The day has come. With your team, you finished a project. Few months have passed. Not so big, not so small. Just typical, like few before and few next. The business partners even create a party with free beer and pizza. Maybe even you will receive a bonus. It looks great, isn’t it?
Changes & consequences
A few months have passed. Your team changed. Jack decide to search luck somewhere else. Your boss decides to stop working with Mike because he doesn’t fit or something. But you know now he is working for XYZ company. Normal life in IT teams. One day you hear strange news. Do you still remember the project, you did a few months ago? This with the great party. The company/department who ordered it announced releases. They are firing people. What happened? A few months ago everything was perfect. They even organize a great party. So why they are firing people? Can you imagine that this can be your fault? You created an application. It is working great. And this is why the company/department can optimize costs. People are redundant, so they can fire them. Your code did it.
Is it real?
On 5 January the 33rd Square publish the following article: Japanese Insurance Company to Replace Workers with Artificial Intelligence
Japanese insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer artificial intelligence.
The artificial intelligence is better and cheaper than 34 workers. The company saves £1.4 million a year. A developers team just fired 34 people.
My experience
I had one such project in my life. A long time ago. I was proud when I finished it. I get worst a few months later. I know such optimization is required in companies. I know such apps are created every day. I hope that everybody, who was fired then, has a new better job. But still, when I think about it I feel terrible.
Technical progress
100 years ago Ford Model T was built almost using hands. You can watch this on YouTube. Today in the car factory, people almost doesn’t exist. But they write code for modern cars. A lot of code. For example, the new Ford F-150 has 150 million lines of code in a truck (read more).
We are developers. We write code. We are changing word every day. We make it better. It is worth even when someone loses his job. The only problem is that it isn’t nice.