Tuesday, May 13, 2025

What jobs were actually EASIER to perform in the past than they are now? How were they easier back then, and how are they harder now?

 

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What jobs were actually EASIER to perform in the past than they are now? How were they easier back then, and how are they harder now?

I know a lot of jobs were harder in the past due to technological limitations. A great example is delivery driving BEFORE GPS. But what jobs were ironically easier decades ago, and how come? If you stayed at the same job through technological changes, how did you adapt?

 

 

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[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 264 points  

Before GPS delivery drivers had a lot more time for each job. There was less traffic. Your location couldn't be remotely monitored. It was less rushed and more relaxed.

[–]60 somethingRoutine_Mine_3019 84 points  

My grandmother's milkman would park his truck and come in the house and gossip with everyone in the household for 15 minutes or so every day. This was encouraged by the dairy because it made for loyal customers and they sold more product.

[–]gonewild9676 93 points  

And get to meet his children.

[–]60 somethingRoutine_Mine_3019 26 points  

How did I know that joke was certain to be made?

I'll copy and paste the joke the old man told in the movie 'Big Fish'. Same joke basically:

Josephine: What were you dreaming about?
Edward: Well, I don’t usually remember unless they're especially portentous. You know what that word means? (she shakes her head.) Means when you dream about something that's gonna happen. Like one night, I had a dream where this crow came and said, “Your aunt is gonna die.” I was so scared I woke up my parents but they said it was just a dream, and to get back to bed. But the next morning, my aunt Stacy was dead.
Josephine: That's terrible.
Edward: Terrible for her, but think about me, young boy with that kind of power. Wasn't three weeks later that the crow came back to me in a dream and said, "Your daddy's gonna die." I didn't know what to do. I finally told my father. But he said, oh, not to worry, but I could see he was rattled. The next morning, he wasn't himself, kept looking around, waiting for something to drop on his head. Because the crow didn’t say how it was gonna happen, just those words: your daddy's gonna die. Well, he left home early and was gone for a long time. When he finally came back, he looked terrible, like he was waiting for the axe to fall all day. He said to my mother, "I've just had the worst day of my life." (beat)"You think you've had a bad day,” she said. “This morning the milkman dropped dead on the porch!"
(Josephine smiles, looking at him sideways for fooling her with this story.)

[–]i_am_regina_phalange 13 points  

This is one of my favorite movies. It’s lovely and bittersweet.

[–]60 somethingRoutine_Mine_3019 2 points  

Very underrated.

[–]DGAFADRC 1 point  

💀

[–]blizzard7788 25 points  

I used to do concrete construction. The redi-mix drivers said the same thing. GPS would monitor their lunch and bathroom stops.

[–]nochinzilch 19 points  

Shitty management is going to be terrible no matter what technology they have access to.

[–]jupitaur9 26 points  

It’s not the management layer. It is not even the bean counters.

It’s the drive for one more nickel. This comes from the need to show profit and growth every quarter.

If your profits dip, so does your stock. Automatically. People are literally no longer in control.

[–]lowballbertman 7 points  

Shitty manager has technology to be even more shitty. They have cameras in the trucks, not just dash cams but a camera on the other side of the dash cams recording the driver all day. And powered by AI, all to help the shitty manager be even shittier. Any office worker out there wanna have a camera on their desk pointed right at them and monitored by their boss all day?

[–]babaweird 16 points  

I’d say rural post office drivers in rural areas. I grew up in a rural area, your address was RR # 1 or 2. The postal guy knew where everyone lived. Since then so many people have decided to move out to the country. There is so much traffic now when I go back home, it’s nuts. They labeled all the roads so my parents address turned into something like 2378 1278th st. This is helpful for emergency services but mail seems to go wherever

[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 6 points  

My mum's road has two names. On the signpost on the road itself, it says one name, but the post office use a different name for it. However, all the post seems to get there OK, no matter which name you use!

[–]nuglasses 1 point  

Back in the day, one went to the PO and retrieved their mail from whatever box number. No addy either. When I went to get Real ID (yeah sure, it's a requirement 🙄) & the DMV gave me trouble for having dual addresses on the electric & other bills. Only my gun & hunting permits have my St. address which was declined. 😡

[–]MrsNoodleMcDoodle 26 points  

Way better before GPS, lol. Milk Men were making babies.

[–]Bitter-Basket 5 points  

Son in law (52) was a delivery driver in Seattle. It was difficult before GPS. Nothing relaxing about it.

[–]'70s vintageWildcatb 5 points  

Not just GPS, but all the computerized order tracking.

I spent years making deliveries on handshakes, or 'sign here' at most.

At the end each order took multiple updates. Each item was scanned over and over again, pictures had to be taken and signed off on... On many orders doing the paperwork (physical or digital) took more time than making the actual delivery.

All the extra admin work meant hiring more support personnel, which meant each delivery team had to make more deliveries for a truck to break even...

....glad to be out of it.

[–]Desertbro 1 point  

The difference is Good Customer Service vs. Resource Optimization to the point of insanity.

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 114 points  

When I started in data systems at the dawn of time, the easiest thing in the world was to find low-hanging fruit and look like a genius.

A couple of years before Windows took off, I managed to cobble together an interactive graphical workstation on top of DOS for doing regression analysis of salary data, replacing a mainframe which ran batch COBOL and FORTRAN programs to produce expensive, clunky analyses to our clients.  Found a graphics library for the UI, I wrote an upper memory data manager to get around the 640K RAM limit, and some custom code to print on an Apple printer.

Today data systems work is so commoditized that I think it would be very difficult to stand out the way I did back then.

[–]50 somethingSnooChipmunks2079 19 points  

I was hired about 25 years ago to do point of sale development that integrated with a back office system.

It was so much easier to develop and test a new feature because there were only two systems involved and everyone was there in the same building. If something broke, the test team called you over and you looked at it. If you needed to define a interface, yeah you wrote a spec, but you also met with the developer and nailed down any details in person.

