Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Moving To an Offshore-Proof Career?
New submitter sundarvenkata writes: I am sure most slashdotters (including the ones who had the I-am-an-indispensable-snowflake stance in the past) have already foreseen the writing on the wall for the future of tech professions (with IT being the worst hit) given some of the ominous news in the past few years: here, here and here. Of course, there are always the counter-arguments put forth by slashdotters that "knowing the business" or "being the best in what you do" would save one's derriere as if the offshore workers will remain permanently impaired of such skills. But I was wondering if some slashdotters could share some constructive real-life experiences of planning a transition to a relatively offshore-proof career. If you have already managed to accomplish such a career change, what was your journey and what would your advice be to other aspirants?
Find a job that requires a super-high security clearance.
http://developers.slashdot.org...
http://itknowledgeexchange.tec...
in short: guy moves to malaysia (he had no ties to the area, just picked it on economic considerations) and doesn't just survive, but does well, on $16k/yr, working 10 hours a week
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The question in TFS is another way of asking "How can I spend my whole working life doing the same thing without risk of change?" It's not much of an aspiration.
Better questions might be:
And there's another several hundred good questions along those lines. How to avoid your employment being outsourced is not one of them. Your life deserves greater ambitions than planned stagnation.
Service industry jobs cannot be offshored. Garbage collectors, police, housekeepers, store stockers/cashiers and other 'must be physically present' jobs cannot be offshored. Chefs, construction workers, beekeepers, doctors, plumbers, longshoremen etc...
What do you want to do?
If you are in a job that can be offshored, your best bet is networking. Not as in TCP/IP type networking, but in talking to people. If you know what you are doing and lots of people at other companies know that too, you have a much easier time finding a job. Hiring a qualified person is time consuming and expensive. If lots of people 'know a guy' and that guy is you, they don't have to go through the effort and you have industry job security even if you don't have it in your particular company.
If you aren't that good? There's always beekeeping...
Get a job that requires you physically be there. You can't outsource the fry guy to India. Then the question comes back to whether your job can be replaced by a robot or computer.
You can't find a "safe" job anymore. The best you can do is find a stable company and convince them you are indispensable.
If labour costs and skills were the same everywhere, then there'd be no risk of offshoring. So the quickest way to eliminate offshoring is to open the borders, both ways, for everyone. But the conservatives assert it'll have the whole world living like the worst of Africa or wherever, so we try hard to make sure we lose our jobs in a nice country, rather than raise the standard for the whole world.
Learn to love Alaska
Or an electrician, as shocking as that may sound.
Being afraid that your job will be taken away by "overseas workers," besides its vaguely racists and xenophobic connotations, is just the latest flavor of a very old fear.
Back in the days of the industrial revolution, it was automation that was going to take away the jobs. And in a sense, it did. But the population of (for example) the United States is larger today than at any time in its history, and most people still have jobs. Whahoppen? And yet now some of the people who weren't even alive during the industrial revolution are worried that robots and other machines will take their jobs away. Or foreigners.
The best wait I can explain it is that you should never approach an employers with the idea that you are a consumer asking the employer to give you something, in this case a job. You should think of yourself a a business resource -- which is what you are, and in fact the most valuable one that exists on the planet. When you apply for a job, you are OFFERING an employer something. You are not the consumer. You are a supplier. So as an autonomous resource who has control of your own destiny, how do you increase your own value so that you are more attractive to your current and future employers? It ain't gonna happen by you taking a job and then sitting down at your desk and pretending you're going to do the same job for the rest of your life.
If you're afraid that you've got the kind of job that your employer could just hand to somebody else tomorrow -- somebody you've never met, somebody who's never met anybody on your team, somebody who maybe doesn't even speak the same language as you -- then my first question is, don't you like money? Why are you in that job, when it can't be worth what they pay you for it and you could already be doing a lot better for yourself.
A lot of tech workers seem to get confused and think their value to their employer is in the skills they have. That's true, partly. But I'd say at least half of being successful at any job -- and maybe even 80 percent -- involves interpersonal skills. How well do you work within the team? How able are you to anticipate what the business needs and act on that? In cases where there's a leadership vacuum, can you fill it? And then when it's time to follow directions, can you still do it?
