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More Than 500,000 High Tech Jobs Lost in 2002
stoolpigeon writes: "A study, released today by the AeA, shows that the U.S. high-tech industry lost 540,000 jobs in 2002, dropping from 6.5 million to 6.0 million. However, a preliminary look at data for 2003 shows that the decline in high-tech employment has slowed considerably this year."
That seems to give the impression that they were carelessly mislaid, or accidentally cast aside. Far from it, they were purposefully relocated to a more hospitable economic environment. Free market, free trade, free information, free software and free beer, what more could a philanthropist ask for?
OK, free love, but that always comes with a price.
They were with my missing sock.
Another article on it at The Register.
In before everyone starts pointing at Bangalore.
Don't blame India for our political failures.
That's all.
Two of those half a million jobs were mine. Sucks to lose one job, get a new one, then lose that a few months later. No, it wasn't anything I had done wrong. One place cut back 40% of the workforce and the other company sold the division I was in. The buyer only wanted the intellectual property, not the team. Bastards.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Great. This is like saying that a semi truck is running people down (GTA-like), but it's doing it slower now than before.
234,000 tech jobs to be lost this year, don't you feel better now?
Very ironic. Not much we can do, if they want to take advantage of lower living standards and lower taxes due to not having an FDA, EPA, USDA etc etc.. fine!
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
The government says the economy is improving and more jobs are appearing! Who's telling the truth here?
I was an electronics tech for the Navy. Did maintenance on comm gear and other electronic equipment. Went through a variety of schools. I feel the education is very good and the hands on experience is great. I worked with a variety of test equipment, receivers, transmitters, communication gear, etc.
.mil, of course these are the ones you never hear about until they're released to civilian use.
:-)
When I was in, the most technologically advanced jobs were CTM (Crypto Tech Maintenance), ET (Electronics Tech), DS (Data Systems), among others (more specialized).
One individual I met while in was a Senior Chief ET at Treasure Island. As far as I know, he was one of the people to first develop laser listening devices for civilian purchase, or at least one of the first that I've heard of. I didn't see a working model, but he explained what it was and how it worked to me.
At yet another installation, I met a group of Navy Petty Officers and Air Force Sgt's that were developing a means to render video to CD, at the time, it wasn't common place (I hadn't even heard of the technology at the time) to find video on CD's.
There's many "cutting edge" tech gadgets being used in the
It's like the old story about the guy that invented the first "radar gun" for highway patrolmen, he also invented the first "radar detector" for civilians.
It's the economy stupid! At least that's what they keep telling us. I say it's greed...not too many upper management and CEO's losing money..grrr
"Cyberstates 2003 is available to AeA members for $95 and to non-members for $190." ...but after I lost my job, I don't think I can afford it!
Aside from overseas outsourcing, how much of these job losses stems from the increasing use of open source software? How many hard working American programmers have been put out of work, their families going hungry, thanks to the "good will" of the open source community? Yes, this is a hard question, and I fully expect to moderated down for asking it, but it has to be asked.
This was earlier in the Crash, so after she'd been laid off with notice from her previous company, she'd accepted the best-looking of the jobs she could find. A week later she got laid off in the morning, and was working at the second-best-looking job in the afternoon.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think the US Tech industry will continue to bleed off jobs for a while as the cost of hiring similarly qualified people overseas continues to be much less than in the us. A person with a masters in Comp. Sci. in India costs a hellava lot less per year than a person in the US with a similar degree. Most companies are moving tech/IT support overseas, and I think major programing will move over there soon. People thought they would telecommute from the 'burbs to the city, but now they are telecommunting from India to the US.
-A
Nafta, GATT... H1B visas.
The nation being promised on the one hand that free trade would bring better jobs to the U.S. while the other hand was busy making sure those better jobs ended up anywhere but here.
Read the news sometime. There's more to it than Dilbert and the lingerie ads.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
government employees are parasites on the public -- they bring nothing of value to the marketplace
Good bye $$$.
Michael Loves Me!
okay everybody. Join the army. We need 300 million soldiers.
Preliminary numbers show that my high-tech employment declined 100% this year... Still hoping for a break-even by the end of December though.
I could have *sworn* that the political PR machine has been pumping out stories that the economy is improving and has been since November 2001 (!)... gotta love revisionist economics! 8P
/. readers could). What I'd like instead is an honest accounting of where our economy is, is going, and what the heck is being done to make sure we keep it moving in the right direction. Then when that data is available, I'd want to get good answers about why we are or aren't on target. I'm just fed up with all the crap^H^H^H^Hspin being put out on news feeds about a recovery that (obviously) isn't happening yet... or, at least, not to the degree that's being reported.
;)
Of course, this news goes with my experience; I know plenty of talented developers/tech-people who've been unemployed or lost a job to outsourcing with nary a replacement in sight.
I could rant about the loss of jobs (as I'm sure many
Nope... instead I'll get to read in news papers 3 years from now how there never was a recession between 2000-2003 (or 4). >8(
Doh... that wound up being a rant, didn't it?
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
I wonder if anyone has taken the time to put this statistic together with the number of jobs that were created during the "dot com boom"... I'd be willing to bet that we're still far ahead of where we were in the early nineties. A lot of those jobs were in the technology and communication manufacturing sector, and manufacturing as a whole has taken a pretty big hit in the recession. The fact that R&D and testing jobs increased leads me to believe that efficiency is also partly to blame...
you're permanently EXPELLED.
I've been in the market for a good developer for over half a year now. As part of the standard interviewing process, I give the applicant my laptop, with a series of programming problems that should take no more than 15 minutes to solve.
Without exception, everybody fails or takes WAY too long to solve. This, in my mind, is a sign of incompetence, the reason of which I still have not filled the position.
The vast majority of the applicants got their BS in CS or CSE because they thought it would be a good way to make money; very few of the applicants have been truly passionate about technology, and those that were, were incompetent.
For all of you who bitch and complain about how hard it is to find a job, perhaps you ought to sharpen your skillset and seek out the employers who will appreciate it. And for those who got into computing because you heard that there was good money in it, but you'd rather be out windsurfing, get out of computing, get a job windsurfing, and leave room in the market for those who actually have skills, so resume reviewers don't have to waste time with you.
Time to slap some chalk on those babied typing hands and ready 'em for sweaty industrial work.
(1 month later, covered in soot)
"Oh, God. I know MySQL, not carbon tubing. What am I doing here?"
The coolest voice ever.
He's talking about a couple stories that have come out about Deibold, now in the electronic voting machine business, where some local elections have experienced bizarre errors, often in what some call Deibold's favor.
With such growth of Internet, chip scale and whatever in technology where Moore's law applies, growth of hi-tech employment is necessary. Not "double every ten months" of course, but some way up, no doubt. (one admin who hosted 10 sites, may host 100 of them just as easily, but if they want 10.000, it's just too much for one person) In recent years, it was way higher than reasonable, and it results in a drop, to more 'needed' level. But it will continue growing and I think all those people will find jobs again in 2-3 years, as demand for them rises. It simply doesn't rise AS fast.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
> "They" aren't out to get you.
Swallow the pill, Quaid.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hmm, maybe because the economy has been in a recession? Also, the computer tech sector is one of the most volatile, and also one that requires less formal training than some of the other hi-tech industries. It's the price you pay for going into a field that's accessible to many people. If you don't want to lose your job to overseas workers, go into chem or particle physics or something.
And now you're free, do you find that you have a purpose on this planet?
This could have been an Indian, Chinese, whoever.. this is the future where we cannot hold anyone in the third world accountable yet we expect them to handle sensitve information and intellecutal property.
/ ch ronicle/archive/2003/11/12/BUGI52VMQR1.DTL&type=bu siness
I'll get modded down but here's the article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
Breaking her silence for the first time, the Pakistani woman who threatened to release UCSF patient files on the Internet says she had "no choice" but to breach the hospital's security after being cut off by the Texas man who'd made her the final link in a long chain of clerical subcontractors.
Lubna Baloch said by e-mail from Karachi that she is "not an opportunistic person who willfully did that to gain some attention."
She said she is instead the "worst sufferer of this situation" because she was only trying to secure UCSF Medical Center's help last month in obtaining money that she was owed.
"I feel violated, helpless," she wrote, adding that she is "the most unluckiest person in this world."
Doctors at U.S. hospitals routinely dictate notes about patient visits, consultations, operations and discharges. Those notes in turn are frequently handed to outside firms that specialize in transcribing them into written form.
The case involving UCSF's patient files represents the nightmare-scenario- come-to-life for the medical industry. For about 20 years, UCSF has farmed out much of its transcription work to a Sausalito company called Transcription Stat.
Transcription Stat outsourced many of the hundreds of files received daily to a network of 15 subcontractors. One of these was a Florida woman named Sonya Newburn, who then outsourced the files yet again to a Texas man named Tom Spires.
Spires outsourced the work one more time to Baloch in Karachi, who agreed to do the transcribing for a small fraction of the amount UCSF originally paid Transcription Stat, thus allowing everyone in the chain to walk away with a modest profit.
But on Oct. 7, Baloch attached two patient files to an e-mail and contacted UCSF. She demanded that the medical facility assist her in squeezing outstanding funds from her employer, Spires.
"Your patient records are out in the open to be exposed, so you better track that person and make him pay my dues or otherwise I will expose all the voice files and patient records of UCSF Parnassus and Mt. Zion campuses on the Internet," Baloch wrote.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Oh wait here they are. They fell under the cushions next to the ethical business practices and uncorrupt politicians and CEOs who give a shit about anything other than their feed troughs full of money.
Crossover is endemic in this game. How many times have you seen stories bounce back and forth between Slashdot, Dave Farber's Intereting People list, Declan McCullagh's Politech list, EFF bulletins, NYTimes articles, FoRK, the blogiverse, Cypherpunks back when it was more active, etc.? The important thing is to keep track of the source enough to notice whether a story is new, or just a rerun, and whether two stories that seem to reinforce each other are just different retellings of the same source.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Okay, who's submitting the stories from fark?
.NET), security flaws I should patch, etc... This is the best place on the web for up to date MS info.
stoolpigeon?
Stories show up on Fark much earlier. I only come here for my Microsoft news. New products (Longhorn,
First we were farmers.
Then they started building factories, and told us that we could get rich by making things, even though lots of people got hurt or killed, the air and water got fouled, and the pay wasn't really that good after all. Then we got together and fought for better conditions, and the people that had only been consuming what we made got strong enough to build factories of their own, and the factories picked up and left.
Then they told us, "Don't worry about the factories leaving! The future is in services and intellectual property creation!" So they trained two generations of us to use computers and write memos and move paper around (at our great expense) so we could work in their service industries.
But the service industries didn't have any factories or other major infrastructural investments, so when the consumers of our software code and financial products got well-educated enough to do those things themselves, the service industries had an even easier time of it and ran for the hills.
Now they're not telling us where we're supposed to work, and not telling us how we're supposed to put our expensive educations to use, only that it'll get better some day. But what's left? No farms, no factories, empty office buildings, and even the production of the very food we eat and the houses we live in is restricted to illegal immigrants because no one is willing to pay living wages. There are some jobs that can't be moved easily - construction, machining, auto repair, but how are we supposed to support an entire economy with this?
No, I just browsed over there and copied the link. I posted as AC because I considered it karma whoring
(sarcasm)Wow I'm finally a statistic. My life is now complete and I can die happy.(/sarcasm)
Somehow this news would be more interesting if I wasn't one of the 500,000.
We don't need no stinking sig!
can people who have lost their jobs blame on foreign IT people from India or the popular Open Source?
Unless your buying into the gloom and doom from Krugman, you'll notice the economy is beginning to come around. 7.2% GDP, (some) job growth, unemployment down, productivity up. Companies are only now getting used to the growing economy, so it will be a while until job growth increases to what many people would like it to.
CISCO says it's stronger than ever, HP says it's profits have doubled... the tech buzz is back.
It looks like good news for Bush (and his tax cuts), and bad news for democrats.
1. How many jobs gained during the "bubble" of the late 90's (that was unsustainable) are factored into that count?
2. How many H1B visas that are unrenewed are part of that count? (Exploitative consulting agencies? They loved to pump up the numbers)
3. How many psuedo-engineers have rightly left the CS/IT job market because they dont have the skills?
I worked with a guy briefly in 2000 that got paid $75/hour, 60 hours a week, for a whole month (before jumping ship to greener pastures in Silicon Valley) to write some horribly broken and incomplete perl CGI code.
Yes, nasty perl CGI that didnt work. It was obvious his skills were at tech college freshman / skilled high schooler level, and yet he was able to pull in an insane wage due to irrational exhuberance.
You hear these stories, and it doesnt really sink in until you see it first hand. Things were severely out of balance.
We are almost out of the hangover. If you are truly skilled, you can find a job with some elbow grease and effort 98% of the time. You may need to relocate, you may need to settle for something less than ideal, but they are out there.
