Every person who is an employee at a company has at least one thing, if not many, that they are uniquely, and specifically skilled at doing - that only they, as that employee in that role, can do the way they do it. My grandpa, for many years in his "retirement", was the manager of a state park in South Dakota, and watching him operate a mower was a thing of beauty. He could cut every blade of grass up to the base of a tree, all the way around, without hardly slowing the machine down - but he would never touch the tree. He had an unmatched work ethic, and took pride in having all of the campsites ready for the next campers as the sold-out season progressed. The facilities at the campground were always in top shape - he was known for getting up at 5 a.m. to clean the showers and bathrooms, so the early morning campers would have an excellent experience to start their day. And he, despite not being a hugely social person, was always known and loved by the patrons of the campground and the people who worked for him.
These are all things that he was uniquely, and specifically skilled at doing, and it made him great at that job. One thing that he was not uniquely, or skilled at doing was operating the computer. Now, that is not to say that he didn't put in the work to figure it out - after all, it was part of the job, and to him, that was good enough reason to put in the time. I remember, as a kid, he would take me with him sometimes to the park, and I would get to sit with him in the miniature building at the park entrance with the window air-conditioning unit and the mini fridge under the counter. Every time a new camper came in to start their stay, he would use the laptop in the building to perform the necessary operations - finding their reservation, checking if they had a permit, taking payment if they hadn't paid yet (checks were the worst - it was 2 more steps). He would have lists, meticulously written out of how to do each operation that he needed in the clunky, government-issue software he was required to use. "Click this menu, select this option, hit this key...". So, customer by customer, hundreds every year, for over a decade, he did his job, dilligently and excellently.
My grandpa is by no means an anamoly in this aspect - in fact, I would say that it's a pattern. All over the country, all over the world, there are skilled people applying their craft every day. Teachers and doctors, store clerks and mechanics, and they all have special skills that we, as a society, need and value. And they also all have parts of their job that, frankly, is a waste of their valuable time. Punching buttons, finding information, tracking down people and parts, managing processes - things that, if done right, we could use computers to speed up or even automate entirely.
As a software builder, passionate about building tools that improve the lives of humans, I can't help but think of the opportunity that we have to use modern technologies to enable people to do more of their job that only they can do, and less of the parts that we can delegate to a computer. Software is more accessible, more buildable than ever, and it's up to us to take advantage of this accessibility in a way that improves the lives of people - not replace them. I can't help but wonder: Over all of those years, all of those checkouts - how much more time could my grandpa have had to do the things he was uniquely gifted at, if the process was just a little bit easier? Or if, as is a real possibility with the technology we can create today, he wouldn't have had to do it at all? I, for one, have a little more hope in a world where people like my grandpa can stay on a mower, where they belong, and leave the button-punching, process-doing to the computers.