Now there are a dozen systems, seems like seventeen different teams, testers scattered around the globe, and half of them don't speak English very well. Half of almost every team has no idea how the business actually works so everything has to be speced out to the nth degree instead of the testers and developers understanding at a basic level how a retail store in the United States works.

Edit to add, I’m at the point of asking in interviews for people to tell us about the jobs that aren’t on their resume. Did they work at a Gap when they were in high school? McDonald’s? Starbucks? Have they ever worked retail or direct customer service? We desperately need people with even a vague inkling of how a store works.

[–]BerthaBenz 1 point  

I was a writer producing the user manual for a database program for a federal agency and alerting the programmers to any bugs. The "program" was actually an overlay of a DOS database program, and my "writing" consisted of making screenshots of each screen in the program, sticking it into a WP4.2 document, and writing below the screenshot essentially what was written in the screenshot. People wondered how I did the screenshot, and I didn't tell them they should look through the WP manual some time.

[–]dancepantz 26 points  

I know some of these words... But for real that sounds like some cool nerd stuff during the stone age of computing. Kudos.

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 21 points  

Thanks. Reading it back, I realize it must look like a long, unfunny Mad Libs.

[–]what-name-is-it 1 point  

Right?? I know what most of the words mean but I’ve never seen them arranged in sentences quite like that.

[–]Substantial-Bet-3876 9 points  

I recognize COBOL as I recently learned our social security system runs on it.

[–]fastowl76 8 points  

I actually taught Cobol when i was an undergrad lecturer to other undergrads. Also did programming back then in Fortran IV, PL1 and APL. Goal was to fit requirements into 160k partition on an IBM 360. Big programs had to run in a 320k partition. Heaven was when we got direct access to a card reader and didn't have to wait for the clerks to run your deck of cards.

[–]60 somethingRoutine_Mine_3019 9 points  

I took a Cobol course when I was in college in the early 1980s. They were proud of the fact that they had gotten off card readers - high tech! Some of the computers had no monitors - you would have to type in the code without seeing a screen, then print the whole file and edit it that way. People would queue up for the computers that actually had monitors.

[–]gitarzan 3 points  

(Deleted as to not hurt another Redditors feelings)

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 3 points  

Well, okay, but I designed and built a hardware/software solution that no one around me had even conceived of. I wouldn't have felt the same pride if I had purchased a solution.

[–]gitarzan 1 point  

Sorry, I didn’t mean to steal your steam.

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 2 points  

You didn't steal anything, I just think it's a bit different.

[–][deleted]  

[deleted]

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 2 points  

Okay, since you went there, no, I don't think buying an app on your phone is the same as designing a new kind of application from scratch, assembling the hardware and writing the software.

It's the difference between earning money and finding a coin in the street.

Happy now?

[–]gitarzan -1 points  

I’d rather find a coin in the street. Less work.

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 2 points  

I’d rather find a coin in the street. Less work.

Yes, that's obvious. I prefer actual accomplishment through work. And that's why you're unlikely to find yourself with the same monetary and other rewards that I have.

But send me the receipt for the app you bought, I'll tape it up on the fridge. With a gold star.

[–]stuck_behind_a_truck 1 point  

No, that can’t be, all us old people don’t understand technology and can’t operate our phones! /s

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 2 points  

Oh fuck, I forgot. I better delete this deep learning AI I'm writing to make the ships in the videogame I created unstoppable.

[–]PapaGolfWhiskey -1 points  

Sounds like you really haven’t let go off that job LOL

[–]60 somethingNotAnAIOrAmI 2 points  

I don't know what that's supposed to mean, or why it's funny.

[–]PaulsRedditUsername 56 points  

Cars are also much more compact these days. My first car was a 1970 Cutlass and the space under the hood was huge. You could get to any part easily. With modern cars, you have to remove five other parts just to get to the one that needs work.

[–]60 somethingRoutine_Mine_3019 6 points  

My dad installed a set of truck air horns in the extra space under the hood of our "compact" Mercury Capri. We would pull up behind someone and blow the horns at them if they weren't paying attention. It sounded like an 18 wheeler was about to run them over!

[–]Catty_Lib 3 points  

I have one of those installed in my Smart car!

[–]50 somethingSnooChipmunks2079 6 points  

I worked around mechanics but I wasn't one in the 80's and 90's. I remember guys just sitting down in a truck's engine compartment to work on something.

On the flip side, there was a bunch of equipment and kind of a black art to using it for drivability problems. Now you can often get by with a fairly cheap scanner that works on most cars. You still have to know what to do when you get a code - an O2 sensor fault is often not actually a bad sensor, for example - but there's a clearer starting point.

[–]40 somethingalinroc 3 points  

I had a buddy with a mid-90s Tahoe and you could pop the hood and sit on the fender with your feet in the engine bay while changing spark plugs.

[–]justonemom14 15 points  

I recently saw a pickup from 1957, and was amazed at how easy it must have been to repair. You could see the literal nuts and bolts right there. I could tell that to replace the rear view mirror you would need the new mirror, a screwdriver, and about 45 seconds of your time. Yeah, you had to adjust it by hand and it didn't check your blind spot for you. But there is real value in simplicity.

[–]throwpayrollaway 5 points  

Even little British cars like the ford Anglia. I saw one with the bonnet open and there's just masses of space around the engine. I can't even fill my brake fluid without taking off panels on my focus, which is pretty much the same concept as a mid size family car but newer.

[–]notadamnprincess 5 points  

I have a 2000 Ford Ranger and it’s so much easier to fix than my 2020 BMW. It may not have Bluetooth, but there is very little about it that can’t be repaired in my driveway.

[–]what-name-is-it 8 points  

And all of the added complexities and sensors. Older cars had fewer parts so the problems were probably easier to diagnose and repair.