The tech services (specifically programming / engineering) are picking up and we are on course for a return to semi-normality. But against the backdrop of insane compensation and free flowing VC cash, even normalcy appears spartan.
The best thing you can do for a career in IT is to truly love it and find it fascinating. This will keep your skills sharp as you experiment and play with cutting edge technologies on your own, and maybe on your job, and also provide the motivation needed to obtain a deeper understanding of the many details associated with programming, system administration, engineering, etc.
If you are in this field for the money, you wont have the drive to stay afloat.
FACT 2: There is a limited demand for your job.
FACT 3: For practical purposes, there is an unlimited supply of people who can learn your job.
Now justify your standard of living.
Note: "I am American, and thus entitled to living better than 90% of the world's population." is not a convincing argument.
Unless you're doing something that only you can do, expect your wage to fall to a level that is attractive only to the poorest people in the world.
Moral: learn to do something remarkable, or accept that you don't deserve more than three meals a day and a warm place to sleep.
yes, and when the military is gone, all our base belong to the new candian overlords?
Their big worry now is, "Holy Fuck! What happens when the pendulum slams back to the left!" Sure, they can flee the country and take their money with them, but what do they do if a reactionary leftist comes into power and gets to command the world's nastiest military force? Their wealth exists only at the pleasure of military force, and now, suddenly, they no longer control the preeminent military force.
Job losses in the tech industry and an overthrow of the government do not go hand in hand.
Ergo, the Diebold solution. A preemptive strike against democracy. Why worry about how the masses will vote when you can hack into Access instead? And who's going to tell? ABC News?
But, hey... if you really think you can "hack into Access" and prevent Bush from being re-elected in 2004, then I'm your new best friend. Unfortunately, elections of importance are still being done the old fashioned way.
They put into motion a series of events that have conspired to emaciate the economy, and with it, any hopes of their further aggregating power.
Keep up the conspiracy theories, friend. I'm sure you'll prove them someday.
I've read a lot of this kind of rhetoric in the news... Decline has slowed indeed! That's sorta like the guy who jumps out a tall building, and halfway down says ... well, it hasn't been too bad so far!
was Re: Military: good jobs, good training
There was a thread about technical job training in the military here on Slashdot a few days ago.
There seems to be this overpowering urge to point fingers at foreign (read: Indian) workers, but they are only taking advantage of a situation OUR politicos have allowed to exist.
[Obligatory Socialist Slashdot Slant]Big business BAD, blaw, blaw, blaw, blaw...[/OSSS]
is that you Donny Rumsfeld? Are you trying to boost military enlistment without having to reinstate the draft? Election year is bad timing, so I recommend you wait until AFTER Bush is re-elected by Diebold.
cpeterso
In the last few months, I have watched the number of tech-job listings rise to the pre-dot-com bubble-burst level. The best data they have is from 1 year after the dot-com bubble-burst.
Relax folks, the recovery's on - beers on me.
There was a typo in the story; here is the corrected version. Sorry about that!
A study, released today by the AeA, shows that the U.S. high-tech industry lost 540,000 jobs in 2002, dropping from 0.6 million to 0.06 million. However, a preliminary look at data for 2003 shows that the decline in high-tech employment has slowed considerably this year."
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
At my work we layed off several people and thos eof us that stayed were given 2% raises (for me it worked out to about $800 more a year) I'd honestly rather have more coworkers than $800/yr more that I don't even notice.
Ave Molech Setting
The toilet-cleaning, and dirty/noisy job, and food service industry has picked up the slack.
"World Gains 500,000 jobs from US"
[IRONY]If you choose to live in a country where nine grand a year doesn't go very far, that's your problem, right? It's not that US techs are paid too much, it's that the cost-of-living in US (and Europe too, for that mattter) is innordinately high by world standards. Until this problem is rectified, US workers can use stopgaps like living with your parents and eating at the homeless shelter and shopping at the foodbank occasionally.[/IRONY]
you didn't seem to read the very short article- It can't continue growing if its Declining! This kind of doublespeak in the media is a worrying sign. There is no reason to think "people will find jobs." Feel free to panic!
People deperately need to learn this lesson.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Regardless, individual stories of people who got fired/layed off/whatever are barking up the wrong tree in this thread. This has to do with macroeconomic supply, demand, and productivity. And I'm going to argue that things are _better_ with these types of market corrections.
First off, I'm just not buying the 'overseas' argument. I think the people hit hardest are web designers and other low-tech technical people (and some niche high-tech people) - en masse, the jobs just didn't need doing, rather than things that needed doing but are easily farm-out-able. The latter set of jobs seems to me to be rather minimal anyway.
Understand that jobs lost numbers are not 'people who lost their jobs', but 'these jobs no longer exist' - it's not necessarily the case that we 'lost' them to someone else.
Question: of the jobs lost, how many of those didn't need to be done? Answer: all of them (when taken in aggregate). Either the companies died, the work the people did wasn't valuable, or the individuals themselves were not very good and others took up the slack anyway.
Taken not in the individual case, but in general - good people get hired to do something else, and the bottom strata have to find jobs in another industry - arguably, they shouldn't have been here in the first place, but they rode the wave. Sure, there will always be individual cases where this isn't true - usually due to people who are not, for one reason or another, willing to go where the jobs are. (Only these last people are ones for whom a 'move to india' (or wherever new jobs are going) actually makes sense).
What this means is that the salaries for these jobs have either gone into: something not technical but useful, lower prices, stockholder equity, or higher CEO compensation (or any of the other drains on productivity, like lawyers, or increased state taxes, or whatever).
In 3 of the 4 cases, that's a GOOD thing. Note that CEO compensation, and perques in general, haven't been increased due to the bust, and despite SCO, I haven't heard of Lawyers and such hangers-on's incomes being spectacular.
What this means is that if productivity stays high, the total amount of work done has become cheaper. If productivity goes lower, that means that the lost work being done before wasn't valuable - if it was, then it would still be being done (market forces driving production). Finally, in either case, those who _did_ migrate from one job to another are hopefully doing something 'better' (usually are - most of the 'best work' of a job is done in the first year or two, IMO, and someone made a recent decision that this job was worth doing enough to hire someone).
So, all in all, a decline in jobs isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's very possibly a good thing. It's a "correction" of an inherent weakness, and might make us stronger and more productive because of it.
500 billion dollars to kill people??? thats outragious!!! when it can be done for much cheaper by useing up older nuclear ICBMs left over from the cold war, might as well use em up doing something constructive er em destructive
Remember the two towers coming down? Remember how no one wanted to use the airlines for a long time? We actually had about a week where NO scheduled airlines flew at all...never before has that happened, since airlines began.
And this all followed the dot-bomb days where investors woke up to the fact that business rules DO apply to this WWW-thing...and before the planes were grounded, MUCH work was already being shifted to India, for example.
People seem to want to think this year is just like last, and the last is just like the one before....but no: didn't anyone turn on the seatbelt light?!?
I believe you'll see a growing, strengthening IT industry in the next few years. The gold-rush people are all in biotech and other speculative areas if they're not on welfare, so sanity can return and people can go back to work. Yahoo, Google, BUNCHES of companies that kept themselves sane are now returning a good profit and are worth their price.
Sure, we took quite a hit...but it's ok: we're coming back. It's gonna get better!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
But mostly just the unnecessary jobs were cut, and unprofitable businesses shut down.
= your laptop is configured with an IDE that -you- like (my Emacs, VisualStudio+VisualAssist and IntelliJ are heavily customized, I doubt that if you have vstudio you have vassist installed for example) not in a way that the candidate is familiar with.
= the programming problems you have on your laptop are related to your domain and thus require extremely specific domain knowledge (which the candidate might know but not use during their current day job, hence the need for documentation which you probably won't have).
= your laptop has a laptop keyboard: it's next to impossible for some people to program on one of those with any speed, for example I've been using a 'natural keyboard' for many years now.
= 15 minutes is a very short time when you're under stress b/c you're in an interview, you have the interviewee staring at you, in unfamiliar surroundings with absolutely no time to get 'in the zone'.
If in the current economy you haven't been able to find a good developer in SIX MONTHS (especially if you're in a technological area) it's likely more related to your interviewing style and/or compensation/requirement balance.
OTOH if your job requirement is to find somebody that can go at a client's site, using the client's hardware and whiz-bang code a product for them on the spot you might be right in using what you do...
Just my 2c
-- the cake is a lie
IT infrastructure or research/explorations. I personally could use a metro/subway station in my neighborhood.
Contact your state or local represtatives. There is no reason the federal government should be paying for those projects. About the only thing the feds should collect taxes for is to have money to be able to kill people should the need arise.
The report said the big losses were in electronics manufacturing and telecommunications. Telecom's no surprise - we were a big part of the crash, after being even more radically overoptimistic and overbuilt and overspent than the web+advertising+software game, but manufacturing is more interesting. It sounds like some of this is a statistical problem - the category sounds like it includes electronics manufacturing companies, so losing developers gets lumped together with losing physical assembly work because customers aren't buying products, or moving the labor offshore or replacing people with robots. On the other hand, some of the commentary I've read on this sounds like the US is losing some of the final assembly work as well as the low-level component board work.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"the decline in high-tech employment has slowed considerably this year"
Lets face it; the only reason that the exportation of jobs has slowed is because the pool of jobs that can be outsourced is declining.
2001 employed 20 workers outsourced 0, outsourced/fired 10
= 50% reduction of liability.
2002 employed 10 workers outsourced 10, outsourced/fired 5
= 50% decrease in outsourcing.
2003 employed 5 outsourced 15 (CEO, CFO, 2 secretaries, 1 receptionist); outsourced/fired 0
= No increase in outsourcing.
And people wonder why the economy sucks.....
The article does not mention if this is a net loss or a gross loss. This small detail will widely vary the topic's importance.
Job losses in the tech industry and an overthrow of the government do not go hand in hand.
Sure they do. These jobs in the tech industry were the ones hailed by Clinton as those that would be aplenty with the passage of GATT and NAFTA. These were to be the good paying jobs that would emerge once we got rid of all those nasty low-paying jobs, or so they said.
Not only does that turn out to be wrong, but it now appears they knew it was shit all along. The same corrupt politicians who brought us NAFTA and GATT also brought us the H1B visa and otherwise paved the way for the exodus of the same new jobs they claimed would be created by NAFTA/GATT.
But, hey... if you really think you can "hack into Access" and prevent Bush from being re-elected in 2004, then I'm your new best friend.
You haven't been paying attention. Chief amongst the exploits being performed against Diebold's "voting systems" are compromising the database used to tally the results, which, incredibly, is MS Access.
Keep up the conspiracy theories, friend. I'm sure you'll prove them someday.
They're already proven! Diebold has already been shown to be corrupt! The exodus of good-paying jobs from America under a policy advertised as securing these jobs instead is a fact! Exactly what conspiracy theory are you referring to here? The one that accuses the government of doing something they've already been proven to do?
Hilarious!
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
That's odd, cause I'm pretty sure you're using the internet, which was a government development.
Chances are your cell phone has some form of a GPS locator (or another device you own does), another government development.
I'm almost positive you use federal highways, take a guess who made those.
Have a drivers licence? Who runs the DMV?
Those 12 years of schooling you got for free as a kid? Guess who?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
http://www.freepressed.com/manufacturing.htm
Blue Collar Workers move to China, India to reclaim lost jobs
Mass exodus of manufacturing jobs prompts mass migration of American workers to the Third World.
Kellerman hopes he will fit in at his new job in Calcutta. Free Trade Zone--Thousands of blue collar workers are leaving the United States in pursuit of the 2.7 manufacturing jobs that moved
overseas during the past three years.
Deke Kellerman, a worker at the recently-closed Maytag Plant in Galesburg, Illinois, is moving his family to India so that he can keep his job constructing refrigerators. His pay will be cut from $11.95 to a whooping 35 cents an hour.
"There aren't any jobs here in the states anymore," Kellerman said. "So me and Missy, Deke Jr. and Delyn decided we'd move over there and
give it a shot. I figure as long as they got a Mickey D's and I can catch the Bears on TV, I'll be happy."
The Kellermans are not the only family from the closed Maytag plant that are moving half-way around the world to save their jobs.
Buel Jackson, his wife, Mary and their children Tucker, Conroy and Beldin followed Jackson's job all the way to the slums of Surat in the Western Indian State of Gujaret.
"Sure, we don't have any running water, tuberculosis is rampant and, last week, a couple of buildings in the slum collapsed, killing a bunch of people, but we're happy...sort of," Jackson said.
In the Jackson family's one-room abode, the children sleep on mats on the floor. The youngest child, Beldin, lay on the floor sweating from a
severe bout of dengue fever.
"The hardest part for me has been getting used to the food," said Mary Jackson, as she placed a cool cloth on her son's forehead. "We
can't afford any."
The slums of Surat may be infested with diseased rats and open sewers, but at least it's close to the sweatshop where the Jackson family works
together.
