Over at Exponential Industry we are working on making manufacturing cool again too! We seek to inspire manufacturing leaders by demonstrating the technological transformation ongoing within factories through videos, podcasts, and high-quality articles. Within the manufacturing industry, software, data, and AI skill sets are converging within factories which will re-ignite co-localization due to necessity of influencing product design and improving manufacturability. Industrial goods are becoming internet connected products and with that the margins are improving and (should) increase salaries in a way that is similar to the Big Tech companies.
Finally a detailed article on one of our current times most pressing problem. If we like it or not, the world seems to be unwinding globalization at least to a degree. The natural consequence is to bring manufacturing back to the US. Fully agree that we need to make manufacturing cool again, would just add that there is a technological answer to that as well. For those jung people that compare the tools to teach robots and program PLCs (old fashioned Windows applications) to modern software tools to build software in the cloud, there is mostly no question where they want to spend the majority of their waking hours. The vendor's of industrial automation need to also step-up, invest and move industry to the 21st century. Thankfully there is a few startups that tackle the challenge: Software Defined Automation Inc. , Full Speed Automation Inc. and Copia Inc. - still we need much more to tackle this challenge as a socienty.
Mar 20, 2023·edited Mar 20, 2023Liked by Sam Flamini
Woah -- this was an amazing piece of writing. As an Ivy League student from a big East Coast city, I am so ashamed and angered that we're not having more of these conversations in American colleges. Our future *literally* depends on it. The pipeline to finance and big tech is so real and heartbreaking. Thank you so much for writing this. Thought you might like this article: https://emaggiori.com/employed-in-tech-for-years-but-almost-never-worked/ Another related topic I'd love to hear your thoughts on is whether the American Dream is still alive and how attainable it is compared to the past. I was recently yelled at for saying I believe in the American Dream by an economist who said social mobility is so much harder than it used to be.
Also, I'm working on an urban studies-meets-CS project soon and will be heavily referring people to your work. I was curious if you've received any answers/gotten more info regarding the talent/career path questions you posed in the article since posting this?
Btw my Twitter handle used to be part-time tech optimist, haha, so I love the name of this.
There's a surprising correlation (rather than tradeoff) between compensation and your work environment (good manager, competent colleagues, better tools). So workers rightly believe that when they take a pay-cut and a prestige-cut, they will also take a happiness-cut. This means that the solution cannot involve big old-fashioned companies like US Steel doing a PR campaign to attract smart, young, ambitious talent. It will require that VCs fund manufacturing startups which have "good work environment DNA" (and competitive-ish compensation) from conception. There are still, of course, difficulties with this: the YCombinator model probably won't work for manufacturing. Therefore, this might require more of the Flagship Pioneering-style VC-led model, where the VC firm would recruit mechanical engineering PhD students to commercialize their research.
Great work, Sam!
Over at Exponential Industry we are working on making manufacturing cool again too! We seek to inspire manufacturing leaders by demonstrating the technological transformation ongoing within factories through videos, podcasts, and high-quality articles. Within the manufacturing industry, software, data, and AI skill sets are converging within factories which will re-ignite co-localization due to necessity of influencing product design and improving manufacturability. Industrial goods are becoming internet connected products and with that the margins are improving and (should) increase salaries in a way that is similar to the Big Tech companies.
Finally a detailed article on one of our current times most pressing problem. If we like it or not, the world seems to be unwinding globalization at least to a degree. The natural consequence is to bring manufacturing back to the US. Fully agree that we need to make manufacturing cool again, would just add that there is a technological answer to that as well. For those jung people that compare the tools to teach robots and program PLCs (old fashioned Windows applications) to modern software tools to build software in the cloud, there is mostly no question where they want to spend the majority of their waking hours. The vendor's of industrial automation need to also step-up, invest and move industry to the 21st century. Thankfully there is a few startups that tackle the challenge: Software Defined Automation Inc. , Full Speed Automation Inc. and Copia Inc. - still we need much more to tackle this challenge as a socienty.
Woah -- this was an amazing piece of writing. As an Ivy League student from a big East Coast city, I am so ashamed and angered that we're not having more of these conversations in American colleges. Our future *literally* depends on it. The pipeline to finance and big tech is so real and heartbreaking. Thank you so much for writing this. Thought you might like this article: https://emaggiori.com/employed-in-tech-for-years-but-almost-never-worked/ Another related topic I'd love to hear your thoughts on is whether the American Dream is still alive and how attainable it is compared to the past. I was recently yelled at for saying I believe in the American Dream by an economist who said social mobility is so much harder than it used to be.
Also, I'm working on an urban studies-meets-CS project soon and will be heavily referring people to your work. I was curious if you've received any answers/gotten more info regarding the talent/career path questions you posed in the article since posting this?
Btw my Twitter handle used to be part-time tech optimist, haha, so I love the name of this.
There's a surprising correlation (rather than tradeoff) between compensation and your work environment (good manager, competent colleagues, better tools). So workers rightly believe that when they take a pay-cut and a prestige-cut, they will also take a happiness-cut. This means that the solution cannot involve big old-fashioned companies like US Steel doing a PR campaign to attract smart, young, ambitious talent. It will require that VCs fund manufacturing startups which have "good work environment DNA" (and competitive-ish compensation) from conception. There are still, of course, difficulties with this: the YCombinator model probably won't work for manufacturing. Therefore, this might require more of the Flagship Pioneering-style VC-led model, where the VC firm would recruit mechanical engineering PhD students to commercialize their research.