[–]NiceGuy737 9 points  

I used to adjust the valves, change the points and do oil changes on my Karmann Ghia's myself. I rebuilt the carburetor on the floor of a public garage in January in Wisconsin. I had an idiot manual and learned as I went. Engines were so much more comprehensible then.

[–]1988rx7T2 1 point  

the difference is, today you don't need a valve adjustment, you don't need to adjust a carburetor, you don't need to adjust the idle speed or replace the points. All that stuff is zero maintenance/rarely repaired if you have a well built car (something more basic like a non hybrid Toyota Camry).

[–]60 somethinghippysol3 15 points  

waiting desert relieved melodic encourage imagine hobbies sort fuzzy sharp

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[–]Count2Zero 6 points  

I just had to pay €25 so that my car continues to receive GPS updates for the next month. Software licenses and online fees just to keep a €65,000 car going...

[–]60 somethinghippysol3 5 points  

pie rock shy simplistic butter plate ten unite expansion existence

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[–]40 somethingalinroc 3 points  

IIRC there was a "lifetime unlock" or something.

BMW accountants figured out it was cheaper to put the heaters in every seat vs. have different seats for different builds (fewer parts combinations to track & coordinate). But rather than just making it standard equipment, they decided to make a few bucks (or make the cars look "less expensive", depending on which way you approach it from) off it.

[–]70 somethingKnotAwl 3 points  

‘72 Dodge Dart. Slant six. All the spark plugs faced you as you opened the hood. Did them every six months and the thing ran like a top. Miss those days so much!

[–]Bitter-Basket 2 points  

A LOT of repairs aren’t recognized by the computer systems.

[–]elciddog84 2 points  

I had a '57 Bel Air in high school. You could climb around under without jack-stands, or sit on the wheel-well, feet in the engine bay, leaning under the hood in a pouring rain and barely get wet. There was about an acre and a half between the block and the front fender, too.

[–]mustbeshitinme 2 points  

Cars are 10000 times better though. A Pickup Truck with 100,000 miles was a proper worn out POS in 1989, now that truck is 10x more expensive and probably won’t need any major work until 200k plus. People USED to brag about how many miles their smoking, rattling old Ford and Dodges had when the mileage got above 80k. Now it takes a Rockefeller to pay one off before 100,000 miles.

[–]Any-Concentrate-1922 3 points  

Yes, I'm sure. I was just answering the question about jobs that used to be easier.

[–]1988rx7T2 1 point  

There was a period of time from the 80s through mid 90s where you had all the hassles of fuel injection but very poor onboard self diagnosis. Something would go wrong and it wouldn't give you a useful trouble code that you could then look up a diagnostic procedure for. Try solving an idle issue on an 80s fuel injected car for example, or get one to pass emissions tests.

[–]60 somethingtheBigDaddio 1 point  

Makes them way easier to diagnose, plug it in and bam you see what’s wrong. Cars in the 60s and 70s needed constant maintenance and mechanical work to last 2 years. Cars were shit, they were poorly built, inefficient, planned obsolescence.

[–]BullDog19K 2 points  

Cars are still shit and poorly built

[–]60 somethingtheBigDaddio 1 point  

You must have American

[–]50 somethingRudeOrganization550 56 points  

Analytics.

Before big data, there was enough data to make decisions. More data doesn’t necessarily help - when you’re looking for a needle in a haystack adding more hay doesn’t help.

It makes people FEEL better and more confident about their analysis but outcomes don’t really change as studied by Paul Slovic and Bernard Corrigan https://humbledollar.com/2019/02/dont-overthink/.

More data also adds storage, processing, complexity, management and time overheads etc etc.

[–]samtresler 13 points  

I am continually amazed at massive log aggregaters that tell us absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, most developers I encounter don't know what standard error codes are or how to use the built in logging system of their preferred language.

[–]mustbeshitinme 7 points  

Paralysis by analysis. When I was in the corporate world I was responsible for a $20 million dollar annual market. My market was one of 15 in the company. I was always #1 or #2 in all performance metrics the company used. (About a dozen). I used 3 metrics of my own deduction to get the result. 5 second management lesson incoming- (1) Hire Great People (2) Make sure they understand how to do their job and give them necessary support (3) Hold them accountable. 99% of high level management in any company can usually only do 2 of 3 at best. You get lost in the weeds chasing one metric at a time if you use data to anything except possibly identify big picture failures.

[–]Useful_Violinist25 3 points  

I’ve worked in data, big data, my entire adult life. I’ve gone from SQL 2005 on local disks to 2012 with remote servers to Azure on VM spread across the cloud. From Gig to Tera to Peta. 

At no point did I ever see any real change be delivered by an accumulation, analysis, or qualified aggregation of millions/billions or rows of data beyond putting money into my paycheck. 

This extends to industries from marketing, software, healthcare, and travel/hospitality. 

I’m not saying it’s a scam, or that it is worthless. I’m being a bit glib here, but despite getting data, it’s very, very few companies and people that have been able to utilize that data in an effective and actionable way. 

To add to what you said, in addition to making people feel better, people simply won’t make a decision without “the data” agreeing with it (even if they don’t understand the collection, filtering, and pitfalls of that data) 

  

[–]50 somethingRudeOrganization550 2 points  

I’ve been doing ‘analysis’ since before pivot tables were first a thing in Excel and CD ROM was an emerging storage media 🤣. I’ve seen the change from KB and MB to Petabyte and Zettabytes. It’s been a wild ride.

[–]Tapingdrywallsucks 17 points  

We're in a "down" spot with searching right now.

Searches were great, then we went through a long stretch where searches only gave you, hmm, other search engines, I guess? Like everything came back as a link to Ask Jeeves or Quora.

Then it got better, now it's trying to be clever. As an example, I've completely quit letting "near me" autofill a search, because the results are NEVER near me.

