You go to help your friends move and there is stuff in boxes? Luxury!
I really hate it when someone asks me to help them move and they not only don't have the stuff boxed, they don't have enough garbage bags, and they haven't even started "packing."
Visa workers would have to be certified first. It's not like IT, where you can buy a degree from an Indian university without having to actually attend classes.
A TV repair place recently opened up near where I live, but they also do computer repair. These days, with tube sets all but gone, there isn't a lot of difference in the skill sets needed.
People still repair computers? By the time it breaks, it's usually better to just buy a new, faster one at 1/4 the price.
A lot of it depends on your lifestyle. 50 years ago, nobody ever heard of "lifestyle diseases", but today they're the top killers. You want to sit around all day at work, sit on the couch and wish for the day when a robot can beer you, take the car to the corner store, etc. - you're going to be falling apart.
Exercise not only improves your physical health - it also keeps your mental facilities going so that you're never too old to learn.
From what I have observed among my friends and acquaintances, it is that nothing in the tech industry is safe from being offshored in our globalized world.
Any job that requires a physical presence can't be off-shored. And many tech jobs do require a physical presence.
One word: Telepresence. Even surgery is being performed remotely nowadays. Now, if you don't mind being hated, you can always become a politician.
Barber or Masseuse. Something that requires your customer's physical presence.
While it's still legal to sell sex in Kanuckistan, they've made it illegal to buy it (though the police aren't enforcing the law because it would undo all the work that the police have done to reach out to sex workers to cut down on abuse and murder).
Physical labor like that tends to be real hard on the body. You can get away with it in your 20s and 30s, but after that you're looking at arthritis and early disability. I'd like to reach 60 without needing painkillers just to get out of bed in the morning.
Not really. There are lots of old plumbers showing their cracks around - and if they're more than a one-person shop, they have helpers, including other old farts. Also, there are lots of health problems that can compromise your ability to hold an IT job before you hit 60.
I think eventually much of it will be automated away, same as all other jobs. However, that's a future threat, whereas coding jobs are being off-shored today.
I love time travel stories, and All You Zombies is right up there - it's held up well over the decades, and yes, it reverberates with me for personal reasons:-)
Also, since productivity is measured by $$ produced per hour worked, the huge drop in gas prices means that even if the total produced were to stay the same, "productivity" drops.
which recently sent an email blast warning U.S. citizens they're in 'A Gigantic Global Talent War'
Who comes up with terms like "email blast" and why are Slashdot submitters repeating them? Can we please eliminate stupid marketing terms like that at Slashdot, of all places?
... because email spam doesn't have quite the cachet:-) And anyone who thinks they can compete with someone who costs 1/4 their pay is an ID-10-T. This whole scam is just to sell more products and services, and put downward pressure one wages.
Plumbers can work fewer hours for the same pay. They also have better job security (unions and obligatory certification).. And they can't be outsourced to India or eastern Europe for 1/4 the pay.
If your job can be off-shored by someone who thinks it will save money, you have no job security. Ask all the people laid off by Microsoft and IBM.
You can't always have "productivity gains", just like you can't always have a rising stock market. If people are moving from full-time to part-time jobs because of scaled-back demand, of course how much each worker produces will drop. Also, they're forgetting about the oil glut's impact on the economy - people are spending less on gas so you're going to have a drop in GDP even if productivity stays the same.
Of course, the people pushing "moar koderz" are the ones who will benefit the most, with the downward pressure of wages in the sector.
Ever notice that when you do a soft reboot, the previous screen persists in ram for a fraction of a second when it switches to graphics mode? It's been possible for decades to have a small program copy the necessary bytes to system ram and execute them on reboot.
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You go to help your friends move and there is stuff in boxes? Luxury!
I really hate it when someone asks me to help them move and they not only don't have the stuff boxed, they don't have enough garbage bags, and they haven't even started "packing."
True, but Greenland is for the entire nation.
Has somebody patented the "This is a turd ... on the Internet" yet?
Professor J. Rufus Fears taught me [amazon.com]that a "career" is a French word that means "path."
Professor J Rufus Fears would be laughed at by my french neighbors if he used that to ask for directions, or where the bicycle path was.
Truck drivers are always needed, and the work is fairly easy. Making it a very good fall back job if nothing else is in the works.
