Welcome to the Entrepreneur round-up!
This week’s picks cover job loss from automation, job creation and entrepreneurship. Below are the posts we read, found interesting and loved for a variety of reasons. They are inspiring and thought-provoking and we’d like to share them with you.
Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary V. never disappoints. His advice applies to millennials and those in their 50’s. If you’re smart, proactive and you have skills, get another job. If you don’t have the skills to extend your career or change jobs, then teach yourself. Things happen fast in today’s job market. Be prepared for what’s going to happen 2-3 years from now, not 15-20 because you can’t predict what kind of work will be available then. Stop watching television, get off the couch and get it done. You are the only one who has control over this. Watch the whole video on Facebook.
Bloomberg
JPMorgan Software Does in Seconds What Took Lawyers 360,000 Hours
From the article:
“The program, called COIN, for Contract Intelligence, does the mind-numbing job of interpreting commercial-loan agreements that, until the project went online in June, consumed 360,000 hours of work each year by lawyers and loan officers. The software reviews documents in seconds, is less error-prone and never asks for vacation.”
Did the lawyers and loan officers see that coming? Some probably did. Regardless, JPMorgan says they’re committed to using software and bots “…for other types of complex legal filings like credit-default swaps and custody agreements. Someday, the firm may use it to help interpret regulations and analyze corporate communications.”
Will there be a real human left to create corporate communication?
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Financial Planning
Merrill Lynch chief: Our FAs don’t see robo advisers as competition
Merrill Lynch has added robo advisory services to their offerings this month. It’s interesting that Merrill Lynch makes the point that their financial advisors don’t feel threatened by robo-advisors and yet the article also points out that some say robo advisors will be as ubiquitous and autonomous as online banking in the future.
From the article:
“Lex Sokolin, global director of fintech strategy at Autonomous Research, says it is following the same trajectory that online banking services took.
“Online banking got absorbed into every single bank. Online wealth is the same way. It’ll become absorbed and become part of every single asset manager and broker-dealer out there.”
James Altucher
No one preaches bettering yourself and your circumstances better than James Altucher. He makes solid points, backs them up with facts and leaves his readers convinced they need to make changes in their lives. His article 10 New Reasons You Have To Quit Your Job In 2017 is the best read of the week in our opinion. If you’re ready to make a change and you’re considering entrepreneurship as a means to salvage your retirement funds give this article a read.
From the article:
“It seems like every year I write a “10 reasons to quit your job this year.” But there are different reasons. The reasons are adding up.
We all quit our farms 400 years ago to have apprenticeships. We all quit the apprenticeships to work in the factories. And we quit the factories to join the cubicle army of Corporatism of the 20th Century.
When I graduated college, corporatism was supposed to protect me.
Feed me, give me meaningful work, help me improve, and then lightly drift me to shore in a safe suburb, happy and content.
And then corporatism died.”
New York Post
Why no job is safe from the rise of the Robots
Your chosen profession is probably named in this article. It discusses how blue collar workers like truck drivers all the way up to CEOs are no longer safe from robot or software replacement.
From the article:
“A 2013 study by Oxford economists Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne concluded (using a sophisticated algorithm, of course) that some 47 percent of US jobs were at high risk from automation in the next 20 years. The economists posited that it was a near certainty that human telemarketers, insurance underwriters, security guards and other fields would vanish. Even sports referees could be headed for the historical dust bin.
Another research report issued in 2015 by McKinsey Global Institute, a business think tank, found that 95 percent of jobs should be safe until 2020, but after that, technology will change the landscape rapidly, with many employees’ duties moving to automation. The study found that 45 percent of work activities could be automated, including 20 percent of the responsibilities handled by the world’s obscenely compensated CEOs, such as analyzing operations data.”
You might also like Options in a New Economy: My Friend George and His Master Stroke of Genius.
Free Code Camp
A Warning from Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking
When Stephen Hawking speaks, I think you need to pay attention:
“The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.” — Stephen Hawking
Have to love Elon Musk and he’s a bit more hip, but no less direct:
“What to do about mass unemployment? This is going to be a massive social challenge. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better [than a human]. These are not things that I wish will happen. These are simply things that I think probably will happen.” — Elon Musk
This is a great article that discusses what thought leaders in today’s society have to say about automation and the end of jobs as we know them.
The end of jobs is the end of humanity as we know it. Since the creation of jobs, the process of learning a skill and creating a lifelong income from that skill has been a normal process of modern human life, but would would you give that career advice to a young person? Probably not. So don’t take it yourself. You have a gold mine of opportunity right in front of you. Online entrepreneurship didn’t exist for your parents in their forties or fifties but it does for you. The knowledge gap is smaller than you think. The start-up costs are practically nothing. Participating in the new economy and taking advantage of the new opportunities that come along with it are a necessity.
Join our discussion of encore entrepreneurship and online business opportunities. We can help you bridge the knowledge gap and fill it with inspiration for a more stable retirement.