The Future of IT in America?

tomocoo asks: "As a young person considering various choices for the future career I'd like to pursue, IT and computer science continually reappear near the top of the list of fields I'm interested in. In fact, one of my only hesitations is the suspected ease by which programming and other related tasks can be sent to other countries for pennies on the dollar. How much of a threat do the readers of Slashdot feel outsourcing is to the American programmer? Should I and other young people be pursuing something more specialized or have I simply been watching too much CNN?"

Comments

There is a solution

[nurb432]

Kill them all. And close the borders totally.

Your lack of faith [of US workers] is disturbing.

[sethstorm]

So, contrary to what Lou Dobbs would have you believe, IT and High Tech jobs are not leaving the US for India and China. IT and High Tech is alive and well in the US and will be for some time.

Obviously you havent lived where they still want to do this economically unsound approach. You sound like the kind that would rather see him off the air - which seems to lend some if not a lot of truth to that message. Guess your kind is quite hurt enough to throw blood money (from slave labor countries such as India and China) to get him (and like minded people) out of the public view.


When I speak to companies who are doing offshoring these days, I am not hearing issues about labor costs at the front of the back. Rather, it is about finding specific skill sets and to attract people who don't want to live in Silicon Valley, the US, etc. Least you think the last point is fantasy, I personally know of a good 1/2 dozen folks who have moved to India and China (accepting local pay packages) in order to have a better quality of life (for example, household servants).

Cao ni ma de.

Well, if you like to live in a country that exploits its own physically as it does to the world politically, fine. Just dont be surprised when you cant get anything of quality and that your every move is watched even more carefully. Forget protests, unless your family wants to pay for the bullets. While the EU/US kick out the free-exploiters *again*, you'll live in a society that will not care if you die to some "accident".

As for those companies that you deal with, I bet they're also some of the ones that want Dobbs out. No sense in trying to endrun the US wages if everyone sees that you're trying to recreate the Gilded Age again.


Simply put, salaries cannot grow at this rate (a CAGR of 29%) for an extended period of time without coming into line with those in the US. The ratio between the US and India is no longer 1:10, it is more like 1:4 and shrinking. This is the reality of a world which is flat. Things reach a point of balance. And in this case, the point of balance is moving up.

Unfortunately, you're not going to get more than a lynch mob in the Midwest after you've taken their job to India, and only jack up education costs to insane levels. Community colleges do not a solution make; it is the redirection of existing subsidy in other areas to education, and the removal of any ability to exclude people from any institution for any reason.

It's not competition when you throw the game by offshoring, even in trade.