Did Your Job Disappear?

[Chris Parks]

I was reading the paper today and there was an article predicting that a lot of jobs are going to disappear in the next twenty years due to the digital age catching up with them. When I started work in the mid sixties I was an apprentice compositor in the printing industry and that job completely disappeared due to digital publishing. Did you have a job earlier in your life that has effectively disappeared for whatever reason?

[Handyjack]

I spent 16+ years as a boiler attendant. In the mid 1980's you might have seen an ad a week, by 2000 it was a dying trade. A lot of places with boilers closed or changed to non attended plant.
Today the vast majority of boilers are automatic and do not require a qualified attendant.

[Handyjack]

Other jobs that have gone are tram/bus conductors and railway guards.
In public transport there have been a lot of changes as operators try to save $ and new technology has reduced staffing requirements.

How many people today have someone put fuel in their car and check the tyre pressure?

[Master Splinter]

While not involving me, I've watched the following jobs suffer losses:

Typesetter (which was what compositor turned into before disappearing entirely)
Photographer (the number of retrained professional photographers that I've known is pretty high)
Scanner operator (for Hell Scanners and other rotary image scanners)
The entire film related side of Pre-Press (anyone else remember halftone screens and chemical proofs??)
Garbage man (not the driver, the guys that ran behind the truck)
Journalist (hasn't disappeared, it's just shrunk by 50% across all Australia's newsrooms)

The jobs I am desperately wishing would disappear:
TV producer for reality TV programs.

[Kidbee]

Had a friend whose job disappeared - he was a mattress tester in a mattress factory.:wave:

[cava]

When I was growing up in inner Sydney, it was common to see:

1. The rag and bone man with horse and cart.
2. Bread delivery to the house.
3. Vegetable delivery to the house.
4. Milk delivery everyday to the house.
5. Very early on, there was the iceman delivering blocks of ice for chest coolers.
6. People sweeping the streets with a bin on a trolley and a broom. Apparently, this was a stepping stone to being graduated to work on the garbage trucks of the day.

[BobL]

Some jobs have disappeared because of funding cuts and a belief from Administrators that some things are not that important.

When I went to University the Department I did my degree in had 12 technicians to assist with maintaining undergraduate student laboratories and lecture demonstration equipment.
Today, with twice as many students there are 2.

Students today spend 1/4 of their time in laboratories compared to what we used to, there are virtually no demonstrations during lectures, and many laboratory sessions have been replaced by computer simulations !

No wonder so few students want to do STEM and the graduates hands on skills are very ordinary bordering on non-existent.

[code4pay]

I was a hay carter when I was younger, nearly all round or large square bales now.

[robbygard]

not mine personally but i worked in employment and training industry in the 1970's and saw the closure of courtaulds who wove the canvass for tyres and pgh pipemaking division ... i interviewed the last "jointsticker" ... the guy who joined the clay pipes to make the y-fittings ... fortunately for him, he was old enough to retire and ended up doing so

regards david

[ian]

When I was growing up in inner Sydney, it was common to see:

1. The rag and bone man with horse and cart.
2. Bread delivery to the house.
3. Vegetable delivery to the house.
4. Milk delivery everyday to the house.
5. Very early on, there was the iceman delivering blocks of ice for chest coolers.
6. People sweeping the streets with a bin on a trolley and a broom. Apparently, this was a stepping stone to being graduated to work on the garbage trucks of the day.
funny you should mention those trades

I remember the bread man and the milk man and the ice man (but only just for the ice man)


and the street sweeper,
my local guy gave up his cart only a few years ago, he now travels around in a larger gang but comes to our street 2 or 3 times per year.

[cava]

Our bread man was Rocky Gattlerri, and the garbage men tended to be rugby players trying to keep fit in the off season (from Balmain I think).

[Twisted Tenon]

While not involving me, I've watched the following jobs suffer losses:

Typesetter (which was what compositor turned into before disappearing entirely)
Photographer (the number of retrained professional photographers that I've known is pretty high)
Scanner operator (for Hell Scanners and other rotary image scanners)
The entire film related side of Pre-Press (anyone else remember halftone screens and chemical proofs??)
Garbage man (not the driver, the guys that ran behind the truck)
Journalist (hasn't disappeared, it's just shrunk by 50% across all Australia's newsrooms)

The jobs I am desperately wishing would disappear:
TV producer for reality TV programs.

What about the Small Offest Press Operators? That was a whole industry on its own. All the Snap shops, Kwick Kopy, inplants etc. All replaced by high speed photo copiers.

TT

[3 toed sloth]

Years ago, my wife was a tracer for plumbing consultancy companies. The designers would scribble out their plumbing designs and the tracers would sit at their drawing boards and create incredible plans and drawings manually. Now it's all done by computer with C.A.D software.

