Some time ago my energy provider sent me an email reminder to take my meter reading, which I diligently did. As I stood in front of these strange boxes showing me some numbers, I had a flashback to my childhood when a man would come knocking at our door every month to do the same for us.

He’d walk down into our basement and write down some numbers on a piece of paper which, after doing his round, he would take to his office and input into a computer. He always made you aware if you’d missed the previous reading because you were not at home. 

In those days most women were housewives or stay at home mothers who more often than not were at home whenever he showed up. Nowadays this alone would make his job impossible as most people are out during the daytime, let alone paying people to do something that consumers now are happy to do themselves. And that is assuming consumers don’t delegate the task to a smart reader.

How things have changed since then, yet…

85% of the jobs there will be in 2030 have not yet been created

When a colleague at work mentioned this statistic, I had to stop and breathe. How could it be? 2030 is only 11 in the future?!

Most of these new jobs will be linked to the internet. A few examples of new jobs:

  • Drone pilots – it’s rather difficult to become one but they are needed for imaging from above (think police, insurance companies in case of accidents, architects for building photographs, media for event photographs)
  • Self-driving car engineers
  • Meat replacement food technologists
  • Plastic deconstruction bio-engineers
  • Brexit experts
  • Etsy sellers making 5 and 6 figures – a notable example is Mr Money Mustache’s ex wife making 5 figures with homemade candles, but I know someone in London making a living off it
  • Online gamers – a BBC reportage brought to my attention recently just how much money can be earned with this activity (mid 6 figures are not unheard of), although they themselves confessed they got into gaming also to escape reality, which is a completely different conversation

The list above is already so unusual to me, I can’t imagine what yet-to-be-invented jobs will be like. Many of them will look to offer a solution to a problem, but which ones? I don’t know.

How will current jobs change?

Earlier this year Matt Mullenweg (of WordPress fame) said in his podcast Distributed that Upwork employs in their Silicon Valley offices two receptionists who work remotely from other US states and greet visitors via monitors. That to me is mind blowing, it’s remote work taken to the next level.

This goes beyond digital nomadism because it involves jobs that are traditionally carried out in person.

Change like this has various sources:

  • People who want something different and are not afraid of asking for it or going freelance
  • Companies like Automattic (founded by Matt Mullenweg, mentioned above) who actively look for these people
  • Governments of countries like Estonia that, after gaining independence from the USSR, had a broken infrastructure and decided to focus heavily on digital nomads and the digital sector, making it very easy for people to move there and work from there (simple visa, super fast internet, affordable cost of living, a community of digital nomads), hence have access to the EU and work there.

Traditional companies will either be forced to adapt or attract those who want to work the old fashioned way.

What does this mean for people aiming for or who are financially independent?
Geo arbitrage is a thing. 

Minimalism is becoming stronger inside and outside of the FIRE community. 

People who can afford it (i.e. people who are financially independent or are close to FI) often will choose to spend their time differently. They can afford to do things just for the love of it. They can relax, be physically active, volunteer, make things manually.

This will breed a new way of living, spanning from FIRE people in Asia increasing the demand for cheap daily massages, to FIREs becoming artisans and activists.

I welcome this trend because smart people who are time and money rich normally generate wonderful ideas and products that the world actually needs.

Will people still move to large cities?

That trend is set to stay, especially among the young. And those who fall in love with a city, like me. Cities are buzzing and exciting, they offer work opportunities, feed your mind and allow you to meet different people.

I suspect that an increasing number will leave after some time to more affordable places after having built a valuable network of friends and work connections.

The FIRE community will have an advantage here as the more the word spreads, the younger the community members will be and the sooner they will start investing.

What about the rest of the world?

Most modern jobs require a computer, reliable energy supply, fast internet connection and a bank account. This excludes a high number of countries.

Other countries especially in Asia have a wealth of well educated English speaking workers who command lower wages as they live in cheaper countries, who often get the repetitive work western companies look to outsource. Will this change? Unlikely as local Asians also need to make a living.

Countries like Italy are immersed in their traditional ways of working in many sectors – everyone raves about Made in Italy fashion and traditional Italian food and wine and ice cream, so why would they change it?  Innovation is slower when things are not too bad.

Germany offers employees good wages, a very generous holiday allowance, amazing parental leave and overall stability. It supports company founders by paying them a “salary” for the first 12 months calculated as a percentage of their recent income or salary. People there are less itchy for a change.

Mindset and values will win. When we visited Iceland in 2015, 7 years after the collapse of their banking system, we met two wonderful local guides and learnt two invaluable things about their culture:

  1. They all have a side hustle. They are only 360,000 inhabitants on a remote island – there are fewer people who can specialise in specific topics, so they are all proficient in a number of things. It’s part of their way of life.
  2. After the banking crisis they slowed down their pace of life. Yes, the value of their homes and of their currency dip dived, so they went back to nature and a more balanced life, no matter if it took them longer to pay off their homes. They value healthy living.

What does this all mean for us?

Change is scary.

Being a curious lifelong learner makes our minds adaptable.

FIRE gives us options.

Sharing stories gives us new ideas and puts old ideas into perspective.

What are your ideas? What do you think the future of work will look like? Feel free to share your thoughts below in the comments 🙂

This post is part of Saving Ninja’s series on Thought Experiments. What a brilliant idea this series is! Read other blogger’s thought on the future of work here:

Read past experiments here.


1 Comment

SavingNinja · 15th October 2019 at 12:29 pm

Awesome insight Sonia, I loved the list of currently new jobs.

I think inner cities have the ability to go to the most sought after place, even when larger corporations relocate/remove physical offices altogether. There is definitely enough wealth to reconstruct the city.

Although, I’m not sure if cities like London will hold anywhere near the same price tag as it does these days when it no longer becomes necessarily relevant to live in the vicinity. It may turn into a hub for the affluent and upper-class as it was in the past.

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