Mary Jackson who used to weigh a portly 180 pounds has lost 50 pounds since the family moved to India three months ago.
She moved about the apartment wearing an Eskimo Joe shirt underneath a Sari.
While the Jackson family used to regularly throw away several pounds of food per week, they now pour a little water into their bowls after they
have had their daily allotment of rice so that they can sop up every last morsel of food.
Besides Buel, the rest of the family also works on the assembly line at the Maytag plant for 12 hours a day eeking out barley enough money to
survive.
The mass exodus of manufacturing jobs started during President Reagan's tenure and gained steam when President Clinton signed the NAFTA free trade agreement, which opened up the borders between the US and Mexico. The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has led to the further loss of jobs. Both groups have loopholes that allow them to overturn national laws in areas such as safety and environmental standards.
"Increasing poverty and joblessness in the United States is not just an afterthought of our policy; it's the main motivation," said Robert Noriega, an assistant secretary of state. "Free trade is primarily about taking jobs away from Americans and creating economies based on slave labor round the world for the financial benefit of multi-national corporations."
Pittsburgh, PA Steel Worker Thomas Barrett, moved his family to Shuiye Town in the Henan Province of China to work for Huaguan Iron and Steel Co. after his company, Bethlehem Steel, shuttered its door earlier this year.
Thomas and Amy Barrett couldn't ask for better jobs except ones that paid enough to friggin' eat on. Barrett works 14 hours a day in unsafe conditions while his children are schooled at the state-run Communist public school where they are
taught anti-American propaganda and to hate Buddhists.
"Well, we couldn't continued to compete against the slave wages that they pay over here in China so I decided if you can't beat them join them,
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
writing in a language designed FOR GAMES FOR MOBILE PHONES is FAR TOO FUCKING MUCH.
It wasn't designed for games. It's just the phone makers who hijacked it for that!
GET A JOB AT McFuckingDOnalds already
Screw McFuckingDOnalds, it's no fun. Get a job on a ranch, involving lots of mares!
I know, don't feed the trolls.
Those are C++ problems
Yeah, that's odd, considering the position makes heavy use of C++.
concerning the minutae of a programming language
The second problem is a general problem-solving capability test that has nothing to do with languages, but you knew that already, didn't you?
Character frequencies are a quick test of programming ability, whatever the language. Tell the interviewee he can pick his language. I agree with your point on the first question, though. I've been doing C++ for about years and I still have to look up weird templates, static/dynamic cast semantics, and other stuff. At one point I depended on destructors being called in reverse order of constructors. Not knowing it off the top of my head, I looked it up, and lo and behold it was part of the C++ spec. I wouldn't have expected anyone to have such knowledge memorized.
Apparently the civilian world hasn't caught up to vacuum tube technology based on my advanced electronics military training. Maybe in a few years the civilian sector will catch up and I go put my military training to use in a high paying job.
...actually, my job was nuclear fission based propulsion so, I'm eagerly awaiting nuclear ski boats.
Steve Forbes says you don't sell copy anymore and won't push you version of the truth, but maybe we can have a friendly sparring match instead...
- love, everyone at slashdot
I'd be insulted that you think so little of my intelligence as to ask me questions concerning the minutae of a programming language.
The problem is, this isn't pedantic dick waving over obscure language features. This is C++ 101 - Basic skill level.
Those kinds of mistakes in a code base cause memory problems (incorrect delete), weird behavior artifacts and/or memory leaks (non virtual destructors) etc.
This is the kind of stuff you learn in entry level c++ development, and certainly a fair expectation to have for anyone applying for a c++ development position.
For almost two decades, the IT industry, in the form of corporate IT departments have been telling their masters:
"Invest in technology, and it will pay off in increased productivity and profits."
For the past 10+ years, the IT industry, in the form of software and hardware vendors, have seen their profits soar as a result of this investment, and developed the perfect mechanism for milking it for consistent, quarterly results: The Upgrade.
The Upgrade has killed the golden goose. The consistent, repetitive costly upgrade... while padding the bottom line of IT Vendors, has eroded the bottom line of the Corporate World.
Increased expediture, planned and worse, ENFORCED obsolescence, ever-increasing headcounts, etc etc etc.
The CEO's and CFO's have had enough, and they aren't taking it anymore. From their perspective IT is a money pit. An endless drain on financial and human resources.
Ane we are wondering why the tech sector is stagnant at best right now? Technology is immature, yet we kept on praising it as the solution to all problems! Arrogance of our superiority and ignorance of true business needs were the dominant perceptions of your average IT department over the past decade or so. Now is the time for their revenge.
The holders of the purse strings want to see some of that return on investment before they'll spend like that again.
Our profession needs to learn humility, and nothing does that better than a financial ass-kicking.
Don't rely on those people. Most of them are driven by Greed(stock price) so therefore they will cut your job and offshore to India or China.
.
Diversify and do two jobs at once like own a business(brick & mortar franchise,subway ?) and have one tech job.
You can rely one or the other in bad times
Be entrepreneurial and be your own boss.
And don't be a suit and offshore jobs like a Phile Knight at Nike.(his shoes cost cents to make but he markets them here for hundreds and idiots buy them , does he care about the States. NOPE).
There is zero lack of community anymore in this country. It's now everyone for themselves and lets open a factory in China.
And in other news, the primary job of a soldier is to be a soldier. Yes, they train you to kill people. Maybe that's because that's the purpose of the military, to wage war.
I mean I realize this is the modern military under preasure from the flowerpower movement, but when it comes down to it, the military has one primary purpose and that is to wage war.
BTW, all that money you're bitching about being spent in the military, ever consider a breakdown of where that goes?
Salleries, food, shelter make up a huge chunk of that.
Then there's research and development, which suprisingly enough, even though it's research into how to kill more efficiently, it still benefits modern society. Or have you forgotten GPS, radar and jet engines? Perhaps you don't like using the internet? You would be truely suprised how much of the money spent on the military is going to something other than putting bullets into bodies.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The modern reality concerning so called "tech jobs" is that they are, indeed, moving and going to be moving more and more to other countries where the labor is cheaper. It's a fact and although I don't care much for this fact, nothing is likely going to change it. Instead of hoping it gets better or complaining how some Indian took your job, there are some option you should consider first.
First, if you have no degree and you make a living programming or involving yourself somehow in Tech, be scared. You live on your wit and although you are probably a good programmer, there is one or is going to be one in India soon. They will work for less as well. You should probably go to school to even think about getting a job in the future.
For those of us going to school or that have graduated, time to get more education. Jobs going to China and India are a sign of our increasing specialization and demand for higher education. Going to grad school is a very good idea and it's a good time to go as the economy is suffering and it's not exactly a bull market for the tech type right now. In short, you're not missing anything with your current degree that won't be there in 4 years when you have a masters or Ph.D..
We simply have an increasing desire for highly educated, specialized work. You have to put yourself into a position where an Indian cannot take your job. It's the same as when blue collar labor started moving over seas. People found they had to go to college. That has fine for awhile but now that some white collar jobs are moving we are finding we need more education. Get educated and really become good at something, like really good. If you're really into computers, find an area that really appeals to you. Network and communication theory? Graphics? Databases? It's not enough to know how to program these things (remember that India can do it too, and cheaper), you have to be highly skilled in it.
As our industry grows (it seems like it's getting smaller, but more and more things have computers) things really do become more complex. There are tons of positions for these people right now. Graphic gurus who can work in the medical field working with graphic processing, etc is huge right now.
Another thing is while pursuing more education, don't just stick with computers. Learn about business, medical things or something else so you can apply your knowledge of computers to these concepts. You then become the inventor and become a part of a team working on new things for a company, or even your company. These things, being cutting edge and all, will not be shipped away. The jobs being shipped away are jobs low skilled computer "tech" people can do.
Lets face it, the cat is out of the bag and not much education is needed to program something. A large portion of our tech industry here has no formal education but still make a living hacking, so why wouldn't some Indian be able to do the same, and for less? It's simple, get more education. A Bachelors doesn't always do it now days.
Think, highly educated, highly skilled and with some good genes and a bit of luck you will have them coming to you, and offering things to you to get you hired. It's more complex than this (as you actually have to do it!) but these kinds of people don't get over looked.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I work in the electronics industry. It works like this, before we did final assembly her in good old usa, so we purchased parts made in usa.
Now final assembly is offshore, so the best is to purchase the parts locally.
First they buy equipment here, and assemble there. Next they build equipment there. There goes all the assembly, machine fabrication, chip assembly, plastic molding, and it goes much deeper.
There's one of those as the FP already!
(and just imagine what shame would such modding bring to the troll!)
Our test is: read in a fixed length file, display it, add/remove/edit a record in it, save it back out. you may use Any language of your choice and you may use google. we have not in 3 years had a developer take the full hour and finish even a rough program to do it. Degree or no, nobody can do it... The funny thing is that all of us finished it in 15-20 minutes back in 1999 I dunno what that means, but I do know that there is a not "Glut" of developers, but a glut of people calling themselves something they are not.
Yep. One of the first things they told me in Navy boot camp was that our job was to kill people when necessary.
And that was fine with me, because some people needed killing, in this case, in North Vietnam. I helped do that, although I never was directly involved. I have no regrets. In fact, if I wasn't so old, I go back in because a whole bunch more people need killing if we are to survive in this age of man-portable weapons of mass destruction.
Some people imagine that no violence is needed in the world... that somehow magic will happen and the sociopaths and other bad guys will just decide they'd rather sit around and contemplate their navels.
These people are idiots, ignorant of history, and free riders on the efforts of those of us who pay attention and volunteered to do something about it.
The only good weather is bad weather.
It can't be Open Source!
Just look at all of those TCO studies showing how much retraining and retooling is needed with an OSS solution. Open source requires more people to admin, more people to code "nonstandard software", more trainers and help-desk people...
It is just more cost-efficient to go with a single-source solution: Think of all the Money (job$) you will save, and how much Overhead(job$)you will not have to worry about by Avoiding Open Source
1)Everyone for themselves.
2) Greed,Greed,Greed.
3)I am moving my factory to China, so screw you.
4) We need to raise our stock prices so we will fire employess so I as a CEO can make more from Stock Options.
5) Fair Trade = mandated quotas on imports from countries that ban our exports.
6) Free Trade = Allow all countries with trade barriers to American products be allowed unfettered access to U.S. markets. Allow as much capital to leave the country dry and raise unemployment.
7) Lets ship all jobs overseas because that should create lower prices for those products and we all be richer and we wont have to work at all ! Keep dreaming.
... so I deserve a higher standard of living than those that live without.
... or encrypt the file system
Working for a firm is a big risk, as we see from these numbers. It's a truism that there isn't any sort of corporate loyalty to employees; there is just loyalty to quarterly earnings. The people who make jobs, ie employers, don't make them as an end in themselves. They make jobs in order to make money.
/.) and sometimes the firm works to help ACX (and sometimes it lays him off unexpectedly.)
Every person in the workforce is working to provide for themselves and is working as a means to that end. (Of course, that isn't always the only end, but it is always an end.) If we think of a firm delegating software engineering to "Anonymous Coward X" when they hire ACX, we can also think of ACX delegating marketing, AR/AP, accounting, etc. to the firm. Sometimes ACX works to help the firm (sometimes he posts at legnth on
There's a risk to delegating your source of income to a firm that doesn't have any loyalty to you. And there are risks to taking all those functions on yourself. But if no one is looking to delegate software engineering, maybe ACX is better off by giving up on finding a firm to take over his revenue generation.
Intellectuals! Liberals! Peacemongers! IDIOTS!!!
Draft Dodgers:
The new passwords at the Canadian border are: "Bingo" or "Casino."
Despite the PSAs by Tim Hortons, "Roll up the RRRRim" is code for "I'm an American! I hate Canada, and I demand a strip search."
"I'm an American! I hate Canada and I demand a strip search." will also work.
Agent J. MacDonald, CCRA Port 410
I was an Electronics Tech, as well...and I know the score!
The Navy is organized for the benefit of the Lifers (those who have been in a long time and have seniority) and officers. Do not join the Navy. THis is Fair Warning!
FTN!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It always amazes me how middle managers and marketing suits are lumped in and considered "tech" jobs, how much code are they writing, or what new research are they doing. These jobs may have been at tech companies but I would wager most of these jobs were positions that shouldn't have been to begin with.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
of US workers.
It also appears that rather than creating jobs in the US, H-1b and L-1 have been intensively used to facilitate outsourcing and to facilitate movement of capital to places like India. For example, Enron had 21,000 employees worldwide, about half were in the United States, and they had over 4700 Visa applications(overwhelmingly from India). Interestingly, out of $12 Billion of shareholders losses, at least $3 billion wound up in India.
Bad trade deals, including the WTO/NATFA have played a very important role causing the US currency to be highly valued, creating a large trade imbalence and locking the US into worker replacement programs like H-1b/L-1, and into the present tax structure.