I was a teacher at TAFE for several years. That's a dying job too. It turns out properly trained teachers are way too expensive. So the courses are "dumbed down" which has a double benefit. Firstly, everyone passes!
Secondly, you need less "teachers" and they don't need to be as well trained/qualified, (or paid). Don't get me started!:roll:

[Chesand]

funny you should mention those trades

I remember the bread man and the milk man and the ice man (but only just for the ice man)

My father delivered bread before the war and later firewood in the winter and ice in the summer. One of my uncles delivered milk as the family had a dairy.

[Uncle Al]

I was a bowser jockey for a while in the very early seventies, and remember the tea lady in my first real job in a large organisation. Both jobs are non existent these days. There were heaps of secretaries throughout the organisation, with shorthand skills and incredible typing speeds. These days, most people in low to middle management create their own memos etc. Actually, they had an internal mail delivery person delivering the mail twice a day. Computers, word processors and the internet took over in most cases.

A typewriter mechanic used to come around every few months to service and adjust the typewriters, and I suppose the bloke who had the contract to refill the cigarrette machines on site now delivers large bottles of water.

A few other jobs that have disappeared are the dunny can collector, toll collector and lift driver.

One could go on and on, especially when you consider the whole industries that have or are about to disappear such as car making, footwear and clothing, electronics, small appliances etc. Remember brand names such as Speedwell and Malvern Star bicycles, Kreisler, Pye AWA, Astor and HMV televisions, to name a few.

Alan...

[AlexS]

My old job still exists, but it is almost unrecognisable when from when I started. I was lucky enough to be part of the big changes, but 11 years after retiring, it's continued to change so much I'd have difficulty doing it. Teaching it for a while kept me up to speed, but not now.

[Evanism]

A friends wife was a cell colourist for cartoons. She literally painted the colours on individual frames in between the black lines (done by someone else).

Both jobs disappeared completely within 5 years....from huge demand to zero.

[Bedford]

My Grandad used to be a bubble diver, collected the bubbles to make spirit levels.

There doesn't seem to be much call for that job these days..........

[Wizened of Oz]

In the 60s I used to see a regular ad for a steel telephone salesman. That job disappeared along with steel telephones.:D

[Evanism]

I was talking with a mate in mining this arvo and he was talking about new trucks and diggers - all GPS auto-drives and remote controlled.

Massive great machines that can be driven from an airconditioned office in Sydney CBD if you want. 24 hours, non-stop. The trucks are automatic.

How cool is THAT!!!!

All those FIFO's and $160k salaries just went POOF!

[BobL]

I was talking with a mate in mining this arvo and he was talking about new trucks and diggers - all GPS auto-drives and remote controlled.

Massive great machines that can be driven from an airconditioned office in Sydney CBD if you want. 24 hours, non-stop. The trucks are automatic.

How cool is THAT!!!!

All those FIFO's and $160k salaries just went POOF!

Check this out
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/06/inside-rio-tintos-robot-mining-control-room/

[Handyjack]

Other jobs to disappear include telegram jobs - sending, receiving and delivering.

In the railways whole career paths have gone from the call boys who knocked on the crews door to make sure they were aware of their next shift, engine cleaners who went on to become firemen and then drivers. Now a lot of the training is done by non railway service providers.

In my youth there was still a home delivery of milk by horse and cart (late 60's). One of the jobs to care for the horses was a farrier or blacksmith. While these trades still exsist it is a fraction of what it was.

[rrich]

1 ~ When I got into the IT industry it was my job to take the CPU (Computer) from the assembly folks and make it work correctly. In those days each gate was made with discrete components. (Transistors, diodes, resistors and capacitors) It was necessary to find the components that suffered infant mortality as well as wiring errors.

Since then, computers evolved into using integrated circuits for each gate and eventually the whole CPU on a chip. Now the testing is performed during packaging of the chip and only the working chips are packaged. The early solid state CPUs needed 4 to 6 racks 19 inches wide and about 60 inches high. Today, in one of those racks, about 100 servers reside.

2 ~ As communications protocols evolved into what we call TCP/IP (i.e. Internet) today, the need for people that could understand the bizarre ACK/NAK protocols waned. Even the need for people to understand the full duplex high speed protocols disappeared. (X.25 / Frame Relay / ATM)

3 ~ As we got the Internet backbone built and the interconnection of sub networks became plug and play the need for the engineers that configured the customer's equipment diminished. It is neat to be able to say that I helped to build the Internet. (And NO! I don't know Al Gore.)

An important anniversary is coming up. On Cinco De Mayo, 2003, I got retired. It hurt that "My position was eliminated" for about 5 seconds. Then I broke into uncontrollable laughter for about a full minute. (I had done the math.) For the last 12 years I've been playing in my shed and travelling to some NASCAR races.

If you've had your credit checked during the mid 1980s through most of the 1990s here in the US, you touched the software that I wrote.

Anyone who has filed a paper income tax return (1970 through 1990) with the US IRS went through some of the systems that I worked on.

