Everyone with your exact job title in your industry vanishes, how long until awful things happen?
I'm a support engineer for dental software. So difficult issues won't get immediate resolutions, and instead development will actually have to fix things because offices will be crying at them for a fix instead of at me.
Oh no, the Business Systems Analysts are gone. Whatever shall we do. Society won't survive like this. Who's gonna analyze business requirements for systems. A tragedy, to be sure. 😶
Farm worker.
Food shortage, widespread food shortage. People would have to change their diets within a few weeks, and learn to hunt to avoid starvation in a few months. Unstaffed farms would be cleaned out for immediate food over time, and the price of anything edible not raised on a farm of some kind would shoot to the moon. Any automated farming that a landowner could run would be the way to go, for lack of workers.
I'm an adjunct professor. If every adjunct professor disappeared today, universities would instantly be better for students and professors. Administrators would hate it, though.
Quality engineer. Eventually someone would get around to the work I do. But there would be a lot of avoidable slowdowns and stoppages as parts and processes breakdown without the function that intentionally searches out and fixes problems.
Eventually problems would get painful enough, a person would get assigned to fix them.
And then another problem and eventually another person assigned to fix.
And then hey, wouldn't it more efficient if we assign a person to go after all these problems? And what if they could even be proactive enough to fix problems before they got out the door? And what if we called that person's function Quality?
It wouldn't be more than a few days. You all don't realize what I do for you. I'm out there every night fighting the night man. Bringing in the day man. I am the fighter of the night man, ahhhhhhaaaayhaahhaaa, champion of the sun, master of karate and friendship for everyone.
Paramedic. A lot of people would die at home or on the streets. Many hospitals would be overwhelmed with patients that can't leave. Nursing homes would have to actualy take care of and treat people for once. Drunk collage kids will be allowed to go home peacefully. Police will not be able to pass off uncooperative people to hospitals for a psych evaluation as easy.
For real though, it would not be fun for the world.
Would be nice if we where treated and paid like we matter.
If it's just paramedics and not EMTs then it won't be as bad. People will still die though.
I could best be described as an "emergency draftsman". And potential damage could be far reaching in scale.
I work for a company that, among other things, makes replacement parts for things like power plants, chemical plants, any large industrial installation. In many cases, the thing that breaks is a one of a kind part, or something last manufactured in the 1960's, or some other thing that you aren't going to be able to just go buy a replacement. So what happens is someone will occasionally drop a broken something or other on my desk, and I have to figure out what it used to look like, then make a 3d model and a drawing of the part so it can be reproduced.
Graphic designer. AI is getting pretty crazy so you all could be just fine. AI will make you what you want but will it make you what you need? Just sayin.
Admin paper pushers coordinate so others can have frictionless meetings. Most likely all meetings will be awful, and initiatives will not have approvals so fraud will propagate quickly
Social Worker, so maybe some parts of society would come crashing down at first but maybe turn out for the better in the long run.
More specifically, working in a hospital currently, helping set up support structures for after the patient is discharged. Maybe we'd end up with people staying in hospitals for longer or visiting more frequently, could be a big hit to our Healthcare system, could force some much needed changes.
within a few hours. water and wastewater don't treat themselves. water would stop coning out of taps. wastewater would back up into people's homes and without a way to deal with it the environment would go to shit.
damn this makes me feel like i might be doing something important. i should be paid more
How exact are we getting? I'm an "assistant term professor", but I'm not an associate or tenure-track position, nor am I an adjunct. So i imagine if just people in my middling position disappeared, we might be fine, a bunch of adjuncts get a raise and a stable job, universities might have to reduce admissions or pack their classes, but we'd probably be fine in the long run. If all college professors disappeared, though, society might collapse. Suddenly you have millions of college students with incomplete educations who need to go somewhere. The brain drain on the world would be immense, and with the death of university-led research, we'd probably enter a dystopian future where all new research is being done by corporations.