[–]Shadow_Lass38 8 points  

Before AI invaded Google and returned false data.

[–]Syrinx_Hobbit[🍰] 9 points  

Duck Duck Go.

[–]60+/Gen JonesInterPunct 42 points  

When you got to a director position or above in any larger organization, you had at least one assistant who would manage things like making appointments, writing memos and reports, following up on meetings, etc. Now you have to do that and everything else on your own too.

[–]shamesister 15 points  

As one of those assistants, we need this to be way more common. People need us. I don't understand why librarians don't all have assistants (I was also a librarian) because they do a lot.

[–]WillingPublic 2 points  

Around 1990 I worked in an office suite which also housed my boss and his boss (I was in a staff position and the two of them were a director and VP). The more senior boss and I got along pretty well and he would offer me advice — some of it useful and some of it ridiculous. Included in the later category was his opinion that if I did not learn how to give dictation to a secretary I would never succeed in business.

[–]60+/Gen JonesInterPunct 1 point  

The equivalent skill today would be you would know how to write in shorthand, lol.

It's gotten ridiculous. A partner at my organization regularly writes code and configures data integrations. Insane.

[–]morefetus 1 point  

Our director was such a Luddite, she had an assistant to read and answer her email for her.

[–]electronic_rogue_5 38 points  

Babysitting.

[–]50 somethingMotherofJackals 30 points  

It use to be no big deal to watch a few children especially before and after school. Growing up I knew so many women who watched 1-2 extra kids and it really helped out everyone. I feel like every street had an older lady that watched babies.

I understand the need for some oversight and regulations but I feel in many places it has gone so far that it actually hurts parents needing daycare more than it helps.

[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 16 points  

It was always teenagers around our way. I started babysitting when I was 14.

[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 11 points  

I remember a 3 year old explaining to me what to do to change her night time nappy...

And the time the dog ate a whole fruit cake.

[–]spinbutton 1 point  

Ooooo! That's hilarious. My sister's dog ate a pound of butter once...wrappers, box and all

[–]50 somethingSnooChipmunks2079 6 points  

My parents had been paying a high school girl to watch my sister and I when they went out. Then they brought her along on a daytrip to the nearest big city to see a show (she was also a student of my mom's) and realized she was a complete idiot with no problem-solving capabilities at all.

From then on, they started having me watch my sister when they went out, because I was not an idiot and did have problem-solving capabilities.

I was in 5th grade, and my sister was in 2nd grade.

[–]1988rx7T2 1 point  

I don't even think you can leave a 5th grader home alone these days in a lot of places.

[–]cheddarsox 3 points  

30 minutes to an hour, as long as they are "mature" enough.

[–]50 somethingSnooChipmunks2079 1 point  

Varies by state, of course.

[–]IndgoViolet 10 points  

You can't find a high schooler to babysit anymore. They have too many extra curricular activities. I used to babysit from the age of 12!

[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 2 points  

People get babysitters in to sit for them.

[–]SoHereIAm85 2 points  

When I turned 11 my mother's best friend was excited I could finally babysit.

[–]50 somethingOftenAmiable 3 points  

Totally.

The Law: "You need one adult per three infants."

Childcare Business: "Okay, now I have to raise tuition to cover the additional staff pay."

Also Childcare Business: "Okay, now I'm losing too many parents because they can't afford it. I have to reduce staff pay to minimum wage so I can lower tuition."

And that, boys and girls, is why childcare is so damn expensive, childcare workers get paid so little, and centers operate on such thin profit margins. The math just doesn't work any other way.

Of course, fewer teachers means more risk for the little ones, so who is going to say we should get rid of ratio requirements? Or even relax them?

The legislation was well-intended; I think we can all agree that child safety is a top priority. But it's why childcare can now costs $2000/mo or more per child in many places. Parent of two? The first $50k of your annual salary goes to childcare.

[–]50 somethingMotherofJackals 4 points  

Not to mention centers can't be super flexible. I watch two of my grandchildren. I watch one 1pm-10pm M-F the other Wednesdays 6am-5pm their parents could not find a licensed center to offer this service in our area. I'm able to do it for free.

[–]OldDudeOpinion 2 points  

My single mom worked and left me with a neighbor lady (we knew - had kids who were friends) who watched all the neighborhood kids after school. Mom’s back up daycare was a Mexican lady on a different block (I didn’t know - she yelled in Spanish and it scared me) who locked us in the backyard to play with 20 other kids. We were always safe.

No “day care license”…I’m not sure that was a thing. Nobody died. Nobody spent $2k/mo on after school care. We walked ourselves to school (starting in kindergarten - all kids on the block walked together and some were few years older). I was latch key and was 100% on my own starting in 4th grade…when I started being in charge of my little brother before & after school.

Our parents didn’t have the daycare costs of today (captain obvious). But times were different and expectations for care were different. Today we complain about the high cost..but expect the child care provider to have a masters degree in early childhood development and have 1:3 staff ratios. ….and prosecute parents who leave their kids with the nice (unlicensed) grandmother who takes in a couple kids for extra cash. We’ve done this to ourselves.

[–]50 somethingOftenAmiable 1 point  

No disagreement on any of that. The legislation and surrounding sentiment were all fueled by the best of intentions but it ended up fucking everything up.

[–]60 somethingscoshi 4 points  

It's gone off the deep end because people have chosen to take advantage of the system and the people who need it.

We can't have nice things.

[–]CoastalMom 94 points  

Not a specific job but office jobs in general were 9-5, so a 35 hour work week rather than 40. You left the office at 5 and there were no cell phones or laptops for people to work from home or call you about problems. The place could burn down or go bankrupt and you wouldn't know til the next day.

Good times, good times.

[–]boomgoesthevegemite 28 points  

I’ve asked my boomer parents about this, they never actually worked a 9-5. It was always 8-5 or 7-4. They never knew anyone that worked 9-5 either.

