Corvida over at SheGeeks recently wrote a post asking if people have lost their job as a result of technology and it reminded me of several arguments I’ve had with people on both sides of the Pacific.

Over the last few years I’ve been (somewhat) responsible for the lay-off or dismissal of just over 100 people across nine companies. I am a software engineer and, as such, I am always on the lookout for ways to optimize jobs and functions, even if it costs someone their job. In a few cases, I even managed to program my way out of a nice position because, at the end of the day, I had solved the problems I was hired to tackle. While this isn’t always a good thing, we shouldn’t see losing our jobs to technology as a bad thing.

After all, we humans are ‘programmed’ to make ourselves obsolete.

Have I No Decency?

I’ve had people get spitting mad at me when they discovered that software I took pride in making made their positions redundant. Some have shouted at me with such conviction you’d swear they were trying to erase code with decibels. Others have hung their head and slunk away from the office without so much as a word. The tireless software and cold logic structures completed the 7.5 hours of daily work once done by humans in anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. So do I feel guilty for putting these people out of work?

No, because I didn’t put them out of work. They put themselves out of work. I simply made it easier for their employers to terminate the positions.

Before the flame wars start, hear me out. Companies seldom terminate productive employees. If someone is let go, it’s because they (usually) did not add value to an organization. Strong people are usually kept, while those who coast or do ‘just enough’ are let go for more cost-effective solutions. If a strong person’s job is eliminated by a machine, that same person is, more often than not, transferred somewhere their skills can be used to contribute to the overall success of the organization.

Do I feel bad when someone loses their job? Yes, absolutely. I’m human, too. I can understand their fears and concerns. But at the same time, I can see why an organization might let someone go. Working is an inalienable human right, and I’ll defend a person’s right to work until the bitter end. That said, just because a person has a right to work, doesn’t mean that others in an organization should suffer.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Unlimited Potential

Each one of us is capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. Most of the people who have been furious at me for “getting them fired” were angry because they were paid a lot of money to do relatively simple jobs.

Predictive inventory management. Automatic faxing. Portable data entry solutions. Remote monitoring of accounting practices. Production waste management and reduction. These things aren’t too difficult to do with a pen and paper, or with something as flexible as a spreadsheet application. Yet, despite the (relatively) basic core concepts of these tasks, the people my software made obsolete failed to perform as their employer requested.

Is it really my fault that a few weeks of coding time can eliminate a $50,000/year job in a company? No. It’s the company’s fault for not understanding the true value of the task they were paying $50,000 for. Eliminating the job is just the organization’s way of cleaning up costs.  This isn’t to say that someone’s time isn’t worth the money, though … it’s just an area that the company feels could be optimized to reduce unnecessary overhead in an ever-competitive market place.

One in Six Billion

We all have something to offer the world.  I truly believe that.  Just because we lost one job to technology does not necessarily mean that technology is a bad thing.  It just means that we’re being given a reason to either update our skills, or try something new.  It can be incredibly stressful at first, but we can all offer something to someone somewhere.

But one thing is for certain: we technology people are not responsible for the obsolescence of someone’s job.