Tag: technology jobs

OM in the News: Seven Jobs Robots Will Create

People are needed to oversee the work of machines to make sure they’re doing their jobs properly.

As machines get smarter, will millions of people will be left obsolete and jobless? Yes, jobs will be lost, and many people will be forced to learn new skills. But “AI opens up opportunities for many new jobs to be created—some that we can’t even envision now,” writes The Wall Street Journal (April 30, 2018). McKinsey predicts that artificial intelligence and automation could add 20-50 million jobs globally by 2030. Here is a look at 7 of them:

AI Builders There will be a greater need for people who can develop the underlying systems that make AI work. Other fields will need people with knowledge of how to integrate their work with AI.

Customer-Robot Liaisons  Companies that make AI applications use “customer success managers” to help ease clients into working with the systems, answering complaints and making adjustments. This is currently among the most sought-after jobs on ZipRecruiter.

Robot Managers  Even though AI can be amazingly smart at some jobs, its judgment can be very limited compared with a person’s. Hence the job someone who oversees the work of machines to make sure they’re doing their jobs properly, and intervenes if the AI asks for help in a tricky situation.

Data Labelers For AI to properly understand the world, it needs humans to explain what things are—meaning, the data that the AI absorbs need to be labeled. That could mean identifying objects in images.

Drone-Performance Artists Drones are  starting to work their way into the arts, where they act as dynamic light installations and flying props. And there is a growing need for artists who can customize those drones.

AI Lab Scientists Experts are needed to teach AIs about the life sciences or chemistry so that computers can surface novel ideas. Technicians, who test the results that AI comes up with to see which are valid and which aren’t, are also needed to help make machines smarter.

Safety and Test Drivers Most self-driving vehicles aren’t fully capable of working on their own just yet—and that means opportunities for people who help the vehicles do their jobs safely.

Classroom discussion questions:

1.Which of these jobs will fall under the purview of operations managers?

2. What kind of jobs will be lost in the AI revolution?

 

 

OM in the News: Why Does IBM Have More Employees in India than in the U.S.?

The IBM logo identifies a company building in Bangalore. Dozens of other foreign technology companies have offices nearby.

IBM dominated the early decades of computing with inventions like the mainframe and the floppy disk. Its offices and factories, stretching from upstate New York to Silicon Valley, were hubs of American innovation long before Microsoft or Google came along. “But over the last decade, IBM has shifted its center of gravity halfway around the world to India, making it a high-tech example of the globalization trends that the Trump administration has railed against,” writes The New York Times (Oct. 1, 2017).

Today, the company employs 130,000 people in India — 1/3 of its total work force, and more than in any other country. Their work spans the entire gamut of IBM’s businesses, from managing the computing needs of global giants like AT&T and Shell to performing cutting-edge research in fields like visual search, A.I. and computer vision for self-driving cars. The work in India has been vital to keeping down costs at IBM, which has posted 21 consecutive quarters of revenue declines as it has struggled to refashion its main business of supplying tech services to corporations and governments.

The tech industry has been shifting jobs overseas for decades, but IBM is unusual because it employs more people in a single foreign country than it does at home. The company’s employment in India has nearly doubled since 2007, even as its work force in the U.S. has shrunk through waves of layoffs and buyouts. It employs well under 100,000 people in the U.S. now, down from 130,000 in 2007. The salaries paid to Indian workers are 1/2 to 1/5 those paid here, and the range of work done by IBM in India shows that offshoring threatens even the best-paying American tech jobs.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. When the trend in manufacturing is “reshoring,” why is IBM offshoring more?
  2. What other industries are outsourcing to India?

OM in the News: Outsourced Jobs to India May Now Go To Indiana

For years, American companies have been saving money by “offshoring” jobs — hiring people in India and other distant cubicle farms. “Today,” writes The New York Times (July 31, 2017), “some of those jobs are being outsourced again — in the U.S.” Salaries have risen in places like South Asia, making outsourcing there less of a bargain. (A decade ago an American software developer cost 5-7 times as much as an Indian developer. Now the gap has shrunk to 2 times). In addition, as brands pour energy and money into their websites and mobile apps, more of them are deciding that there is value in having developers on the same continent.

Many of these domestic outsourcers are private, little-known companies, but IBM, one of the foremost champions of the offshore outsourcing model, has announced plans to hire 25,000 more workers in the U.S. over the next 4 years. As a result, the growth of offshore software work is slowing, to nearly half the pace of recent years.

“The nature of work is changing,” said the CEO of Infosys, the Indian outsourcing giant. “It is very local. And you often need whole teams locally. It’s not enough to have people offshore in India.” This is a departure from the offshore formula of having a project manager on-site but the work done abroad. Infosys just announced plans to hire 10,000 workers in the U.S. over the next 2 years, starting with centers in Indiana and North Carolina.

In the 1990s, the internet allowed tasks like payroll and financial reporting work to be sent to low-wage nations, especially India. That brought the rise of the big outsourcing companies like Tata and Infosys, which still excel at maintaining the software that runs back-office systems.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How has the outsourcing model changed?
  2. List the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing abroad.