[–]50 somethingSnooChipmunks2079 4 points  

My current employer is a 37.5 hour work week - officially 8:30 to 5:00 with an hour lunch, but most people do a half-hour lunch and trim it in at one end or the other.

[–]thedrew 4 points  

9-5 was with no break. You shoved a sandwich down your throat when no one was looking.  Such an arrangement became illegal, so work started earlier. 

[–]Late 50s - Early Gen Xssk7882 4 points  

Early GenXer here, and in the mid-80s I worked an office job from 10-6, with a full (paid!) hour for lunch. By the '90s, a schedule like that with a full paid lunch hour had become vanishingly rare.

[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 8 points  

I'm a boomer, and I've worked 9-5. It just wasn't in the USA. I had the statutory 5 weeks holiday too.

[–]CoastalMom 7 points  

I'm in my 50s and I feel like it changed in the 80's. I used to work as a temp on Fridays when I had no classes and worked 7 hour day. I graduated in 1990 and by then it was 8-5 or 9-6.

[–]40 somethingalinroc 2 points  

I don't recall my father leaving for work later than 7:30, and he was always home between 5:30 and 6:00. His office was only about 20 minutes away.

[–]Harvest_Moon_Cat 1 point  

I'm Gen X, and mid/late 90s I worked 9:30-5:30, and took an hour for lunch. This was in the UK.

Our office had flexitime - we had a certain amount of control over our hours, as long as the office was manned. I was the night owl in an office full of early birds, so they were very pleased when I joined - they were all able to come in at 8, and leave at 4, leaving me to lock up at 5:30, which suited me better.

[–]60 somethingPianowman 12 points  

My office jobs were 8-5 with an hour for lunch in the 70's.

[–]spinbutton 10 points  

Admins made the travel arrangements and wrote up the expense reports, kept calendars and set up meetings. Plus they knew how every system and procedure in the company worked. They were the best. Now only execs get admins like they.

[–]EnvironmentalBuy244 3 points  

The first mega-corp I worked for had admins for every second level manager. They were beyond awesome. What is under-appreciated is the admin network. They networked and had resources to pull ANYTHING off. They even did our travel plans and expense reports.

I'm now with another mega-corp and admins are only at the levels of the CEO down to 3 below. I recently took a position where my boss has one and I am enjoying the benefits of that again. We do our own travel and expense reports, not such a big deal with the very good system we have now. But what's wonderful is access to that admin network again.

[–]spinbutton 1 point  

I know...the admins really knew everything....where the bodies were buried, where the good office supplies were hidden, etc

[–]50 somethingSnooChipmunks2079 1 point  

My employer has one admin for our VP but you can ask her for help with stuff so long as you report to the VP. It's mostly setting up food for meetings and getting meeting rooms on the "special floor."

[–]Stormy261 1 point  

Until Nextel was invented. My boss loved to call me on the walkie-talkie. Especially on my hour long commute when I couldn't actually do anything. I HATED those things.

[–]llestaca 1 point  

Not a specific job but office jobs in general were 9-5, so a 35 hour work week rather than 40.

Wait, what are you talking about? 9-5, 8 hrs a day, 5 times a week gives you exactly 40 hrs a week. It actually used to be much more, as in many countries Saturdays used to be working days too. Also, now we have mandatory lunch breaks.

[–]challam 3 points  

On behalf of transcriptionists (& former transcriptionists), i thank you.

[–]NiceGuy737 5 points  

One of my partners married a younger radiologist that made fun of us old guys for complaining about computerized transcription. Then she joined a practice that initially had human transcription. It was so funny hearing her complain when they lost it a couple of years later.

I have a friend that was a court reporter. They fired her at one point and went live with computerized transcription. It worked so poorly the court had to hire her back and rerun trials because there was no usable transcript.

[–]challam 2 points  

I remember so clearly when Gates announced their first version of automated dictation and how MTs would be easily & quickly replaced by the computerized version. I’m sure it’s been improved since the initial versions, but as in life, context is everything. Eliminating the trained, thinking person who corrected SO MUCH dictation daily seemed to be a disaster in waiting, & I wasn’t worried about my business. (I retired before automation took over.) It sounds like it’s kind of a mess…

[–]SoHereIAm85 2 points  

For some reason this reminded me how the hospital my aunt worked at had hanging decorations cut from x-ray films, and I really liked them.

[–]Sarcolemming 1 point  

THIS. We just switched to AI dictation for our notes at my practice. It is rampant with mistakes, the most egregious I have seen in the last week being that it said I told a patient to STOP TAKING THEIR INSULIN. So now, instead of hand-typing my notes by editing templates, but being sure the first time that what I put in was right, I’m reading every sentence, hand-typing corrections, and hoping to God I don’t miss an error that’s going to get me sued 9 months from now.

[–]Think-Variation2986 1 point  

Every successive generation was worse.

I have worked in IT for over 20 years. This is why I went from a career I was excited about and a positive outlook about the future to down right hating my job. It isn't my employer, just the field for the reasons you state. Computer hardware is approaching Star Trek level these days. Software on the other hand is just the reinvented wheel as a regular polygon with fewer sides each iteration.

[–]NiceGuy737 1 point  

It was my impression that nobody really understood all the code. Every time they tried to fix one bug more appeared. Before I was a radiologist I did experimental and theoretical work on cerebral cortex. I wrote a lot of code for both. The programs improved with time as I worked on them.

[–]Think-Variation2986 1 point  

It was my impression that nobody really understood all the code.

That doesn't surprise me at all. You MDs have a standard body of knowledge and skills that you can expect from med school and residency. There isn't such a thing with tech. It's not even self regulated. People's skill and knowledge vary drastically, but in a bad way. Gaps in what I think should be part of what everyone should learn in a degree program or apprenticeship are common. Undergraduate programs in cyber security (and entry level jobs) should not exist because there is too much prerequisite knowledge.