The sad thing is that the US range of options is rather limited. We have a nuclear power that has shrinking manufacturing capability and enormous amounts of debt held by powers that have their own agendas.
Plus there are more IT jobs there because they don't have H1B visas. Just be sure to have an EU parent or grandparent....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
End of the dot.com bubble? Foreign outsourcing? Are these the main problems, or just diversions?
/. reader can see that mostly we are. This current mess may soon be looked back upon as a small, bad spot in the road.
America is under an administration which is fundamentally anti-tech; or, to the degree it is pro-tech, is pro-yesterday's tech and not tomorrow's (except when tomorrow's can be used to spy on the citizenry, or rig an election). While Jeb may not be in the chain of command (altho he's a factor in the planned chain of succession) his keeping that poor brain-dead woman alive is emblematic of a mindset that's a blend of old technology and older theology, united against the wild promises of the future.
The tomorrow of the 90s really was more hopeful, even if we got taken by hucksters. Now we've got less hope for the moment, and leadership put in place by the very hucksters (e.g. Ken Lay) who betrayed the future then. To beat them, and restore robust economic opportunities for those with technological competencies, we need to defeat the alliance of old-tech interests (particularly in the energy sector), and those whose power base is religious doctrines which are in active denial of the realities of both our senses and our sciences.
We also have to make clearer to the wider public the difference between liberty as exemplified in the openness and freedom of certain software, and liberty as a mask for the power of a Gates or a Bush. Freedom without vision is both mindless and dangerous, and the variety of freedom offered by a Gates or a Bush requires the willing wearing of blinders ("blinkers" for British readers), and is thus seriously diminished. The triumph of tech is on the widest horizons. It requires the rigours of science and of wide-eyed exploration of the best potentials of the world. And this requires a new politics, and new models of business that are consonant with the expression of open source development, even of those very models.
We can do it. But it will be seriously delayed, even imperiled, if we don't head off the current plans for a Roman-style American Imperium. The most productive societies in business have often been the most open and free of their time: Athens, Venice, Amsterdam, London, New York, Hong Kong - each has burned brightest when freedom most brightly circulated there. While the lechery of Rome may have distinct attractions for the currently-monied, it sucks for tech employment (other than for the minders of tech toys deployed on the front lines of world occupation). We in tech should be quite clear on which side our bread is buttered.
And the thing is, a
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Thanks /.!
I hate to break it to you, but if you can't make a product better than volunteer competition then your product does not deserve a viable place in the market anyway.
Sometimes we get so worked up about failures that we can't stop to think whether the venture was worthwhile in the first place. If your product adds so little value that it gets smoked by free competition, then I'd have to say it's not a very valuable product at all.
I'm assuming this takes into account the jobs lost to India and other overseas locations. If companies want to do that, pile additional taxes on them. The same should hold true for all other companies that insist on doing more for the bottom line then for citizens (and residents) of the U.S.
Bark less. Wag more.
I can't not stop reading at eof.
The claim that people that are rich get rich by doing remarkable things is bogus--some do, far more simply lie, cheat and steal effectively. Money is a poor measure of someone's contribution. Look at Kary Mullis-he built and entire industry and got $20K for a patent sold for over $100 Million(he got the Nobel Prize and Japan Medal-but that was inspite of Cetus management, not because of it).
The problem is that as we speak every semester is pumping out more and more computer science majors. The current IT market is already saturated with experienced programmers, network security engineers, and IT jobs in general. It's hard for the qualified people to land jobs because of the ton of unqualified applicants that companies have to weed through.
We all know that the market was loaded with unqualified people before the bust but demand was so high we took them in anyways in hopes that they could be trained, most were. This model just doesn't work anymore. The people that should have never been in IT in the first place should look for work elsewhere and anyone going after a computer science major now should think about switching before they enter a bloated marketplace.
Nick Powers
Resume
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Good point. You can also be a contractor for the military doing work for them that they will never farm out overseas.
Most people don't care about US statistics.
You go where the jobs are, regardless of the moral implications of said job. It really should be up to the American people to decide that they shouldn't have to spend $500 billion a year to KILL PEOPLE.
No, you go where the jobs are, especially because of the moral implications. It is a very fine time to work for the military and people who do deserve credit.
And contrary to your rediculous position, the American people have decided. It sounds like you are pretending they haven't because you are in denial about the fact that they just don't find your warm-ed over '60's mentality very persuasive when radical extremists would like to destroy us because we don't subscribe to their wacked out world view.
The simple fact is that America has rightly decided some people need to be killed and are acting accordingly. When the alternative is doing nothing and watching our buildings fall down or watching Israeli babies blown to bits by suicide bombers, it's immoral to not persue the will of the American people to use the military to destroy the evil which assails us.
it's queers, but they are really crab people in disguise.
Even the money spent on putting bullets or bombs into bodies isn't always spent on just making a weapon. Beleive it or not, the military doesn't want to kill civilians. Nor does the government for that matter. A lot of money is dumped into research to make safer weapons that not only don't kill our guys, but don't kill the wrong people either.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
boo hoo hoo!
So... who are you voting for the Demoplicans or the Republicrats? Make your choice count!
PYHOOYA!
?? Im confused. According to GWB the economy is great, and there is no unemployment...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Interesting.... You know that between both Bush administrations not a single net job has been created.
Sure a certain amount of jobs that were lost were not needed. Companies are also not spending money on things that they actually need. I.E. I just developed online training for a major software company. It took a year. They loved it. They want lots more of it. Their budget shrank and poof they were not able to retain me. They still desperately need the training and I need the work. Its very narrow minded to think that all spending that is not taking place is because it was not needed.
My karma is getting better everyday.
Trying to keep this pertinent to the whole readership, not just Amero-centric.
It all boils down to being a commodity in a global market:
Who of you will pay the extra money to buy a commonplace item that is made by local craftsmen instead of going to the local big-box store and getting a cheaper import? Face it, programming is not a specialty skill set. Anyone with the proper training and tools can do it. Just as anyone with the proper training and tools can build a car, make steel, or make shoes and clothes.
Everyone wants to buy cheap and sell dear, to do that you have to trim the cost of goods sold. If the goods sold happen to be software, or customer support or memory chips, then you have to go with the lowest cost supplier that will give you the quality that you need.
Figure out a way to become less of a commodity - if your job can be done by someone else for less money, why should I pay more for you?
I'm in the process of re-inventing myself right now; creating a complex skill-set that when combined with my experience could not be outsourced locally or overseas. I also have re-evaluated the market value of my skills and experience based on real-world numbers.
I shop for the best bargains, why should I fault my employers for doing the same?
Fuck all of you faggots typing in front of a TV like a buncha bitches.Get a REAL job!
In other news, 500,000 jobs have been created in the new "SCO lawsuit" industry. Film at 11.
If well salaried IT workers were doing simple work that was easily replaceable and commoditized they would have been replaced a long time ago. The IT field has been pretty strong for the past few decades and is still strong even after a lot of pessimism and a large bust. Any free economy wouldn't support such a large group of workers at a high salary if they weren't needed or could be replaced via a cheaper alternative.
The achievements and feats accomplished by the IT industry have been amazing. Can you honestly look at the brilliant tech workers in this industry and say their work isn't hard? You think you can hire some dollar an hour button pusher to do the work of a Bill Joy or a John Carmack? I can tell you've never had a part in building any kind of great engineering.
It sounds like you would just love to personally administer a lesson and guilt trip to IT workers around the country by visiting them and handing out pink slips with a self-righteous attitude. But that's irrelevant to the value of the industry.
I'd peg you as unsuccessful and bitter and you take pleasure in seeing others suffer similar fate.
...that they offered the position in the first place. Folks, if they can't afford you, they shouldn't have been interviewing you or extending offers. A layoff like that means they needed the person but didn't have the money to pay them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Though there was an unnecessary jab at Dems there, he has a point. The GDP is up, productivity is increasing. You'll note some other leading economic indicators, such as avg # of hours worked, are also on the rise. Employment is a lagging indicator, there's usually not a significant rise in employment until well into a recovery.
.. is a loss of a high tech job? He's been replaced by some 'high tech' app that does his job.
How many are actually high tech?
The article in question claims that 540,000 jobs were lost in 2002. Hmm... let's say the average high-tech worker makes US$75,000 (it's probably closer to US$40,000). What's 540,000 jobs times US$75,000? My my, it's US$40.5 billion.
By not spending its cash hoard, presumably on purchases, acquisitions, etc. in the high-tech industry, Microsoft has cost the equivalent, or perhaps literally, all the lost techs job suffered in 2002.
The scenario is a little more disturbing when more realistic numbers are plugged in. 540,000 jobs times US$40,000 (a more realistic avg. salary) is US$21.6 billion. In other words, Microsoft has twice again enough cash to more than make up for all lots tech jobs of 2002. Sobering, especially as their profits increase.
While the numbers above may be somewhat dubious, what is unavailably clear is this: Microsoft sitting on its huge pile of cash can do nothing good for the industry.
The fact that the job-loss rate has slowed is not necessarily good. It's always pointed to as a sign of economic recovery, when in fact all it means is that the rate of deterioration has decreased.
I think that the layoff rate is going to accelerate again. The fact that the dot-com boom produced hundreds of thousands of 19 year old CIOs means that there are that many people-- young, hungry, flexible-- who are willing to work much cheaper, and perhaps smarter, than old fogeys like me and maybe you. But hey, I'm sure the Bush administration will fix everything...
I'm using this time as an opportunity to go back to school and finish a college degree-- in my case, biotech. I think there's going to be a boom in biotechnology that's going to dwarf the dotcoms, and it'll be a subject that's going to be far more difficult for the average person to learn, both because of subject matter and because of the much greater infrastructure required for learning. It's going to be harder for them to fake knowledge by submitting resumes packed with buzzwords to hundreds of companies knowing that one of the fish is bound to bite.
That is, until Microsoft comes out with gel-chromatography equipment. That's kind of a disturbing thought.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
The people we kill have the option of changing their behavior, culture, and ideology so as not to warrant killing.
Fact: Because of our technology, per-capita productivity towards peoples' standard of living, in my field of expertise, is of an order of magnitude 10 times more than that of people 500 years ago, and 100 times more than that of people 3000 years ago.
Fact: The same can be said for most industries (farming, for example).
Fact: Things were livable for most people back 500 years, and back 3000 years. Therefore, they should be livable now.
My desired standard of living (a family wage) is thus justified.
Fact: Things are not livable today for most people.
Now it's your turn. Please justify your local CEO's, congressman's, banker's, stock broker's, (etc) standard of living, as well as that of anyone else with a standard of living more than 5 times that of the people they manage.
Fact: things are a tad messed up. Our country is just a tad disordered, and our magnates are just a tad too busy disordering the world.
Fact: Disordering destroys order. Things are going to break down further.
Quite simply, we have to get back to some basics, like depending on God, obeying God, and stuff like that, or we're going to continue disordering our world, and it won't be pleasant.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
+1 IT jobs aren't the bulk of the economy.
I know of at least two "high tech" jobs that were "lost" in 2002 was because the employees were completely worthless. Some of the jobs lost were because companies were trimming the fat. Some of you who lost your job did so because you were worthless and should have never been hired in the first place.
Finally. Someone around here who has the balls to speak the truth. Thanks for nothing, Clinton.
G.W.'s finally getting Clinton's bad economy turned around. The economy was already turning sour when Clinton was in office. However, the liberal media spin constantly blames the GOP. Funny. George W. wasn't even in office (or elected, for that matter) before the economy went south.
So George W. is spending all those government budget surpluses, huh? Projected surpluses, actually - based on projections of tax revenue from a bull economy. So, really, there wasn't going to be any surplus regardless of which political flavor was in office.
If Gore won the election, CNN would be blaming the republican-controlled Congress... sigh. How gullible is America?
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
I look for more generalized problem solving skills, and creative solutions. Thus the second problem is fair game and the solution to use the Unix sort command or awk or sed instead of C++ would give them an A in my book. The first problems should be caught be a good compiler with the warnings set to a high level. The unsafe cast would be flagged, the destructor and wrong kind of delete may or may not have been. I would guess the parent poster was looking for a C++ guru not just a programmer as those type of errors are not trvial to find!
that is why the UK govt has sold out the people, just like in the USA. But look to the other EU countries. Not quite the same, is it? That is because THEY have proportional representation....
Also, with respect to the dole, in addition to the 80 pounds ($125 or so) per week, you also get cheap housing, right? Well, here in the USA, the unemployment is also less than $125/wk and it runs out in about 6 months. And then all we have is food stamps which is about $100/month or so....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
When were you in?
I know that the only thing I see are EMENIM wannabees in the NAVY.
The Navy isn't what it used to be.
