How has technology changed your job?

Hmm. I don’t know if technology has changed my job to any significant degree since I’ve been doing it. When I first got into bathroom design back in 2015, I used a very specific set of design tools, and nearly nine years on from that first experience, I am using the exact same software. Being at a different company means different order build software, but this is not, in my view, having a measurable impact on how I do my job. Now, had I started out in bathroom design as a fresh-faced meerkat, I might have found a lot of matters would be done by hand, as opposed to fancy software. This would draw out (heh) the entire process of designing a bathroom, and to do it justice, a great deal of care and time would be needed.

That’s not to say that care and time are not needed now. It’s just the computer can help interpret certain elements, and provide a sheen and polish to other elements.

If we take my other ‘job’ as an author, this has not changed much for me, because I haven’t been published long enough for there to have been an impact. In some respects, going back as far as my fan-fiction writing days, not a lot has changed with how I write for a couple of decades. I still use Microsoft Word, which is fundamentally the same as it ever was.

Technology can certainly change jobs, for better or worse. I did not experience it, but when I worked in sofa sales, I heard of how orders used to all be hand-written. Every code, for size, configuration, colour and extras, was all written down. In my time there, it was all done via tablet PCs, which certainly made life a lot easier! When I worked for my local Magistrate’s Court, everything was recorded onto a database, but there would have been a time when all the records would have been exclusively paper based. I’d argue technology changes have changed these jobs for the better. On the other hand, the rise of the internet and the convenience of shopping from home has had a negative impact on retail. It’s an improvement in the eye of the consumer, but not the retail worker. I guess, as with a lot of things, it’s down to the eye of the beholder.