5 Ways Tech Affects the Future of Employment
Guest Post by Artur Meyster
The future of work doesn’t sound like a science fiction movie anymore. Change is happening now, and we can see it’s reflected in our daily life. There are many jobs in several industries that are being replaced by automation.
The reason for this is because robots are more convenient for companies than having a large group of workers. Robots don’t rest, they don’t need a salary and expenses only involve maintenance costs. Robots are available every day at any time, but the most important aspect is that the error margin is significantly low with robots. Us, humans, still can make big mistakes when it comes to numbers and digits.
The question is not whether it’s a positive transition or not, it’s when it’ll happen. Technology will transform the current workspace dynamic and this will result in drastic changes to the economy as well. That’s why it’s important to stay up-to-date and keep learning new skills. Data science is known to be one of the skills of the future, it is related to other ramifications that will be important in the future of work, like machine learning or artificial intelligence.
Due to the uncertainty, most of us are worried that we’ll lose our jobs to robots. But will this happen? Here we’ll show you some of the ways that technology is shaping the future of work.
The Tech Industry Will Generate More Jobs
There’s one common belief among many people and it’s that technology will destroy the economy we know today. This is true, but not necessarily negative. According to CNBC news, 25% of American jobs are at risk of being lost to automation. However, most of these jobs are in the manufacturing and logistics industry. On the other hand, a recent report conducted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) revealed technology will generate more jobs than it’ll destroy.
This makes a lot of sense, just think about it. Since there will be so many artificial intelligence tools in customer service, this industry will need more people to program those tools. That’s why machine learning has become such an important tech skill these days.
Lifelong Learning
Technology development moves fast, and if our economy depends on the industry, we’ll need to be lifelong learners to stay ahead of digital trends. With the evolution of automation, industries will have to move fast and constantly keep up trends and know the techniques to stay afloat. This isn’t something new, we can already see changes in our current work dynamic. But, there are still industries that refuse to keep up. These will be the most vulnerable when the robot era arrives.
Remote Workforces
According to a study conducted by FlexJobs, the number of people working remotely increased by 44% in the past five years, and it’s expected to continue growing. This reveals how common remote work will be in the future. Besides, this trend will also result in decentralized workforces, meaning that there shouldn’t necessarily exist a location where all employees work. Employees will be able to work from anywhere they want, and this will come with the evolution of communication technologies. Although this is something that’s currently happening, the trend says it’ll grow in the future.
AI-Driven Technology
Most companies will work with artificial intelligence one way or another. This is already apparent in our life. With tech advancements, machine learning gives benefits to medical and construction companies. These benefits include the automation of tasks like manufacturing. The work machine learning contributes is also more efficient.
In the future of work, no matter what industry you’re working on, it’s very likely that you’ll be using artificial intelligence.
Communication between Companies and Customers
Every day there are more companies using automated chatbots, voice emailing, and even automated video messages. We all know how important eye contact is for sales and customer service teams. Now they have the possibility to utilise tools like Loom. On the other hand, the smart speaker trend has been significantly growing in the past years. That’s why more companies have started to sync up their mobile apps with smart speakers like Alexa to be more accessible for customers. They’ll be able to consult prices, quotations, near locations, and more just by asking Alexa.
What Can We Do to Stay Afloat?
The best thing we can do to stay ahead of trends and prepare ourselves for the future of employment is to start learning tech skills. This will ensure that we’ll continue working in the future even with the presence of automation. Some of the most in-demand skills for the future of work are data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. There are many schools like Galvanize or Hack Reactor that offer complete courses where you’ll learn all the necessary skills to become a data scientist or machine learning engineer.
Author Bio: Artur Meyster is the CTO of Career Karma (YC W19), an online marketplace that matches career switchers with coding bootcamps. He is also the host of the Breaking Into Startups podcast, which features people with non-traditional backgrounds who broke into tech. Connect him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
