How to reinvent your career, by three people whose jobs were replaced by computers ...Middle East

We are in the midst of a great transition: artificial intelligence (AI) that was once the stuff of science fiction is now seeping into every corner of daily life, fundamentally reshaping the labour market and reigniting fears about machines and automation taking jobs.

]This alarm is warranted: Indeed’s Hiring Lab said in June 2025 that the share of graduate job listings were at their lowest since 2018, while research by investment bank Morgan Stanley suggests the UK is losing more jobs than it is creating, due to artificial intelligence.

However, this is not our first tech-driven rodeo. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, major advancements have resulted in seismic shifts, with manufacturing and heavy industry jobs like factory line workers and miners dramatically shrinking, and the rise of service-led employment in industries like caring, education and retail. And throughout that time, workers have had to adapt.

We spoke to three people whose careers started in different eras but were defined by the same thing: changing technology leading to reinvention. Their ability to transition their skills to work alongside new technology, whether that’s in the same industry or an entirely new path, demonstrates that a technological shift doesn’t have to mean obsolescence.

As Nicola, a former typesetter, puts it: “These technologies are just tools, so use it as a tool to help improve what you do – don’t let it take away the humanity of what you do.”

‘When Apple Macs arrived, my whole industry died – so I learned how to use them’ 

Nicola Wordsworth, 59, lives in Birchington-on-Sea with her two dogs, Bertie and Mabel. She trained as a typesetter in the 80s

I wanted to be an artist, but there’s no money in that. My dad was a fine art printer and I knew quite a bit about the print trade, so I thought I’d do something along those lines.

Typesetting involved using machines and tools to arrange text and images for books and magazines. It was a very, very unusual choice in the 80s for a girl to train to do it. I was the only woman in my group at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communications) and it was very much geared up for the male environment, but I had so much fun.

We did everything: hot metal, plate making, printing, airbrushing, retouching. It was such a skill, so artistic and I loved learning those things. I studied for two years while also working for a printing company that sponsored me for it. At 19, I got a job in a reprographic department in Wembley, on £16,000 a year – a lot back then!

They worked with a photo typesetting machine which was the best in the world and I had to learn German to use that machine. It was fun, but we could already see the industry was changing. The Wapping dispute [when newspaper print workers went on strike over the shift to modern computer facilities] was a moment when you felt life was changing beyond comparison. But what really killed typesetting was when Apple Macs arrived and started being used as the norm in the print world in the late 80s. It killed traditional typesetting. It was just pushing buttons, and anybody could push buttons. They became a bit more affordable, but crucially they were accessible by everyone. It wasn’t this unique thing you had to go to college to learn to use.

Our department died a death with the Apple Mac – I spent more time reading books than I did any work. I hung on as long as I could but then I was made redundant in 1989.

Some specialist typesetters hung on a bit longer, but the rest of us knew it was time to do something else, or embrace the Apple Mac. So I blew most of my £3,000 redundancy package on an Apple Mac course. I had to find a job because I had a mortgage to pay.

I got a new job that I loved, working in signage and wayfinding – the art of getting people from A to B around a company’s places and spaces. The company wanted a typesetter with an impossible amount of Apple Mac experience but they hired me because I had several other skills they needed. I moved over into graphic design, learning to manage people and the art of retouching digitally. By 34, I’d started my own business before changing direction again at 49. At 59, I’m now a brand guardian and strategist wayfinder.

I have a very strange skill set and it’s because I’ve just gone and done what interests me which has all added up to the core of what I do and why. Technology is the tool that enables us to do what technology can’t. And I’m just somebody who embraces things. I’ve never seen a barrier, I just go for it.

‘I matched paint colours for cars – then used my skills to start my own family business’

Peter Fennell, 74, lives in Dudley. He trained as a paint colour matcher in the 1960s

I was 16 when I left school in 1968 and got a job in a local paint factory in Birmingham.

I started as a trainee and worked my way up to what was, at the time, the top manufacturing job – a colour matcher. We had final say on what went into the paint to make the colour and I was mainly involved in paints for cars and vehicles.