Or how about this one: Do you LIKE your job? Do you show up every morning feeling good and ready for work, because you feel like what you do for a living is something worth doing? I've talked to a lot of people who don't feel that way, and honestly I feel like a lot of that is on THEM. Going back to the idea that you're not a customer, you're a supplier ... you've gotta stick up for yourself. For most of us (hopefully) nobody has stuck a gun to our heads and made us take ANY job. It's true that they wouldn't call it work if it was all fun and games, but many of us spend more of each 24-hour day at work than we do sleeping. And certainly more than we do spending time with our friends and families. My advice is to spend that time on something you think is worth doing -- not something that a 10-year-old could do for you, if that was legal.
Do that, and you're already ahead of the game. When you're in a job where your real value is not to some nebulous economic concept, but to the people who make up your business, then you're in a pretty good spot. You can outsource Worker X but you can't outsource Dave Johnson, because there's only one of him.
So don't be Worker X. Maybe it sounds glib, but that's really the whole game. That's your life.
Breakfast served all day!
Even better, specialize.
Generic Javascript/PHP/Java/C# "trained monkey" coders are a dime a dozen and most likely available for less than you are asking for, especially if the work can be done by someone overseas with 1/10th of your living expenses.
On the other hand, if you are skilled in mathematics, computer graphics (algorithms, not Photoshop!), statistics or artificial intelligence, you are going to be in high demand. These are skills that are a lot harder to find and command a good price. The downside is that you have to spend a lot of time by learning. That doesn't mean you must spend years and top $$$ on a university degree (it does help, though!), but you will need to invest some significant time there.
Basically, it is pretty much the same story as basic machinists working on lathes being replaced by CNC operators and robots - you need to bring some added value to the business. The low end - the basic programming - is pretty much a commodity today, especially for large companies who can afford to offshore/outsource. You are nobody special because you know Javascript or C# today.
The other option is to work local - there will be always a market for small businesses/consultants catering to mom & pop businesses that need a website built, accounting or customer management system created, perhaps some reporting beyond what Excel can do. Those are too small fish for the big guys like SAP to go after and too small to be able to afford a team in India/Eastern Europe to manage their systems, not to mention that it would be really impractical. It is a large market - not everyone has to (and can) work for Facebook, Google or Microsoft today.
Problem solvers are far more in demand than ever, and that won't go away till we get strong AI (at which point the problem won't be offshore, but inCPU).
I don't mean 'engineers' like code pigs or most IT drones (not a dig at IT, really good IT people are engineers too). You just have to be someone who can take all information about the problem, including the constraints, then design and implement the best solution given the constraints - that means time, budget, reliability, support needs, end of life, etc.
The trouble is that most people can't do that, which is why it's in high demand. Risk assessment and mitigation are crucial and mostly untaught skills. Most people will just do what you tell them to, or take their favorite hammer and chainsaw and use it on everything in disregard of practical requirements. Most offshore 'engineers' fall into this category as well, which is one reason engineering outsourcing has such a bad stink among those who jumped on the bandwagon in the 2000s.
Which leads to the other problem - it's nigh impossible to learn except by doing. Normal path is to get an engineering degree, then join an engineering firm and work on actual products - though if you join a big boring place like HP you still may end up just learning to be a code pig unless you're lucky enough to end up in one of their very few interesting divisions (memristors!). Obviously this is long term project, high expense. High risk till you get the degree, then fairly low risk.
The other option is to just start making things. Make 'products' for yourself and try to finish them - i.e. make it something you could sell, even if you don't. This is easier than ever now thanks to explosion of low cost boards, motor controllers, cameras, drones... Get your hands on. Someone who can code, breadboard, solder and do servo control is a highly contested prize.
The bad news is you may find you're just not suited for it. In which case your best hope is probably to find an avoided niche like COBOL.
The good news is that if you're suited for it it's ridiculously fun and rewarding. Some days are still gonna suck, but generally you're solving interesting problems and making real things and people are using the things you made (this is THE BEST). Usually not as lucrative as banking or politics, but making decent money and helping rather than being scum of the earth (unless you go to work for Facebook, *zing*) is worth a lot of peace of mind.
