Introduction to the workforce shortage and its broader implications
Conventional wisdom is that software is the future of manufacturing - but is this the whole truth? Or are we missing the plot and foregoing a much deeper secret in the process?
I entered my professional career at Palantir technologies as an engineer who built software for manufacturers - from my worldview, the key to accelerating American manufacturing in the coming century would be to increasingly automate existing processes and leverage AI to drive operational efficiencies. However, over the past few months since starting our company, I have come to learn a few basic yet non-obvious truths.
Conventional wisdom goes that:
Manufacturing will become defined by automation and substitution of people by machines.
As a result, there will be less, not more, manufacturing jobs in the future - and people will be free to pursue ever more creative, high-value, service-oriented roles.
In this world, we will have more programmers, designers, and consultants.
However, the opposite truths are actually more correct:
Most manufacturing roles are an order of magnitude more difficult to automate than their equivalent white collar counterparts - automation in the creative and services industry will likely outpace deep industrial automation in terms of gross productivity substitution over the coming decades.
Combined with the rise of hard tech companies in fields as diverse as space, energy, semiconductors, and defense, there will be a need for far more, not less, manufacturing jobs in the future.
In this world, complimentary, not substitution, will be king. We will see a marked increase in roles requiring the complex manipulation of machines and materials; and the individuals in these roles will work side-by-side with, rather than being replaced by, robots.
These truths come not from textbooks or industry reports, but from manufacturers, government officials, and experts on the ground. Over the past five months I have traveled the country meeting directly with these individuals to understand the problems of American manufacturing today, and the feedback - both spoken and observed - has been resounding and universal: people, not software and hardware, is the fundamental bottleneck towards productivity. With the right people, we can build a more prosperous society than any previous generation imagined. Without the right people, it is unclear how the United States can win the next great power conflict in which our near-peer adversaries have equal or greater industrial might. This is an outcome too terrifying to consider, as there will be no second-place price; we must fight to win.
In future articles, I will dive deeper into specific questions, including:
For now, I will conclude simply with why the outcome of greater manufacturing roles in the future is both interesting and exciting. Put simply: manufacturing has the ability to create a greater quantity of well-paying jobs to support a robust middle class across all states and communities, not just for a select few individuals on the coasts. If the middle class is ultimately the bulwark of any society’s strength, we as a collective unit should be heavily investing in strengthening the core so as to ensure we are building an America where the collective dream of universal progress, striving, and the ability to invent one’s future is still very much alive.