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."

Comments

Military: good jobs, good training

[Preach the Good Word]

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.

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 .mil, of course these are the ones you never hear about until they're released to civilian use.

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. :-)

In related news, a Pakistani extorts US firm

[Serveert]

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.

I'll get modded down but here's the article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ ch ronicle/archive/2003/11/12/BUGI52VMQR1.DTL&type=bu siness

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.

Re:FACT 1: Your job is not hard.

[thesilverbail]

I fully support raising the world-wide standard of living. Paying someone less than their food costs them (regardless of physical location) does not accomplish that.

As an Indian in the IT industry I resent your charecterisation of us as starving slave labour. You just compare our salaries on an exchange rate basis without factoring purchasing power parity and then say that we're being made to work for a pittance. Well guess what? A thousand dollars a month is a very comfortable salary in India.

You're just desperately trying to find some excuse so you can oppose outsourcing "in principle" when all you're really worried about is your job.

I feel sorry for people in the US hit by outsourcing and the job crunch. But it's hard to feel bad about it seeing the good things it has done in my country, giving it a chance to come out of its poverty and maybe into some kind of economic parity with the first world.