The jobs we ship to people "willing" to work cheaper do not, for the most part, improve the lives of those they go to. We destroy the land the local populace used to at least manage to survive on, make them wage slaves for a pittance far below liveable, and when Nike, or Union Carbide, or Walmart, or whatever company, finally gets bored and moves elsewhere, they leave slums and wastelands.
You want an example? Mexico. Manufactures are leaving there because they can find yet cheaper wages in China and India. Mexico's economy is in a tailspin right now because of this.
Thus, China or India could be the next Mexico once some other nation becomes a "better target".
Table-ized A.I.
That's great news. I only hope they counted the job I lost last April. I wouldn't want to be left out.
Been there. Been done by that. I've already been run-over twice.
Still looking for the opportunity to be run-over a third time...
The military also acts as an effective deterrent to conflicts around the world. There are countless instances that could have led to a war, had there not been a threat of a significant military action as a deterrent. The current level of American military spending has also, I have heard claimed, slowed military spending in many other countries (particularly in Europe) simply because they can't afford to keep up.
To the extent that this is effective, the military can maintain peace without killing _anyone_. Which is the best outcome we might reasonably hope for.
Just ask yourself this as an american:
If we had all mainstream media be government media; would it REALLY be that much different???
(think especially related to things the government actually cares about--like wars---econ...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I think finding out a programmer's programming skill is a reasonable thing to do during an interview. If you're doing it the way it sounds like you're doing it, you'll probably insult anybody skilled enough to answer your questions though. For another job, I was asked to write some perl scripts, and I did it. They asked me to do it after a second interview, and I knew if I spent the time and did it well I'd probably get the job. I stayed up most of the night doing the programs, and sent them in. The interviewer looked at what I did and realized what he'd asked me to do was way harder than he'd thought. He was very impressed at my work and my work ethic, and I got the job. Despite the fact that what I produced ended up taking about 4x as long as he initially thought it should.
The point is, maybe you're only highlighting one aspect of your job search, but if not, you might want to reconsider your interview process.
www.clarke.ca
Lol. still looking for the payoff. The fact is the world would still be the same place if you didn't go to Vietnam. Sorry you didn't get anything for it except a big head.
Mod this drivel TROLL. This story is bullshit and the author knows it. Anyone who is so lacking in ambition that they cannot imagine themselves doing anything other than assembling refrigerators is certainly not ambitious enough to move to India.
I blame Bill Gates for it. He and Microsoft designed the "Zero Administration" thing so Windows never has to be administered. Now companies can lay off their entire IT department and just hire 1 guy at minimum wage to sit in a wooden chair and click "Re-image System" every 2 hours. Then their systems fail due to Microsoft bug exploits and they lose all their customers. They then go out of business and even that mimimum-wage guy is now out of a job.
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
the possible remnants of the .com boom
prolly the extra people they didnt need.
that and with systems that manage themselves better, you dont need as many techs, not to mention companies swarming to linux, you dont need 30 Microsoft certified people on the job anymore, that with the economy sag due to 9/11 is probably pretty much why that happened, and it isnt so much the tech industry, everyone's suffering.. we're at a 6% unemployment rate at the moment here in the US. which is steep for our economy. yeah yeah, I know there's tons of countries that have like a 90% unemployment rate, but that's not the issue.
I'm stating the reasons why that probably happened.. and it isnt isolated.
The businesses are always in crunch mode trying to push their people which means things like training and self-improvement of their employees suffer. Then they claim they need foreign workers since only they have the latest skills.
The economy is suffering because none of us told the emperorer they were naked during the dot.com bubble. Instead we checked our yahoo finance every hour watching our stock/401(k)'s blossom.
We've built our economy on consumerism which requires a high-standard of living - letting these jobs go overseas is going to hurt if no one has money to buy the items!
How far to the bottom can we race - there has to be a balance - 100% free market just doesn't work.
Keep in mind that the boy who shells out that hundred bucks for a pair of Air Jordans is buying something much more valuable than a good pair of basketball shoes. They embody an ideal of empowerment through athletics that Nike has worked decades to create, at great expense.
Such ideals can be priceless. It is doubtless irrational for a girl to feel more confident and comfortable because she buys designer clothes. It is doubtless irrational to pick up a self-concept at the mall. It is doubtless irrational, for that matter, for a teenage hacker to feel that his personal merit flows from Linux.
But though you and I can show our faces in public without concern for wearing the right shoes, running the best operating system, or being members of the most fashionable Maoist student organizations, countless young people, desperate and frightened, cannot. The market can ease their plight while they mature by creating and selling the personal ideals they crave as they try to figure out who they are. That's my two cents, take them or leave them.
I live in Australia and can provide the flip-side perspective to all this. The US gave the world the free-market economy, for better or for worse, and is now leveraging the system to maximize profits. Back in the late 90s tech boom here in Australia we didn't feel it much at all. Sure, jobs were fairly easy to come by in IT but even with experience and qualifications I couldn't make more than AUD45k (USD29k at the time!) living in an extremely large, expensive city. You simply could not get a real software development/CS job in Australia then because everything was done in north america and there was no market here. Now its beginning to change. We are westernised, speak english, understand american business and are well educated. Plus the exchange rate and standard of living make us almost exactly half the price of comparible american labour. All of this hoo-ha with outsourcing to China and India is one thing; language barriers, poor quality code, etc. I think the real future in moving US jobs overseas is to places like Australia and New Zealand where, for all intents are purposes, you're dealing with americans in a cheaper part of the world. So I get to my point: Americans are overpaid on a global stage and can't compete. But America is the world's bastion of capitalism and competitive edge. I see this all resulting in the wages of IT staff simply coming down to what they are worth on a global stage and everyone everywhere in the world being able to get a job with fair conditions. Fair conditions mean you get your fair share of global resources commeasurate to your skills and contribution on a global scale. Like a previous poster said, being American does not entitle you to a high standard of living. Get over it. Your loss is our gain, and if you're not willing to 'stoop' to our level i'm happy to keep living comfortably from money gained by lost American jobs. At least that's a bit less tax to pay for Israel/Iraq occupation eh? (had to be said).
peace
Pakistan spy service 'aiding Bin Laden'
Pakistan Ended Aid to Taliban Only Hesitantly
Pakistan denies N Korea nuclear deal
INTELLIGENCE; U.S. SAYS PAKISTAN GAVE TECHNOLOGY TO NORTH KOREA
Pakistani Who Threatened Bush Is Among Deportees
Pakistanis rally against US
Pakistani on US al-Qaeda charge
Pakistan insists it gave no nuclear aid to Iran
Guantanamo prisoners speak out
We shouldn't be doing business with that country anyway !!!
I must have been crazy to think that I can make the world a better place. I give up. I'll join the military where I can get paid to kill people... or help the government kill people. Yes, even the lowely military electronics tech is helping make peace unachieveable.
P.S. IANAL
companies don't seem to give a flying flip about domain experience...They don't want to pay for training and "seniority"
I think it would be more accurate to say that companies don't want to pay what you think they should pay for training and seniority. They (that is, the market) value(s) it, certainly, but they aren't willing to paid the absurd premium prices they were paying for it in the late 90s. Tough luck. The market adjusted to reflect the actual supply and demand. And that actual supply includes offshore workers. Get over it. If you actually have tech skills, they are still willing to pay for those skills, just not at the price you expect. But you can't change reality by whining about it. And setting up artifical contols on prices or wages won't change that reality.
If you really want to work in IT, price yourself accordingly and realize you will be competing with offshore workers. So, maybe you'll have to take a job for half the salary you expect, but I bet any programmer could find some job for $28,000/year. That's still a liveable wage. Show me the problem...
A well crafted troll doesn't put people down, it elicits responses...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
I'm not sure if Americans track the value of their currency or not. As a Canadian, the value of the CDN dollar versus US dollar is always a topic of discussion :)
Anway, since the US economy has been sucking ass for the past couple of years, there has been an ongoing massive drop of (around 20-25% now) of the US dollar against other major currencies.
From other Slashdot articles the money saved by outsourcing varies from nothing to about %30-40. Unless the offshore source is extremely competitive, the drop in the US dollar will make it much less attractive.
Another currency issue is countries like China and Japan keeping their dollar artificially low. For better or worse, its definitely intersting to see China worried about becoming "too expensive".
Ah, a story about job losses and a comment about killing people gets modded up as "Insightful". Someone is having a great day moderating today. Do you ever wonder what will happen when the people who "need killing" include you?
I recently attended a lecture on globalization. One of the main topics was the export of jobs from USA to cheaper labor markets.
They pointed out that when investing money, given several options, it is wisest to invest in whatever gives the highest return (the example given was a farmer who can invest in land, labor, or machinery). Whatever you invest in eventually will decline to the point that it is no longer the highest return (if land gives the highest return, eventually you will need labor or machinery to farm the land, so at that point investing in land gives a lower return than labor or machinery). At that point you should switch - invest your money elsewhere. Eventually all the options will equalize for the most part.
American corporations are the farmer. They can invest in USA, China, India, or wherever. Right now, investing in American labor has very low returns when compared with other countries. Unfortunately, this suggests that the labor market in America will eventually decline until it is equal with countries like China and India (actually the US labor market will decline considerably but China and India should rise dramatically as well).
Seems like sound logic to me. If this is indeed true, Americans should brace themselves for economic disaster as long as jobs continue to exported at current rates.
The American people decide how to allocate the federal budget (and every other budget, right down to your local government) every year through the votes of their elected representatives. Now maybe it's not spent the way that YOU wanted it spent, but that's the luck of the draw in a republic. Now if we had a dictatorship with Mozumder in charge, then things would be different!
And to be fair, I spent 10 years in the Navy. It tought me some valuable lessons (not just how to kill people). First among them was the fact that the ability to express yourself in the face of opposition is a precious right that far too many people in the US do not appreciate enough. Oh, and it also helped pay for my electrical engineering degree so that I could get a good job and afford the $130 Nikes. -just kidding, I bought Addidas.
-h-
The root of the problem is capitalism. IT personnel are nothing more than commodities. They can be pigeonholed with long lists of "skill sets" that are akin to the feature sets of VCRs and Microwaves. Until we learn to treat human beings as human beings instead of products, the present state of misery will continue.
Monthy Unemployment Rate
Bureau of Labor and Statistics homepage
Why should we continue to keep hiring workers who simply arent qualified? If you want to keep your job, get a masters degree, be a smarter worker, work harder and longer and you'll keep your job.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
This is survival of the fittest. Its us vs them, which side are you on? I'm not sacrificing a damn thing, you are a liberal why dont you pay increased taxes, better yet why dont you move to India and help them so us real Americans can find jobs.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I'm tired of hearing this. The market consolidation of the last ten years is real and it's being driven by nasty anti-competitive companies. IT escaped this because it's a relatively new and competitive field. Competition was intentionaly created in the telco industry. That both of these idustries added wealth and jobs to the country was natural, expected and good. Both of these industries are being crushed by the same forces that have wrecked steel, automotive and defense related industries. The contraction is real and harful and paridoxially it feeds itself. As the world of M$ software collapses on it's own greed, the biggest fish, Microsoft, ATT, BellSouth, etc, get fatter for a while. As they harm their competition with bogus laws and vendor extortion, they slow the progressive forces that were obsoleting them and creating new jobs and wealth that fed further improvements. It won't last. The greater the potential proffit, the greater the number of entrants will be. Monopolies, unless legally enforced, are unstable. Legally enforced monopolies lead to political instability. You can't fool all the people all the time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Can't even get an entry level job. Oh well, there's always 2005 :)
Astonishingly, although Microsoft fucked over all it's language users, some of those users idiotically continue to champion BillG's products.
The only question remaining is: "How long will it take before investors realize the imbalance created by Microsoft?" Once Microsoft's stock plummets it will take with it the major mutual funds (heavily vested in MSFT), the stock market and the economy, finally realizing a double-dip recession.
"But if your job includes analysing your company's business and using information technology to solve business problems that affect the bottom line, then your job is very hard, very valuable, not exportable, and very secure." There's a business/management degree program which trains people to do just that. Anyone can be trained to do any job which does not require creativity and innovation and most tech jobs arent about innovation or creativity. Only so many people get to work for Apple.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Precisely. I started in astronautical engineering, switched about half way through to undecided when I figured I didn't like it so much, and the cold war was ending and putting the squeeze on that field. Wanted to do naval engineering, wasn't available at my school. Switched to computer science since I'd been programming on 8bit machines since a kid. Have been in tech for over a decade now. Bought a racing sailboat. Got into woodworking (wooden boat). Got into cars (rebuilt a couple engines, transmissions, race on a real track a few times a year). And the point is?
I do IT consulting now, after all the years in the field. Own my own corp, have an employee earning some money for me. I am involved in my yacht club, serving on committees. Doctors there... making contacts with health care people to try to enter that field in a new venture, with an also lightly-employed colleague with whom I've worked off and on for many years. Started a wireless business earlier this year with a couple other colleagues, one who got an MBA a few years ago... went nowhere, little money in the pay-for-wifi-access business. Working on that again I think, some mesh networking this time. Probably going to start a woodworking/custom furniture company, put all those tools I have for maintaining my boat to work (and buy more!). Working on starting a boat yard with like-minded owners too, oriented toward self-maintaining boat owners, it's getting harder to find amendable yards these days.
