EXPOSED
This is a catch-all bucket for shop-floor metal and plastic workers who don't fit the named machine-operator titles — hand-forming, trimming, fixture loading, deburring, heat-treat tending, inspecting and reworking parts. Language AI barely touches this work, but purpose-built industrial automation does: CNC cells, robotic tending, and vision inspection have been eating exactly these tasks for two decades and continue to. The moat is physical, not legal or relational — no license, no client relationship, and little decision authority beyond scrap/rework calls, so the job is protected by capital cost and part variety rather than by anything AI can't learn.
Tasks largely resist digitisation. At 14 the work sits just above the automation line because the tasks that land in this catch-all bucket — hand-deburring odd castings, shimming a fixture that won't seat, straightening warped plastic trim, feeding short-run parts nobody wrote a program for — are the leftovers precisely because they resisted the cells that already took the high-volume work, but they are physical routines a robot arm with decent vision will eventually reach, which is why this isn't 18.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. 16 reflects standing at a press, oven, or bench for a full shift handling hot stock, sharp flash and slippery coolant, where grip force, part orientation by feel, and reacting to a jam are the job — not 19 or 20 only because the shop floor is an indoor, fixtured environment with known machines rather than a field site or crawlspace.
No licence, no signature requirement. A 2 is honest: there is no state license to trim plastic or tend a heat-treat furnace, and while a shop may carry AWS or ISO/AS9100 requirements, those certify the employer's process and the QC signoff, not you personally — the 2 rather than 0 acknowledges forklift or crane certs and some welding-ticket holders in the bucket.
Anonymous artifact production. 4 is where an anonymous part number puts you — the customer receives a bracket, not you, and the only relationship that shields the job is the shift lead who knows you can eyeball a bad shot; that internal familiarity is worth 4, not 0, but it doesn't survive a plant relocation.
Meaningful discretion. 7 puts you at the bottom edge of real discretion: scrap-versus-rework calls, deciding when a die needs pulling, and catching drift before the inspection sample does are judgment with money attached, but the print, the spec, and the router define the acceptable answer, and a supervisor or QC signs off on anything expensive.
Has AI actually changed your work?