonus check or a bunch of stock options for your hard work. Everyone can handle a long day or two or maybe five, but keep stacking them up, week after week and month after month? Good luck with that.

So how far are you willing to commute for your dream job?

Ok, that's it - I'm out for the weekend.

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads!