From hiring freezes to massive job cuts, as the last dust of the pandemic settles and new technologies emerge, it has been inferred that the nature of jobs will continue to evolve, and a lot of people will be thrown out as new skills spring up.
The challenge now is to make sure that we are ready for the future opportunities as the global economy gradually returns to the pre-covid era, and the force of automation and innovation continues to reshape the market.
Have we moved from the era of the ‘next big thing’ to the ‘last big thing’? More importantly, is the layoff spree driven by innovation, economic downturns, or a yet to be disclosed phenomena?
“Many Engineering CAD software companies had the same problem 10 years ago. Customers stopped buying or upgrading to new softwares, because existing softwares were good enough to get the job done. In response, they came up with this subscription license model, forcing the end users to upgrade each year, even though the end product that you get has almost no changes,” said Navaneeth V., a mechanical engineer at Mayekawa, New Zealand.
“I think many Information technology & financial software developers are going through a threshold limit, beyond which no further development is possible or needed by the consumers. I mean do I really need to use Alexa to order my groceries?”
Maybe not. Maybe AI is simply the latest stage in evolution of knowledge, and there is a high tendency that consumers, as always, will again scamper back to what they were formerly familiar with.
“We’re not in competition with technology as the development and application of technology are socioeconomically calibrated. AI Tech would enable new enterprise cultures different from what we know today. Yes, your future employment may not be a typical corporate 9-5 job, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be employed. Things would just be different, very different,” Sommy Nriama pointed out.
However, as the broader macro environment improves on the wings of technology, we are required to stay resilient, adapt, and never stop learning.
“In summary, Automation tends to Absolute Efficiency and Jobs tend to Zero, but they never really get there, at least not in this century. They just simply tend to absolute efficiency and zero respectively. As the Job Era closes, the Employment Era begins.”