A completely unregulated field that lacks a coherent training system is inevitably going to make messes like your radiology software. It isn't impossible to fix either. It is way past the time for IT and tech put on our big boy/girl pants.

[–]NiceGuy737 1 point  

It's my suspicion that in this case the way they fixed the problem was with a financial settlement. I heard there was a lawsuit about the product and then silence. Emails with complaints to admin went without response. When I had the opportunity to ask the lead for the software in the hospital system in person she said "I have no knowledge of that." Silence about the problem I assume was part of the deal. We still had to use the software that endangered patients.

[–]airckarc 31 points  

Teaching I assume used to be easier.

[–]Termsandconditionsch 21 points  

Yes and no. Kids could be just as bad back in the day (or worse.. no medications etc). But at least no helicopter parents chasing teachers on email 24/7 or worse - trying to figure out their phone numbers.

[–]IslandGyrl2 20 points  

No, kids weren't as bad when I started teaching in the 90s. And parents were supportive of the teachers.

[–]EmperorXerro 3 points  

It’s easier now in that I can save all of my lessons and assignments on Classroom or Canvas and my prep time is next to nothing.

I can’t imagine what it was like for my mom to have to write grades in the grade book and then sit there with a calculator and determine what a student’s grade is.

[–]Shadow_Lass38 14 points  

Yes, because most parents taught their kids to respect teachers. Also, what the teacher said went. Of course they couldn't be abusive, but if you were being disruptive or disrespectful you could be told to sit down or go to the principal's office and you would be disciplined (stay after school). The principal would call your parents and they would also discipline you. Today the parents take the kid's side always.

(Were there bully and prejudiced teachers then? Yes, and a decent parent would stick up for their kid in that circumstance. But today there seems to be an excuse for everything.)

[–]justonemom14 7 points  

Just a couple of days ago my teacher sister was complaining about technology issues she was having. The power blinked, she had to reboot, the laptop wasn't working, her files were missing, waiting on tech support, etc. She was like "ugh, just give me some chalk and a chalkboard!!"

[–]zacmaster78 2 points  

There are still dry erase boards in a lot of school classrooms. Sometimes literally next to the smart boards

[–]justonemom14 1 point  

And no markers because the kids take them or ruin them

[–]dacraftjr -29 points  

Those who can’t do, teach.

[–]40 somethingBleatmop 23 points  

People who have an inferiority complex use this saying.

[–]dacraftjr 0 points  

It was meant as a joke, but I’ll take the hits. I earned them.

[–]40 somethingBleatmop 0 points  

Its literally never funny.

[–]daddypez 6 points  

Teachers now are incredible professionals.

[–]dacraftjr 1 point  

You are correct. I made a poor joke that didn’t land.

[–]expostfacto-saurus 1 point  

I did stuff for a long time. It sucked. Became a college professor because "doing" was crappy.

[–]Exact-Truck-5248 0 points  

And those who can't teach, (think they can) teach the teachers how to teach

[–]chicagokath314 1 point  

This is fascinating. Can I ask what your work is?

[–]WunderMunkey 2 points  

I won’t say too much because there are not many people who do what I do and I’m not a fan of being easily identified. But, I deal with HazMat.

[–][deleted] 22 points  

Retail jobs. I worked in music stores in the 1970’s & 80’s. Merchandise had price tags on them, we had a calculator next to the register, we added the prices up, multiplied it x 1.08 for tax, and that was that. Almost everyone paid in cash or by check. You ran credit cards through a mechanical device that made carbon paper copies of the embossed lettering on the card, had them sign a copy, and you were done.

I work at one of the big box home improvement stores now. Thousands of items for sale, poorly inventoried, you have to scan a bar code, type in a numerical code, or look it up in an almost useless database on the cash register. You can’t simply type in a price and go. Probably 15% to 20% is missing a scan code or it’s damaged, typing the numbers doesn’t work, it’s not indexed in the inventory, or some other problem. The computerized registers break down multiple times per week, individually or system wide. Things are locked in cabinets to prevent theft and half the time the codes don’t work. Good luck getting help to get to unlock one, a price override, or getting loading assistance.

[–]Avasia1717 12 points  

i worked at a mom n pop hardware store after high school. the cash register was a wooden drawer and we added up receipts on a calculator. the bookkeeper was the daughter of the original owner. she was born in the 1800s.

now i shop at big box home improvement stores at least weekly, and i feel your comment so hard it hurts. i’m there often enough to have seen it all, and i hate it.

[–]SoHereIAm85 3 points  

You'd love the local hardware store where I live. They have all kinds of high quality cool old school stuff like wooden rakes, and the register is from the '30s. The guy writes up a receipt of whatever you get, uses a calculator, and it all takes ages.

[–]justonemom14 3 points  

See, the problem with adding things on a calculator is that you have to trust the employee. It used to be that a large percentage of the employees were the owner, family members, and close friends.

[–][deleted] 1 point  

You can’t prevent theft. In the last store I worked at one of the employees was busted for smuggling multiple appliances out of the store over a period of months by claiming customers had already bought them. IIRC the total was @ $200,000. It would also be a piece of cake for an employee to partner with thieves and have them come through his/her cashier line.

[–]50 somethingkalelopaka 10 points  

Automotive mechanics. Cars are pretty simple, only so many things can go wrong. If your car won’t start it was either fuel, air, or ignition. If it won’t turn over, it was starter or battery, possibly the alternator led to the problem. Suspension and brakes, and electrical was simple as well.

Cars are still just as simple underneath, but there are so many sensors, relays, computers, controllers, and other electronics that make it ten times more complicated than it used to be. What may seem like an obvious problem is not, and it’s hard to track down the problem compared to cars 50 years ago.

[–]eruditeimbecile 1 point  

You say that, but you never had to overhaul carburetors or automatic transmissions. I made a lot of money off idiots who thought they were simple.