If you purchased petrol in the North East US, it was probably refined in New Jersey in a refinery controlled by some of the systems that I worked on.

For the west coast purchasers of gasoline one of the systems that I worked on controlled the pumping of the crude oil.

Of course all of those systems are long gone and, like me, retired. But I still play in the shed almost daily.

[BamBam53]

Petrol pump attendants would have started disappearing in the early 1980's when the electronics in the pumps got smart enough to be controlled from the cash register.

Car assembly line workers in Australia will disappear soon, along with many more jobs in industries that supply the assembly plants.

Check out operators in supermarkets are on the way out, replaced by the self scanning.

I read a book, Manna, by Marsall Brain a years back. It gives an interesting view on what might happen when advances in robotics start replacing human workers. This link will take you to the book if interested. http://marshallbrain.com/manna.htm

Read the book and think about it next time the supermarket check out tells you to place an item in the bagging area.

[Sawdust Maker]

...

Journalist (hasn't disappeared, it's just shrunk by 50% across all Australia's newsrooms)

The jobs I am desperately wishing would disappear:
TV producer for reality TV programs.

generic news is a real worry as the 'spin' is more easily manipulated

and I can only whole heartedly agree with this last sentence. I'm yet to work out what unreal TV is!



When I was growing up in inner Sydney, it was common to see:
...
4. Milk delivery everyday to the house.
...

My first job if you don't count roustabout in the shearing shed on the farm




Car assembly line workers in Australia will disappear soon, along with many more jobs in industries that supply the assembly plants.

...

I reckon Australia should give the new royal bub the last Holden to run off the production line

[rrich]

I'm not sure about the Ford Ranger. There is talk that the Ranger is going to be available in the US as a left hand drive. What I don't know where it will be assembled. The old US Ranger assembly plant in Wisconsin has been closed for several years.

[cava]

I'm not sure about the Ford Ranger. There is talk that the Ranger is going to be available in the US as a left hand drive. What I don't know where it will be assembled. The old US Ranger assembly plant in Wisconsin has been closed for several years.
From memory, Thailand is where our Ford Ranger came from.

[Kidbee]

.......and no more video shop retailers. My local store closed down a few weeks ago because people can now download their movies at home with Netflix.

[rob streeper]

I've never done these jobs but in my lifetime I've seen the following disappear.

Television/radio repair technician - people around here are now throwing out their older CRT non-digital receiver televisions.

Cobbler/shoe repair - I remember my grandmother having a pair of shoes made for me when I was young, now SA has just a handful of cobblers in a city of more than a million.

Payphones and all of the people associated with them. Cell phones have killed the older coin payphones, I haven't even seen a payphone in ages.

[KBs PensNmore]

I've never done these jobs but in my lifetime I've seen the following disappear.

Television/radio repair technician - people around here are now throwing out their older CRT non-digital receiver televisions.

Cobbler/shoe repair - I remember my grandmother having a pair of shoes made for me when I was young, now SA has just a handful of cobblers in a city of more than a million.

Payphones and all of the people associated with them. Cell phones have killed the older coin payphones, I haven't even seen a payphone in ages.


We have a Television/radio repair technician and a payphone, with in a couple of kms from us. Whether the pay phone works or not is another story, and the technician guy is close to retirement, working from home anyway.
The way drones, etc. are going, Pilots will be a thing of the past in about 10 years:no:, great till someone hacks the computer for it.
Kryn

[Vernonv]

The way drones, etc. are going, Pilots will be a thing of the past in about 10 years:no:, Doesn't a drone still have a "pilot", just not sitting in the cockpit. I doubt they will ever remove pilots (in the cockpit) from commercial passenger airlines, as I doubt many of the passengers would be comfortable with a pilot who doesn't have some skin in the game: :)

[brontehls]

I was reading the paper today and there was an article predicting that a lot of jobs are going to disappear in the next twenty years due to the digital age catching up with them. When I started work in the mid sixties I was an apprentice compositor in the printing industry and that job completely disappeared due to digital publishing. Did you have a job earlier in your life that has effectively disappeared for whatever reason?

I was upstairs as a proof reader - that one has definitely gorn

Neil

[rrich]

I haven't even seen a payphone in ages.

Obviously you haven't been incarcerated in ages, either. :U

That's about the only place that you will see a pay phone these days.

[Sturdee]

Obviously you haven't been incarcerated in ages, either. :U

That's about the only place that you will see a pay phone these days.

There's one about 400 metres up the road, next to the shops, from me and it still works.:2tsup:

Peter.

[TermiMonster]

There's one about 400 metres up the road, next to the shops, from me and it still works.:2tsup:

Peter.

Is that cell block 3 or cell block 4, near the canteen?:doh:

[elanjacobs]

Obviously you haven't been incarcerated in ages, either. :U

That's about the only place that you will see a pay phone these days.
I can think of 3 near me off the top of my head. They're slowly being converted to public WiFi hotspots