Brain drain in tech's future?

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What, Me Worry?

I am in computers for 27 years. After completing my Master's degree 10 years ago, I considered going for my PhD. Then I asked myself "What for?" I would spend a bundle of money, probably could not hold a full time job simultaneously, and at the end, there would not be any job waiting for me. My advice to anyone considering a position in IT is to run, not walk, away from this field. The U.S. corporations will continue to give away high tech jobs and any other reasonably high paying jobs that they can offshore. As to moving to one of the countries that are currently reaping the rewards of offshoring, I suggest that you forget that idea. Most countries will not allow Americans to work there. I can trace the problems we are experiencing back to the "me" generation of the 1980's. It was at that time that everyone was looking out for himself, when stockholders decided that a reasonable return on their investments was not satisfactory, and the 5 years and out CEO was created. When the CEO came to be judged simply based upon the bottom line profit, with no regard for the future viability of the corporation, it became possible to show profitability by simply cutting the head count with out any regard to the long term negative side effects. When the head count was cut to the bare minimum and worker productivity was at its highest, the less than competent CEO's had to come up with another way to cut costs. Thus came the H-1B visa. That, however, proved to be only a short term solution. Onshore outsourcing never was able to save much money. The only viable solution was to create a work force that was willing to perform the same job tasks at very low wages. Since the U.S. has minimum wage laws, and workers can not even survive on the wages the corporations are willing to pay, their only recourse was to offshore the work. The free trade agreements made offshoring possible, and government subsidies for corporations that offshored work made it all the more attractive. Will the U.S. remain a technological power? Not likely. Will the U.S. remain a superpower? Not likely when all of the tech work has left the country and we have to rely upon foreign nations to design and build our computers, our fighter jets, etc. I believe it was one of the communist leaders who said that the U.S. would collapse from within. The terrorists need not lift a finger to destroy us. We have the rich, the greedy and the incompetent to take care of that.

Posted by: jonnjonnzdnet   Posted on: 08/10/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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