And the point there? Use what you know, use your interests, use your contacts, join some organizations other than technology, meet people, get involved, start something up either yourself or with some others. Don't just hang out with geeks. Don't just depend on some jerk in some office to give you a job.
I have read numerous times that the future of work in the US will be in small business, more and more. Makes sense. Large corporations are focused like never before on productivity and cost-cutting, due to global competition. Large companies will out-source more and more. It makes a lot of sense to pare a business down to what actually makes money, and hire others to manage everything else. This isn't going to end. Jobs in those companies are going to tenuous unless you are core to the business, what actually makes money for the owners/shareholders. One option: get out of the ratrace, use your brain, be entrepreneurial. I scrape more for my money now, it isn't as easy as clocking in every day and taking home $85k a year in bi-weekly steady checks. But, I enjoy it more, I see my wife more. I do what I like more. My last full-time regular W2 job was a couple years ago, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I'll try my ideas, see what works, and run with it. And be happier.
Larry
Learn to be one of these 3 things, and prepare yourself for competition with Billions of Chinese and Indian workers.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I'm a big fan of jobs with very low probabilities of getting me blown up. I've had some bosses that were assholes and I'm glad they didn't have the authority to shoot me.
-B
Thats like saying if we all use Linux Microsoft and Apple will drop their prices. Bullshit, what will happen is companies will force us to buy it, try to sue us etc. People are trying to boycott the RIAA, Microsoft and many other companies and it just wont work, Microsoft wont make their products cheaper they will just bundle their product in everything and force you to pay a tax. The RIAA will bundle their service with ISPs and trick you into paying high prices by saying its free. Walmart has been offering so called "cheap" retail products but their products arent they cheapest, its really the same price as everyone else but because theres a walmart accross the street from you and other stores are miles away you go to walmart.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
So what is happening is a shuffle of the money, you are giving them our money which we could be making. India will then tax their people and build better schools and eventually the best schools in the world will be in places like India and China, our people will be forced to go to India and China for an education and look for jobs in India and China.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Global trade can only be fair trade if we all use the same currency. The exchange rate system was not designed to handle multinational companies. IF a dollar here is not a dollar there, well then they are being paid imaginary money to do real work which we could be doing over here for real money.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The third world should decide to accept companies which will treat them right. They can choose to accept an open source company like Sun, or they can accept closed source Microsoft. Japan, China, and India seem to be doing well while Africa seems to be doing pretty bad. When you let businesses come and take your shit and sell it back to you, well its your fault isnt it?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Terrorism does not work. Just ask Bin Laden.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
$1 an hour may be comfortable, but its not fair, you still cost less. Unless you switch to the dollar system its not a fair competition because we cant compete, you cost less. Make your homeland switch to the dollar and we wont have a problem with outsourcing, we'd all have to compete on an even playing field.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Their results (amazingly enough) were out today as well. Only, they don't feed stories to slashdot. :)
w age.11142001.news
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.toc.h tm
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/history/oc
It isn't so rosy this year, but it isn't all doom and gloom.Overall, employment in Computer and Mathematical went from:
2000 2001 2002
2,932,810 2,825,870 2,772,620
But average wage was something else:
2000 2001 2002
27.91 29.02 29.63
So, we lost 53,250 people, mostly in straight computer programmers, 501,550->457,320, although Software Engineers lost as well.Amazingly enough, Network and Computer Systems Administrators gained ~5k people, and Network Systems and Computer Data Communications Analysts gained ~7k! Analysts are up almost 20k, as are support specialists.
If you want to see who's really getting hit by this, check out the results for management:
2000 2001 2002
7,782,680 7,212,360 7,092,460
I think they've lost more than techies.
Jason Pollock
We could convert to the Euro or begin converting Asia to the dollar but are we? The gov wont let the dollar decline, the other countries wiill always be cheaper, their kids are better educated, they are used to having less so they work harder. What can we do?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
And it's the Bureau of Labour Statistics. :)
Suddenly salary should be based on cost of living? If this is true why should CEOs make more than they need to survive? Cost of living has nothing to do with this so please remove it from the equation. Fact is your salary is lower, period. If your cost of living is lower in theory you'll spend more or inflation will occur which will balance everything off and suddenly your labor will become as expensive as ours. But if you do like China does and deflate your currency to keep your labor cheapest, you'll suck up all the jobs which will pay each worker just enough to survive driving down the salaries of everyone all over the world. You cannot have a global economy without a global currency.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
This is one of the best posts I have read on Slashdot in a long, long time. It is well-written, insightful, thoughtful, and convincing. It is not offensive. It even has decent grammar. I salute you, sir.
May we never see th
What? respect hard work dumbass. Building refrigerators may be all they are good at doing. What? Every single perso in the US is now expected to get a degree from an ivy league school and get rich? 50 % of American students drop out of highschool yet somehow we are supposed to do something besides build refrigerators?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
What? are people supposed to be in and out of school all their lives? Who is going to pay? What about old age? And what about people who arent a genius but who work hard? (about 75% of the country)
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
You say we Americans should justify our standard of living, as, if you have the right to judge the way I live.
You don't.
Most of the world is now engaged in the enterprise of sending their goods to the United States at slave wages because they are incapable of creating their own domestic economies. What do the Asian economies do? Export to the USA. What does every economy do? Export to the USA.
Everyone on the planet earth bitches about America and how much Americans consume. But you can fix that. Maybe quit making shit to sell to Americans?
As a US Citizen, I'd be happy if BMW stayed on the whiny side of the Atlantic.
This is my sig.
I have to agree with twiddlingbits.
It'd be quite nice to find someone that could answer the first questions, but g++ -Wall on a remotely current gcc will definitely pick out all the above problems. If the position is for a compiler or language analysis position (which I would assume *not*, given the other question), the first questions would be a good idea. For simply a C++ developer...I just don't know.
I'd be interested to see whether the applicant could fix the problems with a compiler handy and then be able to explain *why* the compiler should ask you to fix those problems, though.
The second is certainly fair. Given enough time, it'd be nice to have a third that would test more C++-design features.
May we never see th
You hit on an ironic point. The educational system in the United States has become such a disaster that most citizens have a very difficult time affording it. Yes, there are community colleges and some other ways to foot part of the bill, but overall, the educational system is extremely overpriced ($60 for a textbook!) and still fails to emphasize "hard" sciences.
The answer is yes, and to see why simply look at the opposing viewpoints being constantly announced by the administration and the press.
It's like they're reporting about different countries!
Most countries didn't realize this was going to happen. They didn't know these corporations would come, screw up their environment, sell them their stuff back to them for more than they're paid to make it, and then pull up and run to a cheaper nation (or for robotic production), leaving them in an irrepairable environmental mess and fairly well drained of natural resources.
Companies nowadays are probably dealing with a more aware third world. But again, they will counter this with:
a) paying off their leaders, who will sell their own people out, and will
b) inflict media blackouts to keep their populace ignorant
c) kill any international interloping adolescents (scoobydoo-ese: meddling kids) who try and educate the populace about what's to come
So who's fault is it, really?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What? I was in the Air Force and I was never trained to kill people. Heck, I only held a gun twice in my entire time I was in.
Did I miss the "How to kill people" class?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
due to replacing IT staff with Indians. They're a publicly traded company and depending how I feel they may end up losing their biggest client (one of the top 3 global retailers) over this.
According to the report there was a growth of 7000 jobs in R&D and every other area lost jobs.
However surely there must be areas that are improving in the IT job space. I find it hard to believe that no area will see an increase at any point. I would love to see a better breakdown of the figures on what exact areas jobs were lost.
I do expect (read hope) that security and administration jobs should improve. They are areas were it is sensible to have someone on site and not over in India/anywhere else. I seriously doubt that programming will ever be a growth area again except in highly specialized areas, although even this is doubtful.
So has anyone seen any growth in jobs in any particular areas or moved around the IT fields to find work that wont go overseas?
37 - what does it stand for really...
Speak for yourself. Being a good programmer is not something comparable to being a cabbie or a burger flipper at MacDonalds. As much as every clueles PHB's dream is a world where "bah, it's just typing", it just isn't so, and never will be so.
First of all, it's not just learning the language syntax. Syntax is easy. It's also a matter of learning the core libraries. (Billions of man-hours each year go into rewriting something that already existed.) It's also a matter of learning the best practices.
And it's also a matter of having at least a minimum clue about security and of potential pitfalls. No, I don't mean being a cryptographer. But at least knowing basic stuff like:
- check array bounds
- always escape apostrophes when using a user input string in SQL (otherwise someone can basically rewrite your query). Or better yet, use prepared statements.
- entity-encode any user input before displaying it on a HTML page. (Otherwise someone may well inject JavaScript or VB script in your page.)
- don't trust parameters received from the user via HTTP. (E.g., if you stored some information as hidden inputs, expect to receive them changed or missing.)
- if you stored something in the session, what happens when the user opens something in a second window?
Etc. All that comes from experience and training, not from just dumping someone off the street in front of a computer and telling them "just read the tutorials." As many clueless PHBs discovered, when they went with hare-brained schemes like "we don't need skills, let's just hire the cheapest burger-flipper."
And finally, you have to have solid logic skills. You'd be surprised how many people just don't have the mental ability to program well. Or at all.
In fact, a large part of the drive behind outsourcing or "importing" skilled workers is precisely that. They have these skills. We're not talking expendable factory workers a la Nike, nor expendable supermarket clerks a la WalMart. We're talking extremely qualified workers. Which, yes, are far more qualified that the Americans you could hire without paying a fortune.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hi. I'm considering going to get a Masters in Computer Science. But should I? Everyone here seems so negative about the future. What can I expect to get for such a degree?
Logic, macros, and more
But at least you won't get outsourced.... I hope!
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
If you're a Palestinian, it's probably immoral to just stand there while the Israeli government and the Settlement vigilantes bulldoze your house, drop bombs on your neighborhood, and kill Palestinian babies. And if you're a Saudi, it's probably immoral to let foreigners come into your home country and take power just because they don't like the next successor to lead the House of Saud.
The only alternative is not "to do nothing", it's to educate yourself about the situation. If you had done that part, you'd know that far many more Palestinians babies have been killed than Israeli babies. You'd know that Iraq was tricked by our American ambassador into invading Kuwait. You would know that the US government was complicit with the atrocities Saddam committed. You'd know that the excuse for sending troops to Saudi Arabia was completely bogus and the evidence of impending invasion completely falsified. And you certainly wouldn't be surprised that the Saudi people were trying to fight for their sovereignty.
of course they knew. The British have been doing this to countries for centuries.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Ok, I am not american, but there is one thing I admired about many american citizens, that is that it seems to be the greatest goal of them having their own company.
Well now lots of IT people are laid off, where are the new companies, what is preventing a subset of those to start businesses of their own.
It is not a lack of business sense, it is not a lack of ideas. But it simply is not worth it starting a new company and once you earn money having patent laywers on your back which basically bring your company down.
Just a little bit food for thought and maybe another reason why California currently is down and lots of jobs are lost.
On the subject of programmer jobs then the writing was on the wall anyway since the first visual GUI was invented and made the assembly programmers redundant ! But on a more serious note.... US trade deficit with the rest of the world is 500 billion (or in forex speak - 500 yards). In the end this means that you are exporting 500 billion dollars every year worth of someones labour. Doesn't take a genius to work out that at say USD 100,000 per job (including all the pensions and other costs) then this 500 billion could represent in US over 5 million jobs. Its the US consumer who's exporting those jobs.
Even so, I wouldn't really like to be surprised by something like this during an interview. Some minor things that have major impact:
- I'm stressed out enough as it is during an interview. "Programming" is a state of mind, and so is "interviewing", and they are disjunct and hard to switch between.
- I may not have used the particular environment you have installed on the laptop. You may have Borland C++ installed while I know everything about Visual C++. If you hired me, it would take me a couple of hours to get comfortable with Borland - not enough to make me unhirable, but far too much for your 15 minute limit.
- By setting a time limit you are guaranteeing that people go for quick and dirty. You probably don't want candidates who do q&d, but you are asking them to display those skills.
As long as you are aware of these issues I guess it doesn't matter much, but given the fact that you haven't found anyone in 6 months suggests you may not be.
Well if computer programming is no longer a hard job, if it has become equivalent to labouring, then we are all in trouble. Why? Because with a massive surplus pool of unemployed, companies can lower wages to ridiculous levels by picking up anyone (students, interns, live-at-home twenty-year olds) to do the work. Result: anyone who wants to live the house-buying, child-raising reasonable lifestyle is going to have trouble finding that work. If this is the case with computer programming (which most of us here are involved in) then what jobs are there these days that are hard enough to justify the wage that will supply such a lifestyle?
