The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Peopleware Goes To Software

Posted on | September 14, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Megan McArdle makes a point that I think I can clarify a bit:

The jobs that are being automated are the stable, well-paying jobs where you could settle in and know exactly what you’d be doing for years. As Arnold says, if you can define it, you can probably outline it specifically enough to outsource, either to a lower-wage worker somewhere else, or to a computer.

Restated, jobs that involve information management, especially in well-bounded cases, are readily re-stated in software.

So, knowing how to

  • write code,
  • administer information systems,
  • do jobs that have a significant ‘real-world’ component (fixing cars),
  • involve creativity,
  • are not easily structured in code (customer service)

are likely to remain longer.

Interestingly, these decades into the information age, one tough nut to crack is picking over somebody else’s idea of an information system, when it comes to maintaining or re-engineering information systems. The Daily WTF is replete with examples.

Years ago, I was working on porting a client/server system to a web-enabled database. ASP against Oracle 8i, to date myself and hint at the fun it entailed. The application was hugely reporting-intensive. The old Project Manager had been retained as a consultant.

You tried to avoid being clever, but I was kind of backed into a corner. So I coded a rather smart .asp file that looked at the user’s request, and then did a lot of surgery to it before presenting something to the database for the query. A messy database schema sort of looked like the logical whole you would have thought it was.

Punchline: the old PM looks at the work, and tells me I have replaced 200+ explicit queries in the original client/server code. I heaved a sigh of relief, because this explained some of the odd column orderings of the reports, which detail I had no interest in capturing.

Back on topic, though, the Information Age has blown away vast swaths of the private sector, and is even now crushing the public sector. Private citizens just do not require the government, especially the federal government, managing their birth, housing, health, education, employment, and retirement. Private citizens do not need legions of civil servants reading email, shuffling from meeting to meeting, and emitting PowerPoint all day. This must stop.

Request to somebody with better data access: can we refer to civil service hires as ‘positions’, and private sector as ‘jobs’? I should like to see what the employment numbers look like without the invisible hand of Uncle Sam stirring the pot.

Category: Uncategorized

Comments

8 Responses to “Peopleware Goes To Software”

  1. DaveO
    September 14th, 2011 @ 2:41 pm

    Smitty, what you’ve described is the condensing of jobs: Software Developer, DBA, and requirements architect. Each one is a full time job for one person, but in the IT world, employers (and it is an employers’ market) expect one person to three to five full-time jobs. Keeping up with the languages is a bear. Wah, snivel. Funny that you simply aligned the front-end query with the client needs and dbase capabilities – if only the Army would do that!

    On civil service positions: going through USAJobs and OPM, the numbers of positions that are open are skyrocketing. Is this because of the need to have some real numbers for ‘created and saved’ the manpower authorizations are being turned into open (but unfundable) positions? I know the Army is conducting a RIF right now. A number of jobs created in the last two years are being eliminated due to pending budget cuts.

  2. Daily Pundit » Unemployable? That What Government Is For
    September 14th, 2011 @ 11:42 am

    […] Peopleware Goes To Software : The Other McCain Request to somebody with better data access: can we refer to civil service hires as ‘positions’, and private sector as ‘jobs’? I should like to see what the employment numbers look like without the invisible hand of Uncle Sam stirring the pot. […]

  3. Zilla of the Resistance
    September 14th, 2011 @ 4:19 pm

    Although we are currently pretty damned broke, I thank you for giving me another reason to be glad that I married a man who knows how to fix stuff. Husband is a talented mechanic who is currently employed as an industrial welder.  While his job doesn’t doesn’t pay great in this economy, he has skills that are needed so he has never been ‘between jobs’ for any period longer than a few weeks. Some folks linger ‘between jobs’ for years.
    You also mention writing code, well I can write code for custom made blog ads… 😉

  4. Anamika
    September 14th, 2011 @ 6:38 pm

    Years ago, I was working on porting a client/server system to a
    web-enabled database. ASP against Oracle 8i, to date myself and hint at
    the fun it entailed. The application was hugely reporting-intensive.[…]

    Gone are those days. These days, for ‘reporting’ purposes, we use business intelligence/data warehousing tools like  IBM’s Cognos, Oracle BIEE / Hyperion, SAP  BO etc.

  5. Anonymous
    September 14th, 2011 @ 6:56 pm

    Smitty asked, “I should like to see what the employment numbers look like without the invisible hand of Uncle Sam stirring the pot.”

    The “private” employment numbers might be difficult to unravel from Uncle Sam’s massive, intertwined tentacles. For example, how do we count employment for non-profit firms, many of whom are partly, or even largely, funded by government grants, tax credits, etc.? How about private firms that contract almost exclusively with government agencies?

    I have a theory that partly explains – among other factors – the growth of non-profits: many of these jobs exist not only to serve supposed client needs, but because the jobs reflect what some well-meaning college educated people want to do for a career – i.e., “fix” social problems, while not really get their hands dirty. In contrast, few smart young fellows these days desire to become supply chain managers, which prior to the recession were in great demand.

  6. Anonymous
    September 14th, 2011 @ 9:08 pm

    Doesn’t that steel superstructure overhead interfere with your WiFi signal?

  7. Anonymous
    September 14th, 2011 @ 9:13 pm

    Many of those “non- profits” are at least partly funded by federal grants. Are the the private donations to them tax deductible? If so, that alone would be a good enough reason to end the “charitable donation” deduction.

  8. DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Job-Seeker’s Paradox
    September 15th, 2011 @ 4:31 pm

    […] Smitty at The Other McCain kicks the extra point. Restated, jobs that involve information management, […]