[–]1988rx7T2 1 point  

on the other hand, today's cars don't need the points, carburetor jets, valve lash, etc adjusted or otherwise maintained.

[–]sevenfourtime 7 points  

Retail. There were more people doing it, and society was generally more polite.

[–]thee303 8 points  

Journalism. There used to be more journalists focused on specific skills and beats. Now journalists are expected to be one-person bands of general assignment reporters, photographers/videographers, producers, digital content editors, outreach staff and social media managers with 24/7 on call availability. All for a wage that cannot cover basic expenses if a dependent is added to the equation. A lot of journalists are freelance, meaning they pay higher self-employment taxes and don't have minimum wage protections.

[–]Botryoid2000 3 points  

I was looking at job ads and you're right. They want you to have 14 skillsets to be a reporter - writing, copy editing, editing, photography, photo editing, graphic design, video, video editing, content creation, SEO, etc. I was yelling at my computer "THOSE AREN'T THE SAME PEOPLE."

No wonder the news is so shitty. It's like an endless Russian nesting doll of repurposed content with minimal facts.

[–]Ok-Bus1716 8 points  

Crime. Loan origination. Banking in general. The financial services industry lost out when they moved to algorithms and performance based metrics. Lost the allure and the prestige along with the paradigm shift, too.

[–][deleted] 6 points  

I think all office jobs were easier when you had to do mindless stuff like waiting for the printer to turn out ten copies, paperclipping, stapling, faxing, sealing envelopes, walking down to the mail dropoffs, having meetings and traveling between them, etc. It’s all work now.

[–]Tapingdrywallsucks 7 points  

You know what I kinda miss? Collating stuff. And using a sorter. I was particularly efficient at sorting even without a sorter. Once someone handed me one of those puppies, though, I became a GOD.

It was the perfect level of tedious, but fed my slight OCD tendencies.

Anybody got stacks of shit that need to be put in order? I'm your gal.

[–]50 somethingboringlesbian 3 points  

At my job before the one I currently have, I would arrive at work in the morning before everyone else, to a huge stack of papers that came in on the fax machine. My task was to get everything sorted, using a sorter strip, entered into the computer, additional documentation ran and printed, then put into five general categories, as quickly as possible.

That was so fun.

[–]Tapingdrywallsucks 4 points  

It's a competition with yourself every morning, isn't it! I LOVE stuff like that.

[–]andropogon09 5 points  

College professor. Get your PhD, publish a couple papers, then sail into a job for life. Teach a couple classes each year. Retire with full benefits

[–]Difficult-Web244 1 point  

It's not like that anymore?

[–]Useful_Violinist25 2 points  

There are still roughly the same amount of professors. There are probably 20X the amount of people who WANT to be professors. 

[–]RecognitionExpress36 1 point  

It's still like that, except you have to publish a lot more than a couple of papers, that "job for life" cuts both ways, and of course nowadays the pay is pathetic. Also you live in a society that views you as the enemy, there's that too.

[–]expostfacto-saurus 2 points  

College history prof here. We've always been seen as the enemy.

[–]CallingDrDingle 5 points  

Being an airport employee had to be much more enjoyable….Ive never worked at one personally, but after TSA was implemented due to 9/11 everyone seems much more stressed. Way too many more hoops to jump through.

[–]NiceGuy737 2 points  

I had a semester long class in high school on drafting. We had shop classes where we learned basic industrial processes.

[–]Randomizer2025 2 points  

I swore CAD would never take off. Took my first CAD class in college in about 1984. Horribly slow and difficult. I could draw by hand so much faster. I don't draft every day anymore, but a couple of times a week. The software today has made my life so much easier and I complete so much faster. But I do miss that pencil and paper connection. The art of rolling a pencil.

[–]RonSwansonsOldMan 1 point  

I'm a construction superintendent. I asked two young architects where I could buy a good professional compass. They both looked at me with blank stares, because it's all computerized, and they had no idea what a compass was.

[–]DAWG13610 1 point  

I CAN BORROW YOU MINE IF YOU NEED!!

[–]RonSwansonsOldMan 2 points  

I got demoted from being treated by my doctor, to being treated by his assistant, and the final straw, by his assistant's assistant.

[–]TheNotoriousSHAQ 12 points  

Construction certainly was. No pesky worker safety rules & just bury the stuff you don’t like regardless of how polluted it was

[–]dacraftjr 3 points  

Ah, the good ol’ days.

[–]NiceGuy737 5 points  

I worked at a facility that melted scrap aluminum, it's a superfund site now. They posted their OSHA violations on a board that was papered about an inch thick, it was cheaper to pay than to fix the problems. The smoke from the burning labels meant you couldn't see across the plant at times. Spit and snot was jet black, soot was the first known carcinogen. Up until the year I worked there they had drums of powdered asbestos that workers had snowball fights with, it packs like snow. They bubbled chlorine gas through the molten aluminum to decrease the amount of magnesium. We raked the MgCl off the top of the aluminum wearing gas masks. Chlorine gas forms acid on mucous membranes and hurts to breath, it's used in chemical warfare. There were vapor explosions the blew molten aluminum on people.

The good old days.

[–]justonemom14 2 points  

True. Not everything should be easier. I mean, littering is easy.

[–]SoHereIAm85 1 point  

Oh, it's still like that someplaces, and I'm talking about in the US.

[–]what-name-is-it 1 point  

I realize this is a little tongue in cheek but I’ve been in construction almost 20 years and it definitely seems like it’s more of a pain in the ass as the years go by. So much bureaucracy now and very little common sense at that level.

[–]Kindly-Guidance714 4 points  

I just miss working without having a cell phone truthfully.

When I got into the workforce in the early 2000s I just never had a phone cause I was impoverished so I would just get schedules to work and show up for my shifts and go home and never brought work home with me.

With cell phones? Welp it’s just not that simple anymore.

