Anxiety about the rapidly changing world of work — from robots to the growth of freelancing — is high. The threat of automation is no longer restricted to assembly lines, and is causing ructions in white-collar cubicles too. Such fear can be para­lysing: why bother planning a career when your profession might disappear? Five writers looking at work trends outline their advice on future-proofing careers to Emma Jacobs.

就业世界的迅速变化——从机器人到自由职业的增多——让人们感到非常担忧。自动化的威胁不再限于装配生产线，它也在白领圈子引起不安。这种担忧可能会让人气馁：如果你的职业可能消失，又何苦规划你的职业生涯呢？5位研究就业趋势的作家向我概述了他们对于经得起时间考验的职业的建议。

Arianna Huffington

阿里安娜•赫芬顿(Arianna Huffington)

The co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post recently stamped her mark on the topic through a conference on “the future of work”, organised in conjunction with the Berggruen Institute.

这位《赫芬顿邮报》(Huffington Post)联合创始人兼总编最近通过一次有关“未来工作”的会议谈到了这个话题，这次会议是与伯格鲁恩研究所(Berggruen Institute)合作组织的。

Ms Huffington, whose latest book Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Happier Life ex­plores the challenges of a modern career, believes the best strategy is to be “endlessly adaptable, endlessly flexible”. In an era when dev­ices are changing all the time and new platforms seem to pop up overnight, the only way to be ready for the future is to “embrace change as the only constant”.

赫芬顿写了一本新书，名为《兴旺：重新界定成功并缔造更幸福生活的第三标准》(Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Happier Life)，探讨了现代职场的挑战。她认为，最佳战略是具有“无限的适应能力和无限的灵活性”。在这个设备永远在变化而且新的平台似乎层出不穷的时代，为未来做好准备的唯一方法是“把变化视为唯一的不变”。

The technological revolution under way is both a curse and a boon: “Techno­logy might allow us to be creative but it also damages [creativity].” She does not see The Huffington Post, which does not pay its bloggers, as part of the problem. “We’ve created jobs.” The Huffington Post, she says, has 850 employees.

目前正在进行中的技术革命既是好事，也是坏事：“科技可能会让我们具有创造力，但也会破坏（创造力）。”她并不认为《赫芬顿邮报》是这个问题的一部分，该报并不向博客作者付费。“我们创造了就业。”她表示，《赫芬顿邮报》拥有850名员工。

Most of the newer media companies, such as Facebook or Instagram, Ms Huffington argues, are platforms on which users post their own content for free because they enjoy it. “Self-expression has become an important hobby. When people watch­ed television for seven hours, no one said they should be paid for doing so. If you care about your views and want to give them wider dissemination you use a platform.” Rather than knocking on 1,000 doors, she says, people blog to be noticed.

赫芬顿指出，多数较新的传媒公司（例如Facebook或Instagram）都是平台，用户在上面免费发布他们自己的内容，因为他们喜欢这样。“自我表达已变成一种重要的爱好。当人们观看了7个小时的电视后，没有人会说他们应该为此得到报酬。如果你在乎自己的观点，希望让更多的人看到，你会使用平台。”她表示，人们不会敲1000户人家的门，而是选择撰写博客吸引别人的注意。

The Huffington Post was sold to AOL for $315m in 2011. Ms Huffington does not give her 23- and 25-year-old daughters job advice (one is developing a web show, the other is an artist), seeing her role as providing “unconditional support” and “encouraging them to take risks”. She reminds them not to worry too much. “Anxiety and self-doubt can strengthen the voice I call the obnoxious roommate living in our head.”

2011年，《赫芬顿邮报》以3.15亿美元被出售给美国在线(AOL)。赫芬顿没有向她23岁和25岁的女儿提供工作建议（一个女儿在开发网络展览会，另一个女儿是一位艺术家），她认为她的任务是提供“无条件的支持”并“鼓励她们冒险”。她提醒她们不要有太多顾虑。“担忧和自我怀疑会提高那个隐藏在我们内心的悲观自我的声音。”

Erik Brynjolfsson

埃里克•布林约尔松(Erik Brynjolfsson)

Professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Co-

他是麻省理工斯隆管理学院(MIT Sloan School of Management)管理学教授，《第二个机器时代：辉煌技术时代的工作、进步和繁荣》(The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies)的作者之一。

author of The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

布林约尔松教授表示，中产阶级应感到担忧，并指出薪资中值一直陷于停滞。他表示，科技总是既创造了就业，又破坏了就业。但最近，涉及常规信息处理的很多工作的自动化现象增加。“这包括基本的文书工作，而且影响到了越来越多人的薪资和就业前景。”

The middle class should be concerned, says Prof Brynjolfsson, pointing to how median wages have been stagnating. Technology, he says, has always both destroyed and created jobs. But rec­ently the automation of many jobs that involve routine information processing has increased. “This in-c­ludes basic clerical tasks and has affected the wages and employment prospects of a growing share of the population.”