Industrial project engineer. Consequences of losing those jobs? No more new production plants and maintenance forces would quickly get overwhelmed trying to handle upgrades on top of routine maintenance. Profits would plummet. Plants would shut down.
Alot of people with mental health issues would be wandering the streets. Some would simply die at home due to not being able to look after and feed themselves. A fair few would be going around sexually assaulting young girls/boys (not understanding they're adults & it's wrong) and alot would be so pissed off and confused they be trying to kick the shit out of anyone they'd see. The world wouldn't end but it'd be a pain in the arse to navigate.
People would die as X-rays and medical devices stop working. The power and communication grids would go down. Everyone's financial and personal data would be compromised. No one can make any purchases, because credit carding systems stop working. Cash is no longer accepted because no one knows how to do the math to make change anymore. Humanity would be in a stone age in less than 3 days.
Suddenly games wouldn't see a localised version anymore. To play anything that requires language comprehension, you'd have to study the source language.
This thankfully doesn't impact me personally, but people would lose out on some cool content. Not everyone finds it fun to spend years to acquire a language to the degree some games require.
Embedded software designer, so a lot of stuff I worked on in my life might stop functioning for whatever reason, small stuff like Nest thermostat you can replace with mechanical ones, etc. Aerotech stuffs might be more problematic... but planes and helis were flying in the 50s without software
I'm a project manager, so kind of a mixed bag. Some things will go off without a hitch, maybe even faster. Others will fall to pieces from a logistics and budgetary aspect. Loads of toilets will be gold plated and encrusted in diamonds
I am an teacher at a daycare. Short-term, lots of parents will have to drop out of the workforce to take care of their own children. The economic effects of this will be subtle but extensive. I suspect that in the americas this will be ignored, in Europe this will provoke the writing of policies to help parents, and in Asian countries this might just reinforce traditional gender norms very strongly. I dont know how this wouo
I'm an apartment building superintendent, meaning I live in the same building that I manage.
Whether it's a water leak, fire alarm, someone having a medical crisis, or something else, I'm usually called for an emergency of one kind or another at least once every 48 hours. In theory, someone could die if paramedics are delayed by a locked door or the fire department doesn't know which units have elderly/disabled people who need evacuation assistance.
GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Specialist. If you got rid of just the specialists you probably be fine. The techs, analysts, and admins could hold things together. If all of the GIS experts disappeared all together we would probably start getting hungry pretty quick, and the US military would get a lot shittier. basically, anything that relies on a geolocation is kinda screwed. Lots of it has actually been automated so we might be fine for a bit.
The automatically controlled systems in cars will go to the dogs. They're already at the door as it is. I guess we could cycle to work, might be a good thing.
I'm Human Resources. Many would be glad we're gone, but Human Resources are there to do many tasks people take for granted such as setting up benefits (retirement, health, life, etc), to vetting and hiring, and mediating between managers and employees. Often times, these require extensive knowledge on how to navigate labyrinthian laws that sometimes change regularly and less-than-friendly benefit companies.
More specifically, I'm a workers compensation specialist within HR. My job is being a subject matter expert and a liason between the employees and an underfunded, understaffed, stretched to the limits Workers Compensation program that is struggling under the weight of a massive worker population with little in funding being provided to it. I anticipate the needs of the work comp program to try to ease the burden of the workers falling into a denial-appeal cycle.
To be fair.. society would march on without us. There'd be this horrible adjustment period for the workforce where managers who may be industry specialized (Like a manager of nurses isn't really trained to handle most HR functions) have to pick up new skills. And for a while you'll probably see a lot of people not being enrolled, disenrolled, tracked, vetted, etc as people figure it out.
Overall, you'd probably see a lot of unions/angry workers and it would probably hasten a long a massive amount of protests and strikes. Human Resources in the private sector acts like a buffer in some ways. Correcting issues individually before they become systemic.
Production planner here. Eventually you will notice that things are done inefficiently, not in a sensible order or timely manner. It's gonna be really annoying but the world won't collapse.