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  • From: Michael Winslow Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] where your job is headed ...
  • Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 09:51:09 -0500

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 07:31 AM, Roger Austin wrote:

Git a grip. Compared to our family and friends in the manufacturing area who have permanently lost their low paying jobs to latin america and beyond, we have nothing to whine about. The IT bubble silliness caused a lot of IT workers to consider themselves much more valuable than they were. Businesses paid much too much for IT staff and woke up to that fact over the last few years.
For those IT workers with moderate skills or skills in only one area, I would suggest they take advantage of the continuing education offered in this area.

All you say is true, but the problem is much going to be much more pervasive than we've seen in the past. Certainly the manufacturing industry has been hit hard in the US, and I believe it was just the tip of the iceberg. We are beyond the point where the old advice of keeping your skills up is going to help. No amount of retraining is going to help an IT worker if in the next 10 years 50% of the technical jobs go to India and China. Read the article carefully-- we're not talking about just low-level programming jobs here, but rather the outsourcing of entire projects, including high-level hardware design. All this on top of increased global competition by foreign companies.

It is true that what's happening right now has been affected by overstaffing caused by the Tech. Boom, W2K, etc. Regardless of the cause, outsourcing of all sorts of IT jobs has gone past the pilot project stage and has entered the rapid expansion phase. Soon every company in the US (including those who sent a file cabinet to the Caribbean to avoid paying US taxes) will be looking to outsource everything from IT to accounting to entire divisions. No amount of retraining is to going to help when 1 out of every 2 IT jobs is sent overseas.

And general retraining isn't going to help either since outsourcing in all sectors is going to cause a large drop in the total number of jobs available in the US. And if you thing this is just wild speculation, I invite you to explain how this can't happen given:

1. Companies in the US will have to compete globally, which means lowering costs using the same methods as their competitors who will be also sending jobs to the cheapest location.

2. Both highly skilled and unskilled labor can now be done offshore.

3. New companies are popping up all over the globe that will compete directly with US companies, and hire no US workers at all, yet take a significant part of the markets.

Want to retrain in accounting? There are skilled accountants who speak English in Ireland and India who will work for a fraction of the cost. And the same goes for any sort of professional activity that can be done in whole or part remotely.

The fact is, the US has enjoyed a period of advantage compared to the rest of the World, and that period is coming to an end within our lifetimes. And at least for me the answer is to do something else than hourly labor.

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 08:09 AM, Josep L. Guallar-Esteve wrote:

On Friday 31 January 2003 03:07 am, Jason Laughlin wrote:
I've long believed that the best
arrangement possible would be to earn a US salary while living in a 3rd
world economy (my father was in diplomatic/military service abroad, so I
know this works well).

Aside from government officials from a rich country living in a
not-so-rich-country, this just doesn't happen. Not even during the dot-com
era.


Perhaps not while working for someone else. One of the main things I looked for when setting up a business was the requirement that I wouldn't have to be any one place in person, and do everything over the internet or on the phone. I've never lived abroad, but I would imagine that any place that has a significantly cheaper cost of living would also have side affects like poverty, lack of infrastructure, not to mention a dearth of good entertainment. But I'd like to be proven wrong! Hey, I hear Budapest is nice...


___________________________________________________________________
No place better demonstrates the worst aspects of both the American
character and public policy than the nation's highways.
-- michael at czeiszperger dot org, Chapel Hill, NC





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