If this happens on a large scale (and it is), then you can expect people not to spend much money on anything other than essentials. As has been pointed out, the whole world (thanks to US influence) is more or less on the capitalist RoadRunner effect (once you stop running and look down, THEN you suddenly fall down into the ravine).
IANA (I am not American), but I sympathize with those in the US who through no fault of their own suddenly find their skilled proffession has become a casual college job.
Likewise no-one can blame the Indians (which I think are who we're talking about here) from half-inching the work off them. There's a massive imbalance of wealth between the West and the rest of the world which must (and will) end.
But America as in its people, do not gain the benefit of the cost savings from employing foreign labour because (this is the important bit) the profit goes straight to wealthy corporations at the top who DO NOT pass it back into the American community but instead keep it floating around in an International stratosphere beyond the reach of ordinary american workers (and ordinary Indian workers too).
Name calling wont solve the problem. If the US hits recession, it will be bad news for everyone. Trust me on this.
(The one thing I must add though, is that programming has not become easier - it's just that there are many more people who think they can do it and mnay PHBs who can't tell the difference)
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Your position will remain unfilled, not because there is no talented people out there, but because your method of selecting talented people just sucks.
Have it downed on you that maybe the problem you are using takes less than 15 minutes to solve only to you? May it not be that your test is competely useless?
Been there, when I find such an incompetent interviewer I cut the interview short as soon as possible because I am wasting my time, anybody evaluating the capabilities of a technical person based on a narrow test should learn a bit about profiling and interviewing techniques.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes Mr. Hitler, you are expected to get a real job and education these days. This isn't the 1940s anymore where a high school dropout art student can become a successful mass murdering dictator anymore. You're expected to bring real-world experience and a quality education to the table of modern governments before you can be expected to overthrow them and institute your policy of forced genocide. Fscking brownshirt slackers today think they can just waltz into the Reichstag and take over without any qualifications. You people make me sick.
The trouble is, with the current political climate you're more likely to be shipped out to a hostile foreign nation than be coddled in some training school. We need grunts on the ground with machine guns in Iraq, not people learning how to use fancy shmancy electronic radios. I wouldn't voluntarily go near any military "job" these days even if they offered me a million dollars. It's a death sentence.
Exactly. I've been pissed about the H1-B visa bill ever since 1998 when it was passed. What a bunch of crap. Then the bloody idiots were too stupid to repeal the bill after the bottom fell out of the high-tech economy in 2000.
GWB inherited a whole lot of economic problems, and then 9/11 happened. Blaming the current economy on him is total intellectual dishonesty.
In fact, it sure looks like the current administration's economic policies are starting to turn things around in a big way.
If you make (or intend to make) over $50,000 a year, the Dems are not your friend. To them, you are the "wealthy", and as much of your money as possible must go into the goverment coffers so they can "help people". Never try to tell them that the "gummint" is the least efficent way possible to spend money, or that a lot of people would be happier without their "help".
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I'd argue that a major source of America's power has been its technological innovation, and that has been the root of its economic and military power. That doesn't just mean 20th century electronics. it goes back to the birth of the nation and the guilds that stifled innovation in Europe, while it flourished in America.
It's worth noting the growing movement in the USA today to stifle innovation. This time it's not by guilds trying to protect their knowledge base. This time it's classical 'publishers' trying to retain exclusive rights to their data in the face of essentially zero incremental cost of electronic publication.
They may well win in the USA, they may partly win in Europe and South America. They may even win with respect to *their* rights in Asia and the Far East.
But I expect two side-effects if they have their way:
First, the USA will lose its technological edge. One engine of our economy will be gone. Rather than regain that edge, I expect the legislative approach will be to try harder to protect our "entertainment engine", or the powers that cost us our technological engine.
Second, the technological barriers and hassles of consuming American entertainment will help drive the rise of entertainment industries in Asia and the Far East. I expect MPAA protection policies to be the best friends Bollywood ever had. On another note, Bollywood may well be better poised to sell into the Chinese market. They may not be terribly close culturally, but they're probably closer than the USA, and have enough USA in them that they can market to 'Western desires' in China. In essence, information protection policies destroy a second engine of the US economy.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's called "basic training". One would assume that even the Air Force trains their people in basic combat...
My desired standard of living (a family wage) is thus justified.
"Livable" and "desired standard of living" are extremely different. You argue that because your personal productivity is probably 100x that of an individual 3000 years ago, you should be ably to earn "a family wage" now without telling us how "a family wage" compares to "livable" 3000 years ago.
What your Fact:s support is that you should live 100x more comfortably whan did folk 3000 years ago (assuming that the depletion of natural resources over those three millenia is negligible). I can't speak for you, but my apartment with central heat & air, wall-to-wall carpet, and nice glass windows is easily 100x more comfortable than the mud huts of 1000 BC. I have easily 100x better access to food (heck, I can even get fresh rapsberries in February). I'm pretty sure I have 100x more clothing. I can figure to live much more than 35 years, and I don't even have to get my 5-year-old to work along side me.
What you have failed to justify is your color TV. Your "need" for cable/satellite, cell phone. Your consumption of 5 kWhr/day of electricity.
In some sense, once you are fed, clothed, and housed, you're done. Everything beyond that is a luxury which should be tough for you to justify, knowing that there are people who die of starvation, malnutrition, and exposure.
FYI, this can't all be blamed on the last administration. The current administration should get much of the blame, too. They support the outsourcing of jobs overseas and recommend it to companies. Why? It raises their profit margins, but at the cost of American jobs. You also notice they don't make any moves to change the situation. They are using it to their advantage to make the economy look better than it is. A jobless recovery won't last forever, and we could end up being worse off then before.
The current administration also says that the outsourcing overseas will allow for better jobs to be created, but this goes against logic.
Logic says when you lay off a bunch of workers that make X amount of dollars and hire an overseas firm where the employees make Y amount of dollars, and Y < X to save costs and increase profit margins, then new workers are hired in America at Z dollars, Z < X simply because Z > X would HURT profit margins.
Essentially the employee makes less money. Plus, the job you trained for is gone and you have to possibly relearn a new skill. This could cost lots of money depending on the school. Better jobs my ass. All this does is hurt the American people so corporations can pad their pockets more.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
This is utter noncense. Taking two examples of bad choices that people made and extrapolating it to a nation.
1. First the theory that working employees in 3rd world countries work in slavery conditions. Yes you will find such situations but that is the exception and not the norm. Visit the countries first hand and then reflect on these remarks.
2. Both China and India have serious immigration restrictions since declaring independence from the British. It is not easy to apply for a work permit and start a job there.
What's most troubling about this offshore outsourcing trend is that it seems to be becoming an anchor strategy for the creatively-challenged professional manager, in much the same way downsizing was many years ago.
It used to be that when you're screwing up, unable to come up with a relevant and viable product or service that people want, and your business performance is less than impressive, your safe and thoughtless way out of the mess was to downsize, kick out a few employees and glee with a grin about the cost-cutting you have achieved, the boost in efficiency that you'll proudly present as elegant numbers on sheets that'll increase your profits and shareholder value.
Now it seems that offshoring is heading that way; "have problem, will offshore!".
So yeah, lots and lots of money going to the military, yet still they manage to work it so the little guy gets screwed.
Special competition from guest workers is for programmers and cotton pickers.
G.W.'s finally getting Clinton's bad economy turned around. The economy was already turning sour when Clinton was in office.
Wheres your facts?
However, the liberal media spin constantly blames the GOP.
Guess you have been listening to too much Rush Drugball or O'Really. Liberal media? Fox news and Clear Channel are both pro-GOP. Name a popular liberal media outlet. Most conservatives attack CNN or NPR but dont carry facts with the blame.
So George W. is spending all those government budget surpluses, huh?
No, the surplus was real. Some people dont get the difference between Dems and Repubs:
Democrats: Tax more than you spend.
Republicans: Spend more than you tax.
Its good we rotate the two parties in and out of office to even things out or you either get a monster surplus not being used (Clinton) or a huge deficit (Reagan or Bush Jr).
If Gore won the election, CNN would be blaming the republican-controlled Congress... sigh.
I am guessing you are trying to pin CNN as liberal. CNN has been the target of conservatives for years since it refuses to carry programming like Fox or MSNBC (which has added Scarborough Country) and is the leading news media outlet. I guess you can say CNN is trying to be the true "Fair and Balanced" news outlet rather than spreading misinformation for political parties. Again, can you give proof that CNN is liberal?
but I never even got to see this on the front page.
Anyway - I did not see this at Fark, I picked up on it at AZCentral.com. I think CNN.com and possibly MSNBC.com ran stories on the report as well.
I read fark but didn't see the article there. Mostly I just check out the photoshop stuff.
It's a small web after all.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Isn't it nice that the secret police or some other shadowy quasi government organization won't be breaking into your home tonite and removing you at gun point never to be seen or heard from again? Wait a minute ... maybe not!
Bullshit. Check the NBER web site. The business cycle peaked--that is, the economy went from growth to recession--in March 2001. Quote:
So Bush had been chosen (not elected) for over a year before the recession began. Spin that one, FOX-boy.
Hey, didya know that every single Republican president this century has presided over a recession in his first term? Check the data if you don't believe me. But hey, as Bill Hicks would have put it, there is absolutely no connection between giving Republicans final say in signing budgets into law, and having a recession... and you'd be a fool and a Communist to think otherwise.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This is the type of headline that spins the truth to grab your attention. It neglects to point out that the rebels resisting the US occupation are not technically in the (now defunct) Iraqi military, and thus can only be categorized as "civilizians," despite the fact that they are somewhat organized, very well armed, and are shooting at your soliders.
There aren't too many Iraqi Republican Guard grunts left suited up, patrolling Iraq.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
However, a preliminary look at data for 2003 shows that the decline in high-tech employment has slowed considerably this year.
This annoys me to no end. I love it when politicians and economists talk about the economy recovering when they tout statistics showing that fewer jobs were eliminated this year than last year. Guess what genius, that's still jobs getting eliminated! Don't tell me the economy is recovering because there were fewer new unemployment claims this month than there were last month, tell me it's recovering when there are fewer actual unemployment claims.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Your memory is flawed. Things were starting to stabilize when the 9/11 attacks hit. Everything went back into a death spiral at that point. Lots of companies had made plans to start spending (cautiosly) on new IT-related projects again, but within a day or two after 9/11, it all came to a screeching halt.
So, yeah, a lot of the blame rests on the shoulders of greedy people and fools who went boldly where there was no point in going. But some of it goes to a small collection of suicidal fanatics (IMO). And remember, this didn't just affect the USA - it affected everyone who expected to get a piece of that money. Plus, since nobody knew what would happen next, spending plans all over the world suddenly went into the shredder, or at least a time-locked vault.
Kansas City Star mentioned all the offshoring by Sprint and how some of them have started small businesses.
Glad you have done ok.
My father used to manage the business affairs of a number of doctors' offices, and we were very close to some of the doctors (one became my father's (and thus also my) primary hunting partner). My mom also used to be an RN (Registered Nurse, the highest level in the US), so I got to understand how medicine is practiced in the US.
You've being grossly unfair to the doctor; he simply can't schedule his time as precisely as you'd like. Or let's turn it around: you have a life threatening problem, but it takes him more time than is scheduled in your ideal world to diagnose. Do you want him to say "Time's up, come back later" (or "Go to the Emergency Room" if he's figured out it's serious enough by then) ???
It's all based on the patient and his problem(s), and the ability of you and the receptionist to do a good enough job of pre-diagnosis. And how much "hand holding" (bedside manner :-) you and/or the condition require.
To bring this to our domain, do you like being told "You have N hours/days to debug this problem" when it's not an obvious defect? (Or insert any of the other scheduling nightmares that doom perhaps the majority of projects to failure of some sort before they've even started.)
I recently got, at a rather young age, a classic case of shingles (be happy if you're in the lucky 80% who don't get it). It took my doctor literally one second to diagnose when he looked at my back (after a few minutes of history) ... and then several minutes of discussion for how to treat. And then several follow up phone calls for pain killer prescriptions. That visit came out under the average, although the phone follow ups cut into his time between examinations.
(In case you're curious, I was off the painkillers in 6 weeks (below average), and within a further month I couldn't really tell I'd had the problem except for some reddish skin on my back. Young, healthy, and lucky, I guess....)
Other times, it can take much longer (e.g. a Fever of Unknown Origin can be really fun to diagnose), and of course other patients with really serious conditions will take quite a bit of a doctor's time to inform, reassure, discuss and manage.
It's a hard job, with constant pressure from insurers and the government(s), and with the highest of stakes; talk to a doctor sometime outside of his office. If you get to know him well enough, talk to him about the patients he's lost, and try to guess how he deals with the pressure....
As a person of Indian origin in the IT industry, but based here in the USofA and NOT in India, I feel sorry about you feeling sorry for us.