[–]60 somethingtogtogtog 1 point  

You need a separate work phone that you can switch off.

I always think about the organisations I do voluntary work for quite carefully, and it's never been the ones that pay me to do a full time job.

[–]milleratlanta 3 points  

Anything that could be resolved with a two minute phone call. Now it’s texting, emailing, private groups etc. back and forth a dozen times. Just pickup the phone and solve the problem within 5 minutes. Young folks do not know this joy.

[–]60 somethingfabyooluss 2 points  

Right? I hate when people go back-and-forth with conversations in text. So much time is wasted. And I don’t even use it for work. Because I don’t work. LOL

[–]ContiX 2 points  

As a young folk, I actually prefer text-based communication for two reasons:

  1. I'm scared of the phone, and have an auditory processing disorder, so it is difficult for me to understand what the heck people say in person, let alone on a phone.

  2. Paper trail.

Employee: "Boss, are you sure you want to do this incredibly stupid thing? Here's all the things that could go wrong."

Boss: "Yes, yes, just do it, it'll be fine."

Everything goes wrong

Boss: "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

Employee: "I have 24 emails that prove it's not."

[–]ContiX 1 point  

tech is convoluted as fuck

It's designed by people who will never have to use it based on garbled buzzwords from the person paying for it, and the only feedback for the dev is from people who use it the wrong way...after the problem has existed for months.

[–]rmp959 2 points  

Car mechanics. No complicated electronics, sensors, etc. straight up ond school.

[–]MM_in_MN 2 points  

That’s the one I was thinking of. Car or really any mechanical repair - washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners. TVs! People used to fix their TV. Because, components were repairable. Now, so much is just replacing parts.

[–]Nothingnoteworth 1 point  

Assuming there isn’t a little sticker covering the bit of plastic covering that part with the dreaded warning foreboding the terrifying voiding of the warranty and subsequent downfall of civilisation …if removed.

Or the other horrific sticker we tell tales of to scare children “no user serviceable parts inside”

[–]60 somethingRoutine_Mine_3019 2 points  

Instead of mentioning a specific job, I'll just say that returning messages was so much easier before cell phones and email. People called your office. If you weren't there, they would leave a message and you would call them back. Usually that meant maybe 15 minutes around lunchtime and another 15 minutes around the end of the day. I had a car phone, so I could return calls while driving. Easy peasy. No one was mad if you didn't respond immediately, and you could focus on your work without constant interruptions.

[–]1964-Generation JonesDerHoggenCatten 2 points  

Any job that didn't require manual labor was easier in the past. Technology was supposed to make our lives easier, but it just raised the bar on productivity expectations and made it easier for employers to do petty little things like track your computer movement.

Office work used to proceed at the speed of our ability to type on a typewriter or write by hand, and not everyone was expected to do everything. My boss at my first job had a secretary. She did all of the typing for documents. In this day and age, he'd have to do her job himself in addition to his own job because we just expect everyone to do their own paperwork.

There is just so much more pressure on people to do more in the same amount of time compared to the past. Even if you consider things like accounting which likely benefits greatly from spreadsheet software or automatic calculations, you can see that they mainly boost accuracy rather than make life easier. I'm sure tax accountants used to do a lot fewer returns in the past than they do now each tax season.

[–]60 somethingfabyooluss 1 point  

As a person well-versed in Microsoft Excel, this is such BS. You should fill out one report, and their reports should automatically update from it.

[–][deleted] 5 points  

I was an estimator for an environmental construction company that bid on government contracts.

It was incredibly easy as first, about dozen pages of specifications to read through BUT as the years went by those specifications became voluminous nonsense, cut and pasted BS. 

We also had to pass on some bids, ineligible because only distressed, minority or women owned businesses were allowed to bid. 

[–]50 somethingAllswellinEndwell 9 points  

I'm an Engineer. I once did a design and build for hazardous materials processing facility. I shit you not, no less than 6 agencies were involved, and just about all of them were telling me conflicting information. Unfortunately I was the only expert involved in the whole thing.

I get that I can be the only expert. If I'm a good engineer, I can make my reasoning approachable and understood. But they were literally telling me "That's wrong, who told you that?" and it was the other agency. It was even conflicting needs, it was just outright rules for the sake of rules.

"Help me understand why I need to do that, and I can come up with an engineering solution"

"We've always done it that way"

Worst is, I could have followed all the rules, and made the space completely unsafe, but according to spec.

[–]Nothingnoteworth 1 point  

My partner was hired as the in house lawyer for an NGO that was part way through managing an inter-agency (government and NGO) project. Every agency had a different version of, not what agreement they wanted, but of what agreements they thought had already been made. And following that there was the conflicting reports from her managers, she never managed to get factual information on what was already spent, what the budget even was, what fell under which departments authority.

She didn’t stay long because every time she sat down with project managers they’d say something and she’d tell them “You can’t do that. Legislation requires X”.

They’d say “But we’ve always done Y”.

She’d say “You can’t do that. Legislation requires X”.

They’d say “But dept one insist that the budget won’t cover X, we have to do Y”.

She’d say “You can’t do that. Legislation requires X”.

They’d say “We prefer Y because dept two operates like this you see”

She’d say “You can’t do that. Legislation requires X”.

They’d say “We are proceeding with Y”

And knowing she had a paper trail of evidence of her telling them not to do Y because they had a legal obligation to do X she’d say “Okay” and wonder why they bothered having in house legal at all.

[–]magic_thumb 2 points  

Asbestos abatement, back in the day.

[–]Ok-Search4274 1 point  

Simpler but harder.

[–]IslandGyrl2 1 point  

You may be onto something with that phrase.

[–][deleted]  

[deleted]

[–]justonemom14 1 point  

In their defense, it is easy to give someone the wrong meds and not write anything down. Not better, but easier

[–][deleted]  

[deleted]

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