Robots and employment, NHPR this morning

A long talk on the radio this morning with science fiction overtones.  Kinda future oriented, clearly all the talking heads were thinking about Robbie-the-Robot walking talking robots competing for jobs on production lines. 
   None of them seemed to understand that the situation is with us now.  Back when I started in engineering, companies all had drafting rooms, with dozens of draftsmen cranking out drawings.  They all had bevies of secretaries who typed stuff up. 
   As an engineer, I would do pencil sketches on squared paper, and when the design was reasonably firm, I would go down to drafting, negotiate with the drafting supervisor, and a draftsman would be assigned to me.  The schematic for a two layer 3 inch by 7 inch electronic board filled a D size drawing and took a week to do.  The printed circuit artwork for the same board took a couple of weeks. 
   Stuff I had to write, proposals, specs, test procedures, user manuals, application notes, assembly and tuneup procedures I would write out long hand on yellow pads.  Then the a secretary would type up a rough draft, I would correct the rough draft, she would type the final draft.  This took days. 
   When I retired from engineering both the drafting department and the secretarial pool were gone.  The engineers all had CAD programs running on their desktops from which beautiful machine lettered drawings, artwork, and parts lists would flow out the plotter.  We all had Word-for-Windows running on our desktops and in one pass, decent documentation flowed off the laser printer.  No need for typists. 
   Dunno what all the draftsmen and all the typists did when the desktops took over.  For that matter travel agents are pretty much gone, every body makes their reservations on Orbitz or Travelocity.  Most companies now have  automatic answering machines picking up the phone.  Sometimes the automatic is good enough to connect you to sales, and sometimes it isn't.  Robocallers pitch political candidates. Websites have replaced salesmen. 
   Don't worry about the future, worry about the present.

Computers get the new jobs.

The computers have moved into vast areas of the workplace.  Back when I  started as an engineer, we made pencil sketches of our designs on squared paper.  We took these down to drafting and drafting would produce gorgeous D size vellum drawings.  The master vellums were kept in drafting, and Ozalid copies were made for production.  Engineering change orders did not take effect until drafting had updated the master vellum and gotten the engineer to sign off on it. 
  Then we got desktop CAD.  It took a while to catch on, maybe ten years, but then we engineers did the drawings with a CAD program running on our desktop computers, and the drafting departments just withered away.  By the time I retired, there were no drafting departments.  That's a lot of good jobs, gone.
   When I started in the business, to make a trip, we called a travel agency to get the air tickets, the rental car reservation and the motel reservations.  By the time I retired, the travel agencies were gone, and I made my own reservations at Orbitz using my trusty desktop.  More good jobs, gone.
   Years ago, when we needed a memo, a letter to a customer, a proposal, an ECO, an instruction manual, a test procedure or anything formal, we wrote it out long hand on a yellow lined pad, and took it down to the typing pool.  They would type up a rough draft, we would correct same, then a final draft got typed.  Each department would have a typing pool.  In addition to typing stuff, they kept the supply cabinets stocked with paper and pencils, distributed the interoffice mail, and served as information centers.  The head of the typing pool always knew everything and everyone.  If you needed to know who to ask, or what procedure to follow,  anything, the typing pool would know.   Then we got Word-for-Windows with spell check and we began to type our own stuff.  Again, the typing pools went away.  Interoffice mail just didn't get delivered, there was no one to deliver it.  More good jobs gone.
   Again, way back when, companies had salesmen, who traveled to customer's sites and sold parts to the engineers.  The idea was, get an engineer to design their part into the circuit, and your company owned that socket for the life of the product.  We engineers were always happy to see the salesmen, 'cause the salesmen always brought fresh new data books, with the specs on all the latest parts.  A salesman was an opportunity to replace your 10 year old TTL databook, with an up to date version.  Then we got the internet.  Companies posted the datasheets on every part they made on the web.  We didn't need data books anymore, we could run off the datasheet on the parts we cared about on the office laserprinter.  I don't think I saw a parts salesman after 1995.  More good jobs gone.
   I wonder what all those draftsmen, travel agents, typists, and salesmen are doing now.