[petek]

I am inclined to agree that outsourcing is nothing new, and certainly none of us are entitled to lifelong jobs, or even to being able to stay in one career field throughout our working years. Speaking from personal experience, I have "retrained" at least three times in my career, though it has all been various flavors of engineering, and I have been fortunate enough to do it on the job (as opposed to doing it while on unemployment).

BTW, I also agree that Dean was insensitive to those displaced, and to non-Americans. And it would have been nice if he had chosen a more up-beat message, given the occasion!

That said, here's my overly-simplistic opinion of where the real problem lies:

One serious issue which I feel is overlooked in most discussions of outsourcing is that of new-technology startups, and the relative lack of them recently. In the past when a major industry became unable to compete, new technology offered new opportunties for the industry or the displaced employees. Either new technology (itself creating new jobs) "saved" the industry - such as the re-invention of the auto industry during the 70's & 80's, or it created an entirely new industry, such as IT in the 80's & 90's.

One key ingredient in the creation of new technology has been a source of money to start businesses with. Long ago (like in the Stone Age when I started working), major corporations would fund internal "skunk works" projects or companies doing leading-edge development. This was high-risk, and (the companies hoped) high-reward. Maybe one in ten actually became profitable. In the 80's a lot of those corporations decided that the risks weren't worth the rewards and went to mergers & acquisitions to bring in new ideas. This was seen as "outsourcing" by the corporate R&D people who lost their jobs in the process. However, investment bankers took up the slack by providing funding for new startup companies, most likely in the hope that some would be acquired by corporations at a premium price.

This scenario worked pretty well throught the 80's and 90's, and a whole lot of new businesses were started to create a lot of neat techology, and all the while new jobs were being created at quite a clip.

Then the Internet Bubble came along and the investment community suddenly saw 20x and higher returns on their investments, at least until the bubble burst. Now most realize those were unrealistic growth projections, but it seems that the venture capital people are now reluctant to fund high-risk investment without expectation of unrealistically high returns. Between tight money and the economic downturn of 2001, few new technology businesses have been starting up lately. Which means there is a shortage of new jobs for those who are are caught between the outsourcing of "last decade's" technology and the lack of new job fields to go into.

I would be the last to caution against going into technology fields, and it should be noted that to a large extent, science jobs (chemistry, biology, biotechnology for example) have not been pinched as much as other technical jobs. For those making choices about their future fields of study and careers, my philosophy is go for what you find interesting - not where the best starting salaries are this year. Remember that business, like most things, is cyclical. What is hot this year will be old stuff in five years, but will be replaced by a new kind of hot. I just hope that some of FIRST's best brains who are not interested in technology go into investment banking, and straighten out this mess!