Rubbish. I've been running since I was 18 but I just got my best ever marathon and half-marathon results at age 49, (2:57 and 1:22) Work has forced a year off this year but I expect to go even quicker next year.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Also HVAC work, even though you may have been conditioned to think otherwise.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Professor J. Rufus Fears taught me that a "career" is a French word that means "path." He says it's a path to get from graduation into a retirement home. I have tried to internalize this concept, and it helped me take risks with quitting multiple career-type jobs to open up my own businesses. Roll the dice, and see how they land. Have an adventure, not a career.
One business of mine is a software development company. This is my primary means of livelihood. Right now, I mostly contract out development services to small-to-medium sized organizations that have trouble staffing programmers. The vast majority of my clients are not large enough to hire a full time, on staff, programmer to help do what I (literally me programming, most of the time) do for them. I've developed a relationship with a programmer in Kazakhstan, where I can take advantage of the lower costs to get things developed cheaper than here. However, now I am working primarily with a MUCH more expensive local programmer, since his efficiency is higher, the Kazakh guy isn't as available and finding a new one is a ton of work, and on some projects the local presence far outweighs the cost savings by outsourcing. Plus, the American is my friend, an early mentor that taught me about web programming when we were both employees, and things are slow with him now so I wanted to get started working together (on a relatively small project for a client.) I'm also working on developing a software product for passive income, but that takes a LOT longer, and is much riskier than contracting.
Another business I have is rental property close to the local university. That business is, by definition, tied to my geographical area. When software is slow, rents come in and I can work on home improvement projects. When software is busy, rents still come in and I can pay someone else to do emergency repairs, and put off improvements until a slow time.
The concept of relying on a single employer for all my income is extremely scary to me. I would much rather diversify my software earnings across multiple clients to mitigate risk. Similarly, I'd rather have multiple one-bedroom apartments to rent out as compared to a big house to rent so that when one of the college students decides he cannot pay his rent this summer, and that he's leaving two months early (despite his two, international, trips setup...) I still have rents coming in. I have two companies which provide me with income, in terms of about seven clients/customers/renters. Both the Albuquerque software industry (most of my business is serving local customers) and the Albuquerque university rental market would have to collapse, simultaneously, for me to be majorly screwed. If anything, I'm pretty tied to Albuquerque and should try and diversify geographically more! I love Albuquerque though...
I do not have a family to provide for. I'm working on changing that, with trying to be as good of a boyfriend as I can be, with the goal of getting married someday. I am not saying that you should throw away all sense of security for your family (if you have one) and become a hustler overnight. "Look kids, we get to have the BLUE Ramen noodles for dinner tonight! Insurance? Who needs it?!? Jesus is my insurance!" No, that's not what I'm talking about... My local, subcontractor, friend (that I am just starting to work together with) took the plunge about three months ago and went into business for himself. He has a wife and two kids. He prepared extremely well, and setup enough contracts to be making about 1.7x his salary for the first three months from basically day one. This is his first slow two week period, so we are working together. My local community has all sorts of people that are interested in promoting entrepreneurial activities, helping you get started, and providing free advice. I am extremely
And move back to the US
Except that it won't, except in very special circumstances.
Let's be honest here: Most IT jobs - being a sysadmin, writing software, setting up a network - are not complicated. Most systems don't need much other than some some packages and configuration handled by something like Puppet. Most software doesn't do anything remarkable - it just shuffles data from point A to point B and displays a few things to an end user. Etc., etc.
A vast majority of IT jobs only require mediocre skill and knowledge. Most H1-B folks I know have rarely been mediocre, but they ARE cheap and management doesn't know the difference anyway. All they know is eventually their widget does the new X they've been asking for. So what if the code is a terrible mess and deployment is a gigantic pain? The management doesn't see or care.
Knowing the business? That's what project managers and other management-y types are for (or so they think). You and I know that a software engineer who is well versed in a certain business will design better systems, for example, but I've not once seen a manager that believes this way.
Management sees IT staff as nearly a commodity with people easily interchangeable. They're not entirely wrong - not entirely - but they think they're not wrong at all.
Remember: It isn't what YOU think that is important when a company is doing the hiring. What is important is what THEY think and how cheap they can get you and how much they can work you before you burn out.
Love sees no species.