Culture Change

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Job Switching

I continue to make the point that the bet on capital gains from real estate is not through inflation but through speculation. The speculation might be about inflation, but if inflation was the case, we would see employment earnings keeping pace, and they're not. From CBC News July 15, 2014 comes this "Microsoft expected to cut jobs in wake of Nokia deal." and quote:


“We will increase the fluidity of information and ideas by taking actions to flatten the organization and develop leaner business processes,” Satya wrote. “Culture change means we will do things differently.” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. 

Translation 1:

The management will employ fewer people to give us feedback about our ideas by reducing the number of different levels of employment pay so that our cost of doing business is reduced on our balance sheet. We are forced to reduce our inhouse activities.

Translation 2:

I have a job contract to fulfill and you don't. You no longer have employable skills here.

Translation 3:

Software is eating the world.  

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"This is the basic insight: Software is eating the world. The Internet has now spread to the size and scope where it has become economically viable to build huge companies in single domains, where their basic, world-changing innovation is entirely in the code. We’ve especially seen it in retail — with companies like Groupon, Zappos, Fab." Marc Andreessen Wired interview April 24, 2013

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How Technology Is Destroying Jobs
By David Rotman on June 12, 2013, MIT Technology Review

A less dramatic change, but one with a potentially far larger impact on employment, is taking place in clerical work and professional services. Technologies like the Web, artificial intelligence, big data, and improved analytics—all made possible by the ever increasing availability of cheap computing power and storage capacity—are automating many routine tasks. 

Countless traditional white-collar jobs, such as many in the post office and in customer service, have disappeared. W. Brian Arthur, a visiting researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center’s intelligence systems lab and a former economics professor at Stanford University, calls it the “autonomous economy.” It’s far more subtle than the idea of robots and automation doing human jobs, he says: it involves “digital processes talking to other digital processes and creating new processes,” enabling us to do many things with fewer people and making yet other human jobs obsolete. Full Article Here

"Job Switching" from I Love Lucy
Aired September 15, 1952 on CBS TV