How future proof is your job?

[Hooli]

I was having a very interesting conversation with my DM today about working 4 days a week. She feels I should have gone PT when DD was born.

I explained that in my profession (marketing) I needed to move up as high as possible to make sure my job was future proof. I'm 42 now, and am a manager. It took me years to get from an exec position to a manager but I know I could easily be replaced by someone younger and more cutthroat if I'm not a director and given the issues with pensions and working ages, I'll need to be in this role til im 75 it seems. I would never be taken seriously nor get a promotion if I dropped to PT hours. I feel shit enough about this as it is without her guilt tripping me.

So I wanted to see how future proof other people's job are, and whether I'm being a heartless bitch thinking of my future and not my child's present.

I think retail is fairly future-proof - for my lifetime, anyway. Everyone needs to buy stuff, after all. That's never going to change, even if the method of accessing it all changes over time.

I'm a pretty senior lawyer. I think my job is relatively well future proofed as my area of specialism is financial technology. In some ways we are working towards our own destruction - helping clients to do more via smart contracts etc - but I can't see these developments making lawyers at the more senior end redundant although junior roles may become automated.

Retail safe? Erm shops are closing daily all while Amazon takes over and pays peanuts

I'm a systems administrator. I'll be fine until computers get phased out, but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.

I work in IT. In a management role,process and business focussed. Hopefully technology won't die out!

Not very. I suspect Brexit will have a huge negative impact.

Tricky one.

I work in weight management/exercise . . . With an obesity crisis yup I'd like to think with my skills I'd be needed.

However. Local government don't really see it as a priority so if they don't fund it theres no job. Every three years we have this worry

Retail safe? Erm shops are closing daily all while Amazon takes over and pays peanuts

Depends on what kind of retail you work in, surely? I'm sure in a hundred years, my job as it stands won't exist, but I'm pretty sure that there will still be sales assistants and shop managers in thirty years!

I teach Literacy to parents but my job depends on the children's centres staying open. Sadly that doesn't look likely in this area. I'm going back to teaching secondary in September (I know, I know).

Well I think it would be difficult to replace me with a robot, but I'm in the public sector so at some point they will probably just get rid of the whole function to save money.

I'm a chef, so as long as people have disposable income to eat out, then I will be ok

NewYearNewMe18 you obviously have no clue about how the police work or conditions of employment.

I’d disagree with you over marketing and PT, depends on the place. Lots of marketeers I know are PT and a lot of those who I’ve known FT haven’t been protected in any way when redundancy comes around!!

I’ve been PT and flexible working for 7 years in marketing, started off manager and only now have had to go FT to take on a senior role that manages directly to board level.

However while my area is relatively ore future proof than other areas (chosen specifically for that!) it’s still marketing and we are always the first ones to have our budget and staffing eyed up when the cuts come rolling in!

I’m a midwife so you’d think so, wouldn’t you. However with the NHS coming under great of even further privatisation I fear that we’ll move further and further towards the American private health care model where doctors will deliver all the babies

*threat of

NHS middle management, my skills and experience are fairly rare but I can't see me doing my current job until retirement. I think we all have to be prepared to change and adapt, you only have to be late 40s to remember offices without computers and memos instead of emails.

H&S Advisor at a council. Already been told our department has limited time. Can't imagine what my specific area will do without advice and support, but there you go. I have another 21 years to work til the state pension, so I'm trying to hang in there....

I think most jobs could be done by computers or robots sooner than many imagine, but I think that that becoming cost effective will take a little while longer.

My current career plan assumes my job will essentially no longer exist in 25 years, or will certainly be transformed enough to cut numbers by 80% I think. I work in finance, and all the individual bits to automate most finance departments exist, just very few places have put thrm all together. E.g you can automate invoice scanning aside from loading the machine (but I anticipate these will all be received electronically soon anyway), and automate the recognition of invoice data, automatically insert this into the accounting, automatically create many accounting entries, and sales invoices. Lots of companies do some of these. Very few do all of them. I believe most will in the next 15-25 years, and instead of large finance teams, you will have a single skilled accountant checking edge cases (or several in the case of very large companies), and that will basically be it.

Run my own specialised VA company - parts of the job I can see going one day but most of it I think is probably pretty sound. There are some parts of it like transcription that I can foresee will become obsolete eventually although there's always the need for the human touch. When a computer can turn "Write a letter to XYZ MP, they're an f'ing bitch tell them to mind their own business" into something polite and professional, well that's when it will truly be obsolete but until that day... ;)

I'm a project manager with a finance background. I'd say I'm reasonably future proofed. Robots can replace a lot of things process wise but you still need a human somewhere to advise and make decisions. I am unlikely to go part time because I think it will slow my career down and my path has better potential than DH's, that's if we even have DC though.

SensingWeakness - similar here. Work in complaints & compliance in insurance industry. We're getting busier rather than quieter (and finding companies are expensing to have fingers in a lot of different pies) so I'm not too worried about the future yet.

I plan to work my way up with a potential career change along the way

I’m a doctor, I think I’ll be safe.
There had to be a pro to the job, somewhere!

I don't think any job is future proof. I try to work as hard as I can but at the end of the day if money is tight we could all be replaced (and I work in HR).

However I don't think your question is about being replaceable I think it's about your mil thinking your job/career is as important as your partners.

I was lucky to be able to go part time when children were young but I had friends who gave up work. In theory I could have too, in the early days I worked for little and potentially would have gotten similar in tax credits (I never seriously looked into it so don't know for sure). However I felt it important to keep up my experience so now my children are older I have a better paid job so it was all worth while.

I'm a former teacher who now works in learning design. I create a lot of online and distance courses as well as supporting campus-based education. It's a flexible role, so fairly safe.

My job is one of the main ones that people are absolutely certain will be done by computers within the next 10 years though they've been saying it for a lot longer than 10 years. Personally I think computers will probably take on a slightly larger role but I'd never trust one to do the whole task with no human input.