efficiency on S Anand

Technology efficiency affects jobs differently

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 04:55:26 +0000

Jobs fall with technological efficiency.

Farmers in the US fell from 40% (1900) to ~2.7% (1980) and ~74% drop from 1948 to 2019 despite ~175% output growth; wheat harvest efficiency rose ~75* (300>3-4 man-hours).
Mechanics & repairers grew from ~140 k (1910) to ~4.64 M (2000); machinery reliability lagged so technician demand surged over decades.
Construction workers doubled from 1.66 M (1910) to 3.84 M (2000) even as labor share fell (4.3>3.0%); 5-10* productivity gains met booming development.
Switchboard operators plunged from ~1.34 M (1950) to ~40 k (1984) and ~4 k today as rotary-dial and digital switching automated call handling.
Travel agents dropped >50% from ~100 k (2000) to ~45 k (2022) while travel demand rose; online booking doubled trips per agent.
Elevator operators went from building-staff staple to near zero by the 1940s once automatic doors and button controls arrived.
Lamplighters vanished from thousands to near zero post-1907 electrification; Edison’s incandescent lamps eliminated manual lighting.

Jobs also grow with technology efficiency.

Software/IT workers surged from ~450 k (1970) to 4.6 M (2014); RAM price-performance jumped >100 000* (1 MB at $5 k>1 GB at <$0.03). 1980 IBM PC launch triggered a scramble for COBOL and BASIC coders-employers flew recruiters with cash-filled briefcases to MIT; “Y2K bounty hunters” later earned $1 k/hr inspecting two-digit dates.
Registered nurses climbed from ~12 k (1900) to ~3 M (2024); medical tech (antibiotics, MRI, EHRs) boosted care per nurse >10*. WWI field hospitals proved that trained nurses cut mortality by half; politicians returned home demanding hospital schools-enrollment tripled in one decade.
Wind-turbine technicians rose from ~4.7 k (2012) to 11.4 k (2023) and head for 18.2 k (2033); turbine capacity (660 kW>4+ MW) and remote SCADA expanded roles. First U.S. “windtech” apprentice class (Minnesota West, 2004) trained atop a decommissioned 90-ft tower welded to the parking lot; grads had 100 % placement.
Solar-PV installers jumped from ~4.7 k (2012) to 24.5 k (2023) as panel costs collapsed 80% and snap-in racking doubled installs per crew-day. An Arizona roofer who added PV installs in 2011 hit $1 B revenue by 2022-outselling five coal mines combined.
Social-media managers grew from ~2 k (2010) to ~61 k (2024); auto-schedulers let one person handle 50+ brand channels. Oreo’s “dunk in the dark” tweet (Super Bowl 2013) was crafted by a 15-person war-room-today a solo creator can replicate that reach on TikTok.

What drives head-counts growth despite efficiency jumps? Here’s ChatGPT’s guess:

Elastic new demand - Cheaper output unlocks previously-priced-out customers (software for every desk, electricity from prairie winds).
Complementary task creation - Tech automates routine sub-tasks, freeing humans for non-routine extensions: nurses moved from bed-making to ICU monitoring; developers shifted from punch-cards to UX design. ([nber.org][12])
Regulatory or safety mandates - Every extra MRI or turbine needs certified operators; compliance can outrun automation.
Network effects & ecosystems - Social platforms, app stores and open-source stacks spawn whole job families (community managers, DevRel).
Local installation & maintenance bias - PV panels assembled in Asia still need boots-on-roof locally.

So in the context of LLMs, here’s a guess on roles that could grow.

Edge-of-frontier complements. Prompt engineers, AI ethics leads, autonomous-fleet technicians emerge where tech leaves gaps.
Orchestrators & translators. Roles that fuse domain expertise with LLM tooling (e.g., “AI curriculum architect” in education).
Ecosystem enablers. Marketplace ops, trust & safety reviewers, fine-tuning data curators.
Regtech & audit. Assurance positions verifying model compliance and bias-often imposed by statute (EU AI Act clones).
Experience designers. As core tasks automate, differentiation shifts to narrative, community and emotion; expect growth in AI game writers, “synthetic brand” managers.

PS: The image was vibe-coded from BLS stats.

Scraping

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 04:30:10 +0000

I was at Cream Centre with my father on a Sunday afternoon. We’d finished a light lunch and were debating dessert. (He has triglycerides. I have cholesterol.) This was my fifth visit this year, and I had abstained so far. I couldn’t any longer.

I ordered a Sizzling Brownie Sundae. But not for reasons you might think.