Our paints were largely used for touching up cars that had been in accidents: a request would come in with a swatch of the original colour and information from the laboratory on what they thought was needed. We would adjust the colour and match it up to the swatches as best we could until it passed the inspection of a keen-eyed man in the laboratories.

Computers were getting introduced to the process, but to get a colour they couldn’t adjust for quantity and could only get so far in the job. Employing us was cheaper. Your ability to spot the difference in the colours and know what to do to adjust was key. You needed a good eye.

I enjoyed the job at the time – I did it for about 13 years, but when the industry started changing I got out when I could. The company I was working for was being taken over by another bigger company, and they were really focused on getting all of the work done by computer. There was less and less work for us. I could see that there was no future in being a colour matcher, even though they’d still be manufacturing paint.

I left and went into printing inks. We did the inks that printed on T-shirts, fairy liquid bottles and so on that had to be colour matched. Computers were also coming into the inks business, so that didn’t last too long. It was a good transition job and I worked there for a few years before starting a business with some family members who were in metal polishing.

We all left our day jobs and joined the business – I had transferable skills. A sharp eye was always important, and also being able to adjust a business as it changed over time. We went from the polishing being manual labour to owning both a tube manufacturing and tube polishing company.

I ended up in management: I was office-bound for the last few years and retired in 2019. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it but it certainly didn’t do me any harm and paid me a good wage.

It was a shame my job disappeared, but it wasn’t the end of the world. The paint business wasn’t going to wait for me.

‘I worked in a photo printing lab – I loved it, but was replaced by a machine’

Shawna Scott, 41, lives in Galway. She trained in film printing in the noughties.

I grew up in Seattle where my mum worked in a one-hour photo lab and adored it. I dropped out of film school and didn’t know what to do, so chose to do the same thing.

I moved to Ireland in 2006 – I’d visited the year before as a student, and fallen in love with a guy there. We were both keen photographers, and I got a job developing photos in a lab in Dublin on €11 an hour. This ended up being the last year the photo lab was in business.

I mainly worked downstairs in the lab where I’d get the chemicals ready, fill the tanks and run tests on the machines to make sure everything was in order. And then I’d spend the rest of the day printing off film photos and fulfilling orders.

It slotted really nicely into my interest in photography. For one, I was able to print stuff for free which was awesome. But I also loved working with the machines and the chemicals. Being in the basement made me feel like a mad scientist and I loved that.

I’d been there for over a year and business was slowing down because people were using digital cameras and getting photos printed digitally. I found myself downstairs in the basement less and less. We would just watch America’s Next Top Model for hours on YouTube. We had regular customers, including a punk kid who would use the photocopier for hours to make his zines, but in general we had fewer customers.

I wasn’t running film through the machine anymore. Instead, it was an automated machine that queued them up and ran itself.

We knew this wasn’t going to last. In November 2006, we were told by the owner that the lab was getting shut down and we had a month before we were let go. We booked karaoke for our last night together and the punk kid went – he showed up in a tuxedo.

I wanted to get another photo lab job, so I quickly joined a pharmacy chain and worked there for seven years on very similar pay, but the labs all dried up quickly and just became kiosks.

I ended up doing photography full-time for a while after that – music photography never paid, so I did weddings which I really liked. But I just love learning new skills and trying new things as well as working with people. Every five or 10 years, I get really itchy feet. I gave up photography because I wanted to start my sex shop – I was in the kink scene in Dublin and saw a real gap for a sex shop with a really high level of customer service (something I’d learned was so important at the photo lab). It was on a shoestring budget at first, I learned along the way, and now I am fully fledged 14 years later.

But I’m getting itchy feet again. I’m 41 and I want to learn another skill, try a new field – I want to become an intimacy coordinator for film and television. To go back into the film field with my experience in photography and my understanding of human sexuality would be really fulfilling and I’d feel like my life was coming full circle.

Hence then, the article about how to reinvent your career by three people whose jobs were replaced by computers was published today ( Monday 27/04/2026 - 02:06 PM ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.

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