Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Programmers An Endangered Species?
CommanderData writes "USA Today reports that US Programmers are an 'Endangered Species' and expects them to be 'extinct' within the next few years, replaced by offshoring and H-1B visa holders. They suggest people will manage overseas projects, become self-employed, or switch to other fields. What do my fellow code-dinosaurs plan to do before the asteroid hits?" A report on Newsforge (which is part of OSTG along with Slashdot) shows the flip side of the coin.
... and THAT should scare the living HELL out of you. I'm a Brit, currently living in Canada; Britain's NHS isn't in too bad a shape today, but 20 years ago it nearly killed me. One of the nasty little gotchas of 300 years of colonisation is that many of the former colonies can fairly easily get right of abode in the UK and in my case, the doctor assigned to my case was from Bangalore and DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH.
I went in and out of the local hospital 4 times, each time seeing this same "doctor" before a nurse finally decided something else had to be done (my condition was getting worse and worse and all that bloody Indian "doctor" would say is "take temperature, come tomorrow").
As luck would have it, a specialist from Addenbrookes (big hospital in Cambridge) was making his rounds that day and agreed to look at me. Within the hour I was checked-in to Addenbrookes where my temperature peaked at 111 degrees - they got me down to 104 that night.
I lived because of a 20 minute window where my visit coincided with one of the best orthopaedic surgeons in the UK... otherwise I'd have died at the hands of an Indian-trained "doctor".
My point is that the paper may say, "Doctor", "Engineer" or "Programmer" but what we in the west consider those terms to mean is a VASTLY different thing than the rest of the world.