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Posted on 02/23/2008 3:44:22 PM PST by Momaw Nadon
The other 280 million people . . . never to be seen again.
If anything that can be outsourced is outsourced, the it seems that only the most talented lucky few will have high-paying jobs, while everyone else is struggling just to survive. That's a scary prospect, but what can be done to prevent such a dismal outcome?
Somewhat related... The movie Idiocracy takes current American social trends to extremes. Both funny and scary!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
IT is a good field, but programming knowledge WITH business knowledge is where to be. If you can provide a business solution as well as a IT solution, you will be a very valuable asset.
I work in with the ERP (Enterprise Resource Package) SAP. And SAP consultants are in high demand. I am a developer (SAP ABAP language) as well as a configurator (someone who "flips the switches" to deliver a specific business process).
If you desire a field in IT, consider pursuing a career in SAP and focus on business knowledge: Logistics, Production Planning (MRP), Finance, HR mgmt, Purchasing, etc.. Take a look on Monster.com or DICE.com a put in SAP and ABAP in the search and you will see quite a few open positions.
There are still options but pay is lower and consider any job you get to be temporary.
Have to agree with Driftdiver. Stable jobs are hard to come by. Also depends on what systems/languages you know. If you are doing hardware/networking, there always seems to me medium level jobs available anywhere. If you're doing system specific languages/development, you need to carefully assess your local market and the demand for said language.
SQL is almost universal. A higher level understanding of it can be translated into use upon most systems, although some are less capable (have less up-to-date functionality). Check your local ads for the languages they're looking for. Go to the user meetings in the area and check them out. Make contacts, and talk to people and listen to the people in the industry, what they're doing, and if they're happy or not.
Heck, the local user groups may be the best place to start. You can see yourself and how you'll be a little while down the road and decide if that's the destination you want.
Good luck!
I build and design fishing rods.
Oh my husband would just die! Any names I would recognize?
The biggest reason for offshoring is the TAX SYSTEM, plain and simple! Regulation and litigation abuse are big contributors, but the tax system is the real problem.
Either go to a flat tax like the former Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe or (even better) enact the Fair Tax proposal. With the current Internal Revenue Code ball and chain, the U.S. economy will continue this slow death spiral. The U.S. is no longer competitive because its tax system is no longer competitive, and hasn’t been for many years.
The United States is allegedly a Republic with democratic elections. Well, it used to be, anyway, but I digress....
The feedback loop in a democracy is the vote. Things get bad enough, people vote to change those things. If that vote is not circumvented by some usurpation like a judicial intervention (like what happened with Proposition 187 in California), then things will sloooowly change until the voters get what they want. The system is set up that way.
You do not see Republicans running around Ohio right now babbling about how Fwee Twade will make everyone's lives All Better. That con is over with, and the voters plan to make sure of that.
And this is why the hapless sucker Johnny McAmnesty is gonna get dumped hard in November. As someone else here pointed out, he's winning with about half the votes that Hillary is losing by. There ain't gonna be no white working class social conservative cross over vote for Johnny, like there was for Reagan. They are going to hold their noses and vote for the Black guy, as long as he promises to do something about their jobs.
There were principled Republicans in this race like Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, and even Huckabee who were willing to talk about saving American industry. Didn't go nowhere, except for Huckabee. That's the dynamics of primaries - you get partisans and ideologues out in force.
And so it goes. Get set for major Democratic majorities. Job security will be the real issue in this campaign, with national security following up. Some people may have different names for these things, but that's where it's going to go.
And it should. If - and when - the neo-Rockefeller wing of the Stupid party gets a clue and realizes that the Free Trade area known as "America" is the only one that counts, then things will change again. Most people really are socially conservative, and even economically conservative (which does not mean "the Chinese Fascists can have our economy 'cuz they work cheaper"); they are not, however, in favor of stoop labor and starvation as a lifestyle.
Free trade as defined by the ideologues was given a try. The results are in for the regular folks: pink slips. The ideologues can yap all they want about how life is still good because things are so cheap, but those goods aren't ever gonna be cheap enough when you're on unemployment.
People will vote with their perceived interests in mind. People who try to sell them a bag of crap will get pounded.
If I were Mad Johnny, I'd be looking for a nice big house in Paradise Valley, somewhere near Barry's old house so he can go on pretending he has something to do with that guy.
I wouldn't list author as a "safe" job by any means.
how else will you explain the U.S. unemployment rate hanging around 5% or lower?)
Obviously, if the unemployment rate is 5%, Then that means 95% of the rest of us are working doing something. There is an argument to be made however that there has been a shift in our economy from good paying, manufacturing jobs to lower paying jobs in the service industry. Also, that there is underemployment as far as people working part time that want to work full time or work 2 part time jobs with no benefits.
Well put.
Currency controls coming. Not this year though.
Think of how most Americans live now compared to how they did a few generations ago. My Great Grand parents were farmers and grew all of their own food. They grew all kinds of things in Calif and raised chickens and cows to eat. They made their own shoes out of leather, their own clothes out of raw material, and even built their own small house. Today, most of us are not self-sufficient and could not be if we had to. Most of us have a skill however, that allows us to make enough money to pay others to grow our food, build our homes, etc.
How many of us, if something catastrophic were to occur, could go out and build a cabin in the woods, hunt for our own food, and defend ourselves?
Our nation losing its ability to make its own things, is becoming less self-sufficient in much of the same way. The world we are living in now, is one where we can use our high tech skills to make money in order to buy everything made in our countries, but that could change with one cataclysmic event. At the very least, we better make sure we continue to build our own weapons and grow our own food. A nation can’t just start providing for itself again over night once it’s lost its know-how and resources for those things.
Scared the crap out of me.
What is your opinion?
The only way to avoid it all is get a government job!
“I work for a Fortune 500 company that does both hardware and software. They see their future customer base in China and India, so they’re setting up offices offshore that include sales, R&D, QA, tech writing, and graphic design depts. Not to mention the salaries are cheaper.”
So you work for IBM?
No, try another 3-letter acronym...
Better yet, volunteer to give a presentation at a User Group. You'll be amazed at how many people will start contacting you and begging you to come work for them.
I’ve worked in tech support for a few years now and have been “under the gun” most of that time.
What kind of tech support? Is it over the phone?
No, don’t work with SAP, work with an American ERP company Oracle! ;-)
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