No Job Lasts Forever

My first job out of college was working as a Technical Writer in an airplane engine factory. Most of the work was around regulatory compliance, creating documentation to show that everyone was trained on the work they were doing and the machines they were using.

I learned how to do the job from my manager, who cared not at all for the craft of writing, but wanted the documents filed so they could show their manager everything was in order. There was another technical writer who worked on our team who was — to me at the time — old, and he hated the system of knocking out documents and putting them in filing cabinets.

Why? Because when he started working as a technical writer, the task of creating a document took an entire team making thoughtful decisions. Publishing something actually involved typesetting and printing, photographs required a photographer and film processing, edits used pens and paper. But by 2004 one person could do everything with a computer, digital camera, and a printer, and because the process could be completed in such a short time, the goal shifted from producing well-made and thorough documents to checking off a list that documents existed for any process or machine on the floor, even if they were simply one sheet of paper that described very little of what someone would need to do their job.

You might read that as ”technology took away jobs” but it took away more than that. It took away working with a team, and it took away producing a meaningful artifact that other people got something of value from.

The PC eliminated a lot of jobs. Software on PCs eliminated more. AI will do the same. Will we miss the jobs? Probably not. Will we miss working with people to build something meaningful? Maybe.