This chapter describes how us as individuals can survive the flattening, by developing our skills and obtaining jobs that Friedman calls "untouchables"--those jobs that cannot be outsourced, and cannot be digitized or automated. Because of the flattening, more and more white-collar, service jobs are becoming fungible, meaning that they can be easily transferred. We need to find these non-fungible "untouchable" jobs in order to eliminate the risk of losing that job to either another country or to advances in technology. Freidman recognizes 3 types of "untouchable" jobs: Those that are specialized, such as basketball stars; those that are localized, such as your local barber; and those that are a part of the "new middle." It worried me as I read this chapter, because the field that I've been studying the past 5 years was listed under the "old middle". Uh-oh. Have I been wasting my time?
This new middle consists of many different jobs, and Friedman goes over many different categories. My favorite category is probably the Great Collaborators and Orchestrators. It's these people that will manage the supply chains, coordinate the collaborations between companies and keep the companies of the flat world alive. My next favorite would have to be the explainers. They are the ones that, well, explain things. In this age of increasing technology, these people will be able to make a living explaining how things work to others. And as the flattening world brings together so many more and allows for so much to be going on, it is the explainers who will be able to "see the complexity and explain it with simplicity."
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I often joke when the MBA program is stressing me out that I should have just gone to cosmetology school. This chapter made me consider it a little more seriously! I asked myself am I really an untouchable. At this point I do not know!
This chapter also scared me a little about not having a secure job when we graduate. Pretty much you're golden if you have an important service job that needs to be produced and consumed in the same area as the customer. As I mentioned in a previous post, looking back I think he was being a little over dramatic to get a message accross. However, I am glad I read this chapter, because it will make me think differently as I learn through the rest of my MBA. I will be thinking more with a mindset of maybe a consultant or a great collaborator. I want to now train my mind to be geared toward the types of jobs that cannot really be outsourced. I think one of the advantages of having an MBA is that it exposes is more in depth about different aspects of business and helps us put a good perspective on how to manage effectively all aspects of an organization, maybe leaning towards the great collaborators side. Maybe Dr. Wasko's project management class will be even more effective to us given that it will teach us skills that could apply in these types of jobs.
My concern is one of the Untouchable categories is unobtainable to 99.9% of the population (e.g. professional athletes, Hollywood actors, etc.) and another category is localized and mostly undesirable at least for MBAs (housekeeper, trash collector, etc.). That leaves the final category, the “new middle class” of collaborators and orchestrators. These may be great middle class jobs for a few people, but as a direct analogy, how many conductors does an orchestra need relative to musicians? I fear the middle class of the future will be small and shrinking, like the middle class of today.
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