I haven't seen much talk about the obvious effects on US power. The outflow of tech jobs has two obvious effects. First, the tax base is reduced so that the country can afford less. Second, the nations the jobs move to will grow indigenous companies that increasingly create all the new innovations, leaving us in the dust.
Isn't it interesting that this is happening at the exact moment the current Administration has decided it can strut about acting like an undefeatable imperial power? I have seen some commentators who have speculated this power imbalance would only last perhaps twenty or thirty years. Garbage! With the continually increasing rate of knowledge accumulation, the fact that the center of that accumulation has moved out of the United States implies the imbalance will shift much, much sooner.
Just, of course, when we have managed to pretty well piss-off much of the rest of the world.
"The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
And there will continue to be a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for minimum wage. Only people of above-average intelligence work to get that educated. Therefore they are smart enough to do something else that will make more money than minimum-wage programming, like selling insurance, or construction work.
By wiping out vxWorks, which Linux should inevitably do, WindRiver loses its main source of revenue, which arises from royalties paid to them on each delivered product. Ie, you pay them a percentage of your profit. HUGE motivation to get out of vxWorks(TM). Why would they want to become just a shop that made tools, (for copy by copy license) and give that up?
Consider that any Open Source tools are going to come from people working on embedded Linux projects. Now, in the lawyer-mentality of our age, wouldn't it seem smart to get all those folks first using WindRiver development tools (which will NOT be Open Source) and then, as the Open Source submissions are made, go after those developing it as 'stealing' from WindRiver? This may sound paranoid, but hey, even we have real enemies, doing stuff that sounds like paranoid fantasy (SCO).
I have worked Silly Valley for more than a quarter century now. In the early days, I used headhunters in my job search and also responded to some recruiters. Generally they were highly ethical people.
During the rise of the bubble, that changed, along with so much else. The rise of the bubble saw the rise of
-- a great many unethical contractors
-- a great many unethical headhunter/recruiters
-- a drop in the ethics of companies hiring
-- a drop in the ethics of employees when courting employers
-- a drop in engineering standards
...and of course, lots and lots of money funding people who should never have received a dime. Which is what fueled all of the above.
I have not used headhunters the last few years. I would not be surprised if, during the bubble, the ethical ones were driven out of business, given the conditions then.
Of course, with the collapse, the sky fell on the good the bad and the ugly alike. I know many highly-ethical, high-quality engineers who are abandoning the profession. I would expect the same must also occur among headhunter/recruiters.
This too shall pass. Companies will again climb the learning curve to achieve better engineering, and better relationships. This will occur because we have left that abnormal period where hype was more successful than actual performance.
This, of course, is not the last time we will see someone who attacks and undermines the infrastructure, but who is not a terrorist, etc. The only really appropriate response is to recognize that these people have shown that they are too irresponsible to live in a world undergoing a high rate of technical evolution.
The simplest solution is to set aside regions of the country as non-technical zones. We can hire the Amish to run them and gaurantee a 19th-century level of technology. The only advanced item would be the 'ankle-bracelets' on the offenders giving their GPS coordinates, so they do not get to leave.
Essentially, I suggest sending these folks back to the 19th century for a time, possibly the rest of their lives (19th century medicine was pretty poor) while those who are capable of dealing with this world move on into the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen much talk about the obvious effects on US power. The outflow of tech jobs has two obvious effects. First, the tax base is reduced so that the country can afford less. Second, the nations the jobs move to will grow indigenous companies that increasingly create all the new innovations, leaving us in the dust.
Isn't it interesting that this is happening at the exact moment the current Administration has decided it can strut about acting like an undefeatable imperial power? I have seen some commentators who have speculated this power imbalance would only last perhaps twenty or thirty years. Garbage! With the continually increasing rate of knowledge accumulation, the fact that the center of that accumulation has moved out of the United States implies the imbalance will shift much, much sooner.
Just, of course, when we have managed to pretty well piss-off much of the rest of the world.
"The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
And there will continue to be a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for minimum wage. Only people of above-average intelligence work to get that educated. Therefore they are smart enough to do something else that will make more money than minimum-wage programming, like selling insurance, or construction work.
Consider that any Open Source tools are going to come from people working on embedded Linux projects. Now, in the lawyer-mentality of our age, wouldn't it seem smart to get all those folks first using WindRiver development tools (which will NOT be Open Source) and then, as the Open Source submissions are made, go after those developing it as 'stealing' from WindRiver? This may sound paranoid, but hey, even we have real enemies, doing stuff that sounds like paranoid fantasy (SCO).
During the rise of the bubble, that changed, along with so much else. The rise of the bubble saw the rise of
-- a great many unethical contractors
-- a great many unethical headhunter/recruiters
-- a drop in the ethics of companies hiring
-- a drop in the ethics of employees when courting employers
-- a drop in engineering standards
...and of course, lots and lots of money funding people who should never have received a dime. Which is what fueled all of the above.
I have not used headhunters the last few years. I would not be surprised if, during the bubble, the ethical ones were driven out of business, given the conditions then. Of course, with the collapse, the sky fell on the good the bad and the ugly alike. I know many highly-ethical, high-quality engineers who are abandoning the profession. I would expect the same must also occur among headhunter/recruiters. This too shall pass. Companies will again climb the learning curve to achieve better engineering, and better relationships. This will occur because we have left that abnormal period where hype was more successful than actual performance.
This, of course, is not the last time we will see someone who attacks and undermines the infrastructure, but who is not a terrorist, etc. The only really appropriate response is to recognize that these people have shown that they are too irresponsible to live in a world undergoing a high rate of technical evolution. The simplest solution is to set aside regions of the country as non-technical zones. We can hire the Amish to run them and gaurantee a 19th-century level of technology. The only advanced item would be the 'ankle-bracelets' on the offenders giving their GPS coordinates, so they do not get to leave. Essentially, I suggest sending these folks back to the 19th century for a time, possibly the rest of their lives (19th century medicine was pretty poor) while those who are capable of dealing with this world move on into the future.