CBS News: American on Jobs

[Chris_Elston]

Did you guys happen to catch this?

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6059911n&tag=api

Nothing about FIRST or Dean, but I about fell out of my chair around 4 minutes and 30 seconds into the video clip: a company called "Infosys".

[jamie_1930]

To put a different spin on that it does mean that all FIRSTers have a bright future in the job market, if everyone is looking for engineers.

A couple of weeks ago one of the technology teachers in my school was talking about this and he made an interesting point about an often overlooked job place in the U.S. The Government, they need engineers, especially the military, and those engineers can only be U.S. citizens. It's a job market that can't be undercut by overseas engineers.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by jamie_1930

To put a different spin on that it does mean that all FIRSTers have a bright future in the job market, if everyone is looking for engineers.

Not quite. The real truth is that as there are more large engineering pools overseas companies will be more likely to hire those companies for a fraction of the cost of employing a US engineer.

IMO the only chance we have to change this is to invent a new industry and let "low end" manufacturing go overseas completely, so we can focus on things only we can do.

[jamie_1930]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

Not quite. The real truth is that as there are more large engineering pools overseas companies will be more likely to hire those companies for a fraction of the cost of employing a US engineer.

IMO the only chance we have to change this is to invent a new industry and let "low end" manufacturing go overseas completely, so we can focus on things only we can do.

I see what your saying, I mostly just wanted to put that out there because if you ever ask someone what they want to design, or more specifically who they want to design for, I at least have never heard someone say that they're headed to the military to design, for example, robots that will disarm bombs or whatever else our soldiers need.

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

IMO the only chance we have to change this is to invent a new industry and let "low end" manufacturing go overseas completely, so we can focus on things only we can do.

That is absolutely what happens. Far as I'm concerned, let those manufacturing jobs go - other countries will gladly supply a work force for a lot less cost (although those overseas workers may be making a great living in their country). But this forces the US to stay on the cutting edge of innovation. I grow tired of hearing folks like my dad saying that he will only buy products made in america; socks, soap, etc... I don't want the US to be the leader in sock or soap manufacturing!! Our country will stay on the top of the global market ONLY if we continue to be leaders in innovation. Support efforts that work to that goal.

As far as the InfoSys company goes - That's scary. I often show this 2005documentary (1-800-India) to students every so often to generate open discussion of outsourcing and the global economy. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/ep...troduction/70/

On a somewhat sidenote; the epitome of outsourcing has now extended into video game playing and MMORPGs. Here's a video of a gold farmer from China.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEegohRPsqg They play a video game to acquire virtual gold and goods and then sell them for real money to Players that don't want to spend the time doing all that work. According to an article in Scientific American, the total amount of real money made by doing this is over $200 million. And one gold farmer made $1.3 million in just two years. Kinda bizarre!!