Millons of Indians chose to take advantage of the H1B program to immigrate to the US, where they filed for a greencard and expected to become an American citizen in due coure and live the good life. They paid their taxes, bought houses & cars, took out a mortgage, had kids born here & go to local schools here - bottomline, they acclimatized themselves very well & contributed heavily to the US economy. All of this is legal, good ( in the sense someone's trying to improve his wellbeing ) and beneficial ( to the US economy & society at large ).
All of a sudden, their plans were derailed. Thousands have lost their jobs. They can't go on welfare cause they are not yet a citizen, and they can't afford the mortgage & bills, and they are forced to hit the reset button. They have to abandon the life they built here in the country of their choice, sell their houses, cars, possessions, and go back to India to start from scratch. Their children, born & brought up in America, have no idea of the travails of India. This disrupts not just their schooling but their entire future life.
Saying "I feel sorry" just doesn't cut it. Real human lives are direly affected. Rest assured, this isn't the end - just as jobs were outsourced from the USA to India, they will be outsourced from India to elsewhere - China, fareast, many other candidates. A lot more lives will be disrupted simply because a few CEO's can cut costs & take home a larger paycheck.
You feel sorry ? You betcha!
That's becouse the airforce is not the military. :)
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
According the the website you linked to, all the visa applicant has to have is a employment guarantee from an India company. That's it.
That is way easier than getting an employment visa for the U.S. I got an employment visa for Germany a few years ago and I had to go through all sorts of hurdles to get it. The most difficult one was that the company had to show that it couldn't find a similarly qualified European Union application. I believe the requirements for a U.S. visa are similar. That's not required in India.
you interested in a joint venture of some kind ? i'm looking to sell my cameras, digital video security and point of sale/billing systems into doctors offices and the like.
if you are email me at zurk at arbornet dot org.
Man you have no idea how bad it is...last week I installed some software that came from outsourced Indian programmers, and my machine still smells like curry. Every time I turn on the machine, the smell of curry fills the room. Nasty, really.
Hey look... there they are... almost all half a million of them... No! over there... in India.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
I sure as hell did not vote for the MF in office now. You fools in the military are a prime example of blind faith. Do as your told never ask questions. Don't get me wrong I appreciate what you do to protect my freedoms but I just have a problem with going out and following orders and not asking why? What happens to you when they are done with you is your life any better for it. Do you carry the thought that you brained someone from 50 yards out or do you pass it off as second nature? I think most military are Killers trained to do just that. Slam me if you want but that is how I look at it I know I don't have the intestinal fortitude to do your job nor do I want it.
I'm guessing you probably live in San Francisco or New York City. In which case, you should move either to Vallejo or Trenton. At least you'd cut that rent figure down! ;)
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
Trust me, you've made that perfectly obvious..
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
#!/usr/bin/perl -w /[\n.]*/,<>;foreach$c(@c){$n{$c}=$n{$c}?$n{$c}+1:1 ;}$ n{$x } x $x\n"};
@c=split
foreach$x(sort{$n{$b}<=>$n{$a}}keys%n){print"
Of course, it's probably not as elegant in C++, but like I always say, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing in two lines of Perl that look like line noise.
(It wasn't clear from your description of the problem whether you wanted to know how many of each character, or just get a 5-character string out, so I made it print a sorted list of most popular characters and how many of each, as that seemed the most comprehensive answer.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
You ask if I carry the thought that I brained someone from 50 yards or if I pass it off as second nature? In the Navy, I was part of a surface to surface missile action that ended up sinking an Iranian ship and killing most of its crew, perhaps as many as a hundred men. I was part of the team that fired the missiles. Do I think about it? Yes, every single day, for the past 15 years. I have dreams about it several times a week. Do I wish that it wouldn't have happened? Damn right, I do. Would I have done anything differently? No.
I have friends from the Navy who served in river boats in Vietnam and who were Seals in the Middle east. I have buddies who were in the Army in Desert Storm. They've killed people in battle. And every single one of them was changed for it. Every single one of them carries the thought that they ended somebody's life. Every single one of them is sorry that it happened and wished that it wouldn't have happened. And every single one of them knows that he was doing his duty, just as the man that he killed was.
It's unfortunate that there are segments of society who view veterans like me and my friends as either trained killers or complete mental cases. The reality lies in between. Yes, in many cases, the military tought us to kill. But it did not make us killers.
Perhaps it is just as important to realize that those of us who served were just as ready to lay our lives down as we were to take a life. 15 years ago, I came within a whisker of laying down mine. I'm sorry about the other guys, and it obviously still affects me, but I, and the other men around me, knew exactly why we were there, what we were doing and how to best carry out those orders. Nobody on the battlefield was mindless then, nobody on the battlefield is mindless now, and anyone who suggests that the opposite is true is simply speaking from ignorance.
-h-
..that now even Al-Qaeda does it!!
Yup, Bin Laden is the son of a billionare, he's got an MBA(!) and he runs a multi-million dollar global terror "franchise" that outsources its operations to "local allies" who'll supply services under the "brand name".
Last straw for me! If this isn't proof enough the world is a darn big capitalist shithole, I don't know what is.
I am guessing you are trying to pin CNN as liberal. CNN has been the target of conservatives for years since it refuses to carry programming like Fox or MSNBC (which has added Scarborough Country) and is the leading news media outlet. I guess you can say CNN is trying to be the true "Fair and Balanced" news outlet rather than spreading misinformation for political parties. Again, can you give proof that CNN is liberal?
Actually, I can prove that CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are ALL liberal. Let me not pick just on CNN...
Remember that "comatose" Terri Schiavo lady in Florida whose husband was trying to get her feeding tube removed? The right-to-die husband? Anyway, I did a little experiment on whether the three aforementioned news organizations leaned left or right. I did a search for the word "comatose" in each of the news articles about Ms. Schiavo. All three news agencies reported her as being "comatose" when, in fact, this woman is not comatose (in a persistent, vegatative-like state), but rather in an awake, responsive and alert state of being. This is hardly an angle that a "fair-and-balanced" or a right-wing news organization would take.
Secondly, to further prove my point that the three major news organizations offer liberal slant, just listen to the latest on Iraq. What do you hear? Another soldier dead in Iraq, right? Another bomb explodes or another rocket-propelled grenade kills one or more. How about reporting on how Iraq now has pre-war levels of electricity, water and sanitation that was provided by the US and her allies? But I guess they're used to reporting on conflict - even Clinton threw around some missles halfway around the world to draw attention away from his charge of infidelity.
On a side note, presidential hopeful Howard Dean spoke in Texas earlier this week. He accused the current national administration of "morally bankrupting" our country. Last I checked, Clinton wasn't in office any more...
Regarding Rush Limbaugh, I do not advocate the use of drugs and I do think he should be investigated. If proof is found that he did indeed obtain these prescription drugs illegally, he should be dealt with through the court system. Funny, though, I feel that if this were someone like Clinton or Gore, the Dems would just want to give him a slap on the wrist and say, "bad boy". You know the Dems love creating social programs to "help" those who need it.
No, the surplus was real.
It was? How can a projected anything be real? You've got to be kidding me. If Hillary had gotten away with her communist national healthcare plan, the democrats couldn't have even projected a surplus, much less achieve one.
Democrats: Tax more than you spend. Republicans: Spend more than you tax.
Then why tax more than you're going to spend? You and me and the rest of this country pay for those people in Washington. So you'd rather THEM have the money than you? You think they know how to better spend your money than you do? Oh, yes, Social Security is a wonderful thing. Force me to pay into a retirement fund that I won't collect more than $255 from if I die before retirement age. Yeah, that's fair.
I prefer a president that is socially conservative rather than a fiscal conservative, but I don't believe I'll see that in my lifetime.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
I don't think you understand what I'm trying to say. I don't contend that Diebold's methods are legit, nor do I claim that we experienced nothing but prosperity under the Clinton administration. The point I'm trying to make is that you're over-reacting to an issue that does not merit such a level of paranoia.
In your initial post, you suggested nothing short of a violent revolution in response to an economic recession. Our government isn't perfect, but, compared to that of most nations, it works pretty damn well. So we have a few corrupt politicians; since when haven't politicians been corrupt? I'm not saying we should just sit here and take it. All I'm saying is that "burning everything" isn't a practical nor rational solution to anything, let alone the recent slump of the tech industry.
With regards to your spiel on Diebold: yes, something shady is definitely going on, and the public has been made aware. Their election system is insecure, and they've admitted it. Now, if you would, please tell me what the fuck any of that has to do with jobs being lost in the tech industry? I don't see the connection.
All three news agencies reported her as being "comatose" when, in fact, this woman is not comatose (in a persistent, vegatative-like state), but rather in an awake, responsive and alert state of being.
She does not respond to stimuli or move on her own (vegatative). That's comatose by definition. Now what does her being or not being comatose have to do with the media being liberal exactly?
What do you hear? Another soldier dead in Iraq, right? Another bomb explodes or another rocket-propelled grenade kills one or more. How about reporting on how Iraq now has pre-war levels of electricity, water and sanitation that was provided by the US and her allies?
I served in the U.S. Army for six years and I get sick and tired of hearing this. Listen, the U.S. military is an extension of the peoples will. If the cause is just the casualty counts dont matter. Covering up loses because we are worried about next year's presidential elections is about as unpatriotic and anti-American as you can get.
Clinton wasn't in office any more...
You must have some odd Clinton fetish. I mean really why are conservatives so stuck on the Clintons? He hasnt been president for years and shes not running. Stop already. No one cares.
Regarding Rush Limbaugh, I do not advocate the use of drugs and I do think he should be investigated. If proof is found that he did indeed obtain these prescription drugs illegally, he should be dealt with through the court system.
Rush is rich. He will most likely buy his way out of this like O.J.
Then why tax more than you're going to spend?
Why spend more than you have?
Oh, yes, Social Security is a wonderful thing. Force me to pay into a retirement fund that I won't collect more than $255 from if I die before retirement age. Yeah, that's fair.
The money you pay covers people who are retired now. When you retire everyone who is not retired will be paying for your retirement.
I prefer a president that is socially conservative rather than a fiscal conservative, but I don't believe I'll see that in my lifetime.
There is something we agree on.
A bit late in the conversation but...
$384 a month for a car payment is actually pretty high nowadays unless you've just bought a new top 'o the line SUV. If I were you I'd consider refinancing through a credit union or other A or B class lending institution. I recently refi'd my Mazda 626, bringing my interest rate down to 5.5% and my payment down from $355 a month to $160 a month. Yeah, it means it'll be an extra two years until I pay it off, but I wasn't planning on dumping the car anyway and the lowered interest rate actually saves me money in the long run.
Just a suggestion!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Salary is not based on cost of living, it is based on market mechanisims,regulation and a host of other factors.
On the other hand from the point of view of an employee csot of living is relevant. What matters is how well you can afford to live. What would I gain by earing a thousand pounds more a month by moving back to London if I pay a thousand pounds more a month in rent and had to pay higher London prices on everything else as well?
Also differentials between jobs at different skill levels are greater here, so labour intensive services are less expensive relative to my salary, manufactured goods (cars, PCs) are more expensive, my rent is less (15% of salary as against 30% in Manchest and nearly 50% in London), food is about the same. I could not definitely afford there a LOT of things I can afford here.
There are a lot of stuctural reasons why people like me will remain in this position for a long time to come - until this economy becomes developed (in which case I would also benefit form abcolute salary rises and be back in teh same position I was in in England).
I am not aware why you think inflation will balance everything off as cost of living differentials have persisted for decades, if not centuries. They also exist within countries - look at the cost of living in the north of England vs London.
What you way might be true if we hadd a true global free market with free movement of labour etc, but that is not the case. Even if it did happen the adjsutment would take a very long time before everything equalised.
You are arguing based on a very simplistic ecomonic model. I sugest you read a little of the real thing - there is a fairly accessible text book by David Begg (head of the department at which I did my MSc) which manages to cover a lot of the real world issues.
Nope. The AF doesn't train it's people in basic combat.
Why would they do that? The vast majority of their people work far away from any conflict. Usually with some natural barrier in the way. (Mountains, an ocean...)
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
At some point life as a hunter/gatherer will be more fun and humane than the overly complex and competitive life we are headed toward. What makes you think its a good thing for the world to be more competitive? Why should it be good is more columbines, more highschool suicides, more drug use, all happens due to the world being so competitive that getting a B on your report card or a low SAT school means theres no reason left to live? When life is all about school and nothing matters outside of this, or all about work and nothing more, expect alot of people who just arent smart enough, talented enough or good enough to commit suicide, use drugs, and resort to crime. More competitive = more losers = more rebelling from society = bigger jail?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Phil Knight isn't doing anything wrong. Nothing Nike makes is something you need to live. You can get $15 sneakers from Payless shoes. Nike shoes are LUXURY items, its just almost no one can remember that anymore.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.