Thread: Did Your Job Disappear?

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.

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..........

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

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!

Originally Posted by 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!

Check this out
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/06/in...-control-room/

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.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

...

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!

Originally Posted by cava

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

Originally Posted by BamBam53

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

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

From memory, Thailand is where our Ford Ranger came from.

.......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.

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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, great till someone hacks the computer for it.
Kryn