Automation and thoughts!

Okay, so here goes a post after a long time. For my readers, assuming safely that there are quite a few residing in the poshest corners of the globe, the wait would have seemed interminable.  And that was just that. An illusion. The wait shall now be terminated.

TL: DR à Bring in Automation at the workplace. Keep it out of every youngster’s reach till then.

I have been attending an Automation course the past week. Before venturing into that, let me provide a background to my story. After entering the workplace and post months of training, 3 to be precise, I regained my spark of interest in programming, which hopefully will now be a raging fire. This caused a flurry of frantic browsing activity. Previously, I have never gone past 2 pages of Google’s results, and here I was, wading past 5 of all the crawling it threw up. I searched for the language that I should start feeding my fire of programming with. I searched for the limitations that every language had, I searched for the ease and efficiency of IDEs. I searched high and low as I wanted to nail it right, right at the start. And this want remained a wish. Had I gone and dived straight into solving problems or straight into thinking up a programming challenge for myself and coding in it, I would have endured a lot more satisfaction. All that search only caused in me an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. After two days of such soul-searching, I quit. I couldn’t remember even a major detail of all that I drowned myself in. I resolved to laziness and started coding in the language that my training indulged me in. A month after that, I tentatively put my feet into what I had drowned myself earlier with. The experience stood me in good stead this time though. I could select a language immediately. I installed all the necessary components and started learning pertinent lessons from tutorials. I was doing basic self-assigned tasks. It was fun. My brain, which by time had dulled, had re-energized itself and ran on interminable fuel. I found myself thinking up logic, penning down code that coughed out non-understandable errors when compiled. That never deterred me. It spurred me on, if anything. I found myself unable to rest till I had hit upon the solution. I exhorted myself to spend every waking moment trying to iron out the errors.

And then, automation happened. I attended a course that threw light on the basics of Automation using a certain tool, which I will not mention here. The first day of this course had me thinking of the perfect date for celebrating a ‘Doomsday’ of sorts to amateur programming. All the effort that went into the coding that I had to type out and correct and execute towards a purpose as trivial as getting to download an image from the web, paled in comparison to that which Automation delivered to me on a platter. Paled, here, does not convey the emotion I felt. It was as if Automation made a mockery of the entire effort that I had invested towards my tiny moral achievement. Doing the same via Automation was as simple as mentally adding 1 and 2 in Maths. Knowledge of English and the process that you wish to automate is more than sufficient. No application of any technology that you might have learned is required. And more importantly, none doing Automation need use their brains, neither to think nor to apply!

I now grasp the significance of the debate on Jobs vs Automation. Let a few years pass and eventually, we will see many of the processes currently in production will not so much as even warrant the presence of a human to unlock the computer with an access-specifier! In these few years, the Automation products will gain more stability and the triangle of competition-demand-supply will drive down the pricing to corporate-affordable rates. What I fear the most is the effect that this will cause on the up-and-coming programmers and the budding kids who take up programming as a passion. The proportion of this population is intricately linked with the period till when they obtain a hands-on with any such Automation product. Once given a peek, would not the flames of programming turn to embers of a fire that once raged? None, barring a minute cases of exception, would stoop to the activity of thinking and coding towards achieving a trivial self-made aim.

That said, all feelings vented, I shall now turn to the ripples that Automation in the corporate landscape would ensure. Aren’t there innumerable workers around the globe in support teams, who are made to perform mundane report-generating processes or daily status updates on the application that they support? Yes, this would seem fun, nice and relaxing, for a total of three months. Beyond that, the moral voice kicks in. They begin to question themselves, question their place in this world and question the significance of the work they do, unable to associate themselves to a bigger picture, for no fault of theirs. And this inherent dissatisfaction in the professional domain will hamper the happiness of the personal domain. This small ripple could culminate into a huge tsunami of sorts, when the frustrations of the former are vented out in the latter. There exists a fine line between the two, and an even finer population, had they introspected on the self, that toe this line. For the majority, tsunami results. Maybe they consider it as a cleansing, an opportunity to wipe out everything and start afresh, only to eventually find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a familiar saga. To such people, Automation acts as a sprinkling of rain on a parched land. Automating labour-processes will push them towards thinking on the lines of how existing Production systems can be improved towards achieving an higher efficiency, of how a better ROI can be gained through modification of processes, of how workplace-spirit-building and camaraderie can be increased to involve diverse teams, and of how many more such innovative aims shall be realised. This could even come back full-circle for them, that is, a hike in the salary and/or improvement in ambience of the workplace. This sure is a satisfying aim to achieve, for the effort that Automation requires to be invested.

I thank those that are reading this line, because it indicates that you decided to jump in, even after the TL: DR.