Expertise comes from experience. I scrape food more than 99% of the people I know. So, I consider myself an expert. Here’s a guide on the art of scraping.

Why scrape food?

You get to eat every last bit
Food isn’t wasted
You can eat longer (and no do whatever else you have to)
It’s a motivating challenge to get every last bit
Bonus: It annoys people

What foods are scrapable?

Semi-solids are the easiest to scrape. The best kind is the cohesive semi-solid. It’s sticky but sticks to itself more than the vessel. These are usually foods that solidify over time. Examples include:

Baked cheese. It’s great when cheese falls off the pizza or pasta on to the plate. You can scrape it off of your (or others’) plates.
Molten chocolate. It has the added bonus that you can lick it at the end, too.
Pasta water (or noodles water). It eventually thickens into something scrapable.
Spreads like peanut butter, Nutella, jam, chutney. Especially on the sides of the glass bottles they come in.
Others like yogurt, cake batter, dried tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, hardened honey on ice cream, … the list is endless!

Avoid crumbly stuff. These stick to the vessel but become brittle and break when scraped. This includes toast, pizza, biscuits, rice, muffins, pie, quiche, cookies, etc. You could pick large crumbs and lick small crumbs in shallow vessels. But scraping them and pouring into your mouth might be the best overall strategy for this category.

Avoid loose stuff. They’ll fall off from your knife or fork, or melt when scraped. This includes curd, whipped cream, custard, panna cotta, soft jelly, tiramisu, soft boiled eggs, etc. Licking is a better strategy here.

You could combine the crumbly stuff with loose stuff to create a cohesive mix. Add curd to granola. Add whipped cream to biscuit crumbs. Add curd to pizza crumbs (and since I eat Maggi with curd, this makes sense). This makes it a lot more scrapable.

What vessels to pick?

Shape: Flat, smooth vessels are the best (e.g., ceramic or wooden plates or bowls.) Avoid deep vessels like glasses, especially curved ones. They’re hard to get a long scrape against. Definitely avoid vessels with ridges. Disposable plastic containers like below are among the worst. Food gets stuck in the ridges and since there are a dozen ridges on each side, you have to scrape 48 times just for a first pass. (This might be a good challenge, though.)

Material: Hard vessels are better than soft ones. Prefer wood, metal, ceramic, and hard plastic. Avoid thin plastic that bends. Avoid paper (it bends and soaks). Banana leaves tear when scraped.

Avoid non-stick vessels. The coating wears off when scraping.

What to scrape with?

Knives are the best. They are sharp enough to separate the food from the vessel and flat enough that you can pile enough food on top of it.

Forks are OK. Their edges can scrape reasonably well, and their tips can poke into corners. But it’s hard to pile up much food to pick up.

Spoons not ideal. They aren’t sharp enough, and too curved for scraping long slices. But if you want to take your time with it, they’re great.

The sizzling chocolate brownie

My dish arrived. Burning with chocolate. My father just had some brownie, leaving all the molten chocolate to me. On a flat wooden plate. With a knife. For an hour.

Heaven.

Why are you afraid of process

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Why are you afraid of process?

… we bristle when we’re asked for our weekly goals sheets, or when the boss wants us to use a database or when the insurance company requires docs to follow data-driven guidelines. We pass up the tenth novel by a successful author… because the process has become too transparent.

And yet, in many cases, process is underrated.

Process is your ace in the hole when your intuition stops working.

Process is the system that doubles a plant’s efficiency when you’ve done everything you can think of.

Comments

Gautam 26 Apr 2006 6:07 pm: when did you move to infosys consulting? and why?
S Anand 26 Apr 2006 9:04 pm: Moved about a year ago. Wanted to get back into IT.
Anonymous 27 Apr 2006 9:36 am: Is Infosys Consulting into IT?
S Anand 27 Apr 2006 11:08 am: IT consulting, actually.
Gautam 28 Apr 2006 6:40 pm: oh ok. I remember coming to the blog a couple of months back and still seeing BCG :) If you want to move to better IT consulting firm then let me know ;-))
S Anand 28 Apr 2006 7:28 pm: Nah, I’m very happy, thanks!

Productivity software

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Marc’s Outlook on Productivity – a good blog on productivity software.

Keep your desk cluttered

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Interesting article on The Economist on the value of a cluttered desk.

… the assumption that filers can find stuff more quickly is wrong. Filers, they say, “are less likely to access a given piece of data, and more likely to acquire extraneous data…”

(There’s a “Clean your desk” initiative at BCG Mumbai going on right now.)

B2E

Wed, 06 Jun 2001 12:00:00 +0000

After B2C and B2B, is it now going to be B2E?