Jobs of Web 2.0
Fast Company posted a 10 slide piece about jobs that exist in the online world – even though the editor has some slides and text in the wrong order. I thought it was odd that they titled it Jobs of Web 2.0 since these roles are pretty commonplace. Even around in 1998 a lot of companies had the same positions with varying titles. I was designing type, iconography, and interfaces for SonicNet in 1996 and they had someone hacking the social software and developing audience more than trying to trick Google.
The real jobs of the future are going to be how well you interact with people, develop ideas as a team, and make deals. Since most of the jobs are putting people in front of computers, these roles can easily be outsourced. See Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind to be convinced that these roles will be low-wage roles in booming cities.
I do worry about sending so many jobs outside the U.S. when there are communities of people who need jobs. What would happen if we trained Detroit auto-workers to be a web-hacker/support person? I know some people in Flint, Michigan who would embrace a 24K – 30K salary. With the way the dollar is headed and the rising rates of Indian companies this is what some companies are paying to firms who give a fraction of that to their employees.
Jobs of Web 2.0
Filed under: Differentiation, Positive Change, Poverty , daniel pink, fast comapny, job-shifting, jobs, outsourcing, web 2.0
October 9, 2007 • 7:49 pm
There are a lot of films to watch in my Netflix queue and sometimes a film pops up on Sundance or IFC right before I go to bed. Sure I have Tivo but there is something about documentaries that seem to hover in the “soon to be deleted” bubble but on DVD I seem to watch them right away.
The documentary “We Feed the World” by director Erwin Wagenhofer was done in 2005 and it seems like it shold have been long ago. Why have western cultures trusted everything that is grown and sold at markets for so long? Sure, the price is part of it but when farmers would rather grow vegetables that will look better, taste worse, and ruin the land and any future harvests because of our shopping habits, then it is two colliding forces: 1. poor shopper education influencing the industry and 2. corporations taking advantage of the ignorant shoppers by providing retailers with engineered end of life products. I can only blame myself for falling prey to the the same thinking. If it looks good, it must taste good. Wrong.
But this film goes much further and the main takeaway for me was the fact that we have a global food surplus for over 60 billion people and yet 100,000 people die of starvation every year. Nobody should die of starvation in 2008. Malnutrition cases should be able to drop in half by 2010.
Things are changing now and the internet – and positive change organizations – is becoming the vehicle for the voice that has been suppressed for too long.
http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/facts.htm
Filed under: Environment, Positive Change, Poverty , corporate farming, documentary, globalization, starvation, we feed the world