They're always needed because the pay is crap. And I guess you missed this story about self-driving Freightliner 3 days ago
Visa workers would have to be certified first. It's not like IT, where you can buy a degree from an Indian university without having to actually attend classes.
A TV repair place recently opened up near where I live, but they also do computer repair. These days, with tube sets all but gone, there isn't a lot of difference in the skill sets needed.
People still repair computers? By the time it breaks, it's usually better to just buy a new, faster one at 1/4 the price.
Since Wal-Mart is one of those stores that assumes that the majority of their customers are thieves anyway.
That's because, depending on where you're located, many of their customers look kind of sketchy
A lot of it depends on your lifestyle. 50 years ago, nobody ever heard of "lifestyle diseases", but today they're the top killers. You want to sit around all day at work, sit on the couch and wish for the day when a robot can beer you, take the car to the corner store, etc. - you're going to be falling apart.
Exercise not only improves your physical health - it also keeps your mental facilities going so that you're never too old to learn.
If you're a programmer over 50, you're screwed. And breaking into a new profession isn't going to be that easy.
By definition my network alone is at least as secure as my network + other networks. When the net goes down, I can still access my files.
From what I have observed among my friends and acquaintances, it is that nothing in the tech industry is safe from being offshored in our globalized world.
Any job that requires a physical presence can't be off-shored. And many tech jobs do require a physical presence.
One word: Telepresence. Even surgery is being performed remotely nowadays. Now, if you don't mind being hated, you can always become a politician.
Barber or Masseuse. Something that requires your customer's physical presence.
While it's still legal to sell sex in Kanuckistan, they've made it illegal to buy it (though the police aren't enforcing the law because it would undo all the work that the police have done to reach out to sex workers to cut down on abuse and murder).
Physical labor like that tends to be real hard on the body. You can get away with it in your 20s and 30s, but after that you're looking at arthritis and early disability. I'd like to reach 60 without needing painkillers just to get out of bed in the morning.
Not really. There are lots of old plumbers showing their cracks around - and if they're more than a one-person shop, they have helpers, including other old farts. Also, there are lots of health problems that can compromise your ability to hold an IT job before you hit 60.
Look for something with an entrenched union.
Surprise - Greenland doesn't come to mind, but it is listed as almost 2x the murder rate of Russia. It's the suicide capital of the world.
I think eventually much of it will be automated away, same as all other jobs. However, that's a future threat, whereas coding jobs are being off-shored today.
I love time travel stories, and All You Zombies is right up there - it's held up well over the decades, and yes, it reverberates with me for personal reasons :-)
That makes me feel like the parrot pining for the fjord. Sturgeon's Law is going to have to be revised.
Also, since productivity is measured by $$ produced per hour worked, the huge drop in gas prices means that even if the total produced were to stay the same, "productivity" drops.
which recently sent an email blast warning U.S. citizens they're in 'A Gigantic Global Talent War'
Who comes up with terms like "email blast" and why are Slashdot submitters repeating them? Can we please eliminate stupid marketing terms like that at Slashdot, of all places?
... because email spam doesn't have quite the cachet :-) And anyone who thinks they can compete with someone who costs 1/4 their pay is an ID-10-T. This whole scam is just to sell more products and services, and put downward pressure one wages.
Plumbers can work fewer hours for the same pay. They also have better job security (unions and obligatory certification).. And they can't be outsourced to India or eastern Europe for 1/4 the pay.
If your job can be off-shored by someone who thinks it will save money, you have no job security. Ask all the people laid off by Microsoft and IBM.
You can't always have "productivity gains", just like you can't always have a rising stock market. If people are moving from full-time to part-time jobs because of scaled-back demand, of course how much each worker produces will drop. Also, they're forgetting about the oil glut's impact on the economy - people are spending less on gas so you're going to have a drop in GDP even if productivity stays the same.
Of course, the people pushing "moar koderz" are the ones who will benefit the most, with the downward pressure of wages in the sector.
The simple solution is just not to store your stuff on someone else's servers. If you put it out there, someone else has access to it.
How many Ally McBeals is that?
Ever notice that when you do a soft reboot, the previous screen persists in ram for a fraction of a second when it switches to graphics mode? It's been possible for decades to have a small program copy the necessary bytes to system ram and execute them on reboot.