Everyone will be an engineer

Or will be left and missing out.

There are two types of jobs: ones that create something new or ones that repeat what already exists. Note, that I’m not talking about creating something per se. Quite often creating something is actually repeating some preexisting algorythm, probably with some adaptations to given conditions. Chef cooks similar meals, driver executes similar actions on different routes, even construction engineer develops similar bridges and buildings.

Sooner or later all of such actions will be automated. Sure, the process wouldn’t be evenly paces across industries and jobs. There might be even some islands of ‘personal touch’ left just for the sake of it, for instance in waiting tables. But majority of such jobs will be automated.

And people who do them now will have two options: either adapt and change their position, skills or even fields of employment, or be left out.

It doesn’t necessarily means that they will crave for job, become poor or starve. It’s possible that our social system will adapt and provide everyone with certain level of life quality, irrelevant to occupation or productivity.

But such people will become useless in general term of the word. They will still buy things, go out, socialise and entertain themselves and thus be part of economy, but consuming one.

And everyone else will be an engineer. Of programs, machines, robots as well as human entertainment, emotions, nutrition, sport and so on.

I wonder what percentage of people will become and engineer. Is it 50%, 25%, 10% or mere 1%? And I wonder how different their life would be from the rest of the people. For sure they will have more self fulfilment, more satisfaction and sense of meaning. Quite likely, they will have higher quality of life.

And this process of splitting has not just began, it’s growing very, very fast. Uber is great example. Couple hundred people create and support main system, while hundreds of thousands if not millions drive cars. As soon as some company will automate driving, Uber will switch to this model and all of those drivers will be no more needed. But those ‘engineers’ who run Uber as a system will still be in place and thriving (although, some optimisation will happen there as well).

So, practical conclusion for all of us is to decide whether you would like to be an engineer in that future (or at least have an option to chose to be one) and if so, what should you do now, that will prepare you best for it.

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