然而，他认为，人们有理由心存希望。“创新从未像现在这么快速，总财富和收入正触及创纪录高点。”他仍然乐观地认为“人们和企业可以采取一些措施，让自己生存下来甚至兴旺发展”。

However, he believes there is reason for hope. “Innovation has never been faster and overall wealth and income is hitting record highs.” He remains optimistic that “there are steps people and companies can take to survive and even thrive”.

布林约尔松教授给他的学生们提供了三条建议。首先，“学习如何做那些人类比机器更擅长的事情”。其中包括创造力和创业精神，还包括人际交往能力，例如激励、说服、培养和关怀。其次，接受终身学习。“随着科技的进步，今天有价值的技能可能明天就会变得没那么有价值。”第三，做那些你真正热爱的事情。“在第二个机器时代，多数市场将是‘赢者通吃’，少数最成功者会获得大多数收入、关注和成功。如果你不真正热爱你所做的工作，那么想出类拔萃很难，甚至是不可能的。”

Prof Brynjolfsson offers three pieces of advice to his students. First, “learn how to do things that humans do better than machines”. These include creativity and entrepreneurship, but also interpersonal skills such as motivation, persuasion, nurturing and caring. Second, embrace life-long learning. “The skills that are valuable today may be less valuable tomorrow, as technology ad­vances.” Third, do what you really love. “In the second machine age, most markets will be ‘winner-takes-most’ where a small number of top performers get most of the revenue, attention and success. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to excel without really loving what you do.”

马丁•福特(Martin Ford)

Martin Ford

他是总部位于硅谷的软件公司Acculant Technology的创始人，著有《机器人崛起：科技与失业未来的威胁》(Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future)一书。

Founder of Acculant Technology, a Silicon Valley-based software company. Author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future.

福特对于未来10到15年的就业前景感到悲观。他表示，很难为个人提供职业建议，因为就业的结构性问题必须由政府解决。如果他告诉某人一些有关经得起时间考验的职业的建议，这将损害他人的工作前景。在他看来，这是个“零和游戏”。

Mr Ford is gloomy about job prospects in the next 10 to 15 years. It is hard to give career advice to individuals, he says, because the structural problems of employment must be tackled by government. If he were to advise one person on future-proofing their career, it would harm another’s prospects. It is, in his view “a zero-sum game”.

他表示，将白领工作自动化要比将体力工作自动化容易一些。需要视觉感官和灵活性的工作相对安全，例如护士、看门人、服务员。他表示，一个影响是，提高就业能力的传统办法——教育——将不会特别有效。学习编程也不是一种解决办法。“目前人们正做出大量努力让日常软件开发工作实现自动化。”

It is easier, he says, to automate white-collar jobs than those requiring physical skill. Jobs that demand visual perception and dexterity — nurses, janitors, waiters — are relatively safe. One implication of this, he says, is that the traditional solution to improving em­ployability — education — will not be particularly effective. Nor is learning to program a solution. “There are lots of efforts under way to automate routine software development.”

这位有3个孩子的父亲表示，很难想出什么有用的职业建议给他最小的孩子（8岁）。“到她开始工作时，我们现在的担忧会急剧放大。”然而，他那已达上大学年龄的儿子决定当医生，这让他感到欣慰，因为他认为这种工作的寿命较长。

The father of three says it is hard to think of career advice that will be useful to his youngest child, who is eight years old. “The concerns we have now will be vastly amplified by the time she starts working.” However, he is reassured by his college-age son’s decision to become a doctor, as it is a role he sees as having longevity.

尽管对未来20年感到担忧，但福特认为，如果政府做出正确的政策决定，例如进一步的收入再分配，长远未来可能会一片光明。约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)曾在1930年预测，未来的人们将每天工作3小时，尽管这种预测可能不会成为现实，但或许那种生活已不太遥远。福特表示：“长期来看，我们可以无比乐观。”

Despite this anxiety about the next 20 years, Mr Ford believes that if the right policy decisions are made — such as further redistribution of income — the long-term future could be bright. While John Maynard Keynes’s 1930 prediction that future generations would work three hours a day might not come true, it is not perhaps far off the mark. “In the long run, we can feel fantastically optimistic,” says Mr Ford.

琳达•格拉顿(Lynda Gratton)

Lynda Gratton

她是伦敦商学院(London Business School)管理实践教授，著有《变迁：未来的工作已出现》(The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here)一书。

Professor of management practice at London Business School. Author of The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here.

格拉顿教授认为，很难对未来的工作做出乐观叙述。科技，以及工作空心化（即中等级别工作的数量减少），是主要原因。

It is hard to build a positive narrative about the future of work, according to Prof Gratton. Technology and the hollowing out of work, in which the numbers of intermediate-level jobs are shrinking, are the key reasons.

她表示，人类的自然本能是把头埋在沙子里，希望这不会发生。“我们发现长期规划很难，而做出那些长期来看对我们更有利、但短期来看很艰难的选择就更难了。”

The natural human instinct is to bury our heads in the sand and hope this will not happen, she says. “We find it difficult to plan for the long term, and even more difficult to make choices that are better for us in the long term but tough in the short term.”

她的建议是什么？注意新的重要技能可能会是什么，并不断学习获取这些技能。那种三段式职业生涯（教育、工作、退休）已过时。她指出：“富有远见并准备好尝试是明智之举。”她给她已成年的儿子们的建议是为长远做好准备——把健康、人脉和教育列为优先。

Her advice? Remaining alert to what the next valuable skills are likely to be and constant learning in order to attain them. The three-stage career (education, work, retirement) is outdated. “It’s wise to have foresight [and] be prepared to experiment,” she notes. The advice she gives her grown-up sons is to prepare for the long distance — prioritising health, relationships and education.

他们还必须衡量有形资产和无形资产：“又老又穷是可怕的，但有钱却没有家人或朋友也同样不幸，”她表示，“未来不可能预测，但他们需要（考虑）他们热爱什么（以及）什么将是重要的。”

They must also weigh up tangible and intangible assets: “Being old and poor is awful but being rich with no family or friends is also tough,” she says. “The future is impossible to predict but they need to [consider] what they love [as well as] what will be valuable.”

斯图•弗里德曼(Stew Friedman)

Stew Friedman

他是沃顿商学院(Wharton School of Business)管理实践教授，著有《过你喜欢的生活：如何将工作与生活融为一体》(Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life)一书。

Professor of management practice, Wharton School of Business. Author of Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life.

在给个人提供职业目标建议时，弗里德曼教授提出了3个挑战。首先是设想未来。“努力设想15年后你生活中的一天——你跟谁在一起？身在何处？你希望有什么影响力？这有助于你了解希望从生活中得到什么。”

When advising individuals on career goals, Prof Friedman poses three challenges. First, imagine the future. “Try to think of a day in your life in 15 years — who are you with, where are you, what impact do you want to have? It helps to get a window into what people want out of life.”

其次是确定谁重要，你希望从他们那里得到什么。“与那些影响结果的人交谈。”

The second is identifying who matters and what you want from them. “Having conversations with those people affects the outcome.”

最后是创新性。“我要人们想象自己是生活实验中的科学家，尝试冒险。”

Last, be innovative. “I ask people to imagine being scientists in the experiment of their lives, to try adventures.”

他表示，小步前进是重要的，因为这会防止人们完全止步不前。“人们比想象中更能控制未来的路。”从个人来讲，他原本希望成为布鲁斯•史普林斯汀(Bruce Springsteen)，但他表示，他做了第二想做的事情，那就是让这位摇滚巨星成为他新书的一个研究案例。

Small steps are important, he says, because it prevents paralysis. “People are more in control of the path forward than they think they are.” Personally, he would have liked to have been Bruce Springsteen but he says he did the next best thing, which was to make the rock star a case study in his latest book.

他表示，数字革命让人们变得紧张和惶恐，这解释了人们对于正念的兴趣。“这是一种反应，人们需要安宁和界限。”他表示，经得起时间考验的职业的关键是“持续再创造”。与他人讨论你的方法的好处在于“你会获得想法和支持”。

The digital revolution has made people twitchy and nervous, he says, which explains the interest in mindfulness. “It is a reaction — people need peace and boundaries.” The key to a future-proof career, he says, is “continual reinvention”. The benefit in discussing your approach with others is that “you get ideas and support”.