Why?
My goodness, you give up so easily.
Look, if the "experience and tech" were overseas, we would be in the same position as the Chinese and Indians—that is, we would have to play catch up. But we are not in that position. As I indicated in a previous post, we are so far ahead of the Third World that all this scaremongering is ludicrous. The Chinese and Indians are having to catch up with us, not the other way around.
That is no reason to become complacent. To stay ahead, we must adapt to changing world conditions—something Americans used to excel at doing. It will not do to give up and declare the whole situation to be hopeless. Or to appeal to the government to shield us from "unfair" competition.
. . . especially with our levels of engineers and engineering students falling. Lawyers and burger flippers aren't too innovative in tech. As for productivity, that's exportable too, especially when its tech driven.
I would like to see more of our students majoring in engineering. That is less likely to happen if they listen to all the nonsense about the engineering jobs going overseas.
I would not disdain "burger flippers"—some of the most technology-savvy companies are in the food industries. On the other hand, feel free to say nasty things about lawyers. One of our biggest problems is that we lead the world in litigation.
Fine. So what is you advice for American workers? How can they compete with the Chinese and Indian workers who have less living expenses?
Wrong, we are still tredding water because we have people with experience. Unfortunetly the newest stuff is now leaving in droves, so that experience will diminish and peter out, especially as the replacement engineers will have less experience to gain.
My x-roommate who worked in development for Intel is a good example. His whole research department is now in Nizhni Novograd, he barely found a support job in Portland with Intel. Sybus moved their entire IT department to India and competitor Oracle hasn't been to far behind.
Why?
I would like to see more of our students majoring in engineering. That is less likely to happen if they listen to all the nonsense about the engineering jobs going overseas.
Why?
...Critical awareness and the ability to hypothesize, to interpret, and to communicate are essential elements of successful innovation in a conceptual based economy." Alan Greenspan
Unfortunately, most of the engineering jobs are going overseas. Good engineering jobs follow the manufacturing industries. If more of the refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries move overseas, then the engineering jobs will follow them.
I spent much of the 90's as an engineer trying to salvage a career. I had very good grades through bachelor's and master's degrees at major public universities. I had excellent performance appraisals at work. However, when I was laid off, I found few jobs available and had only one offer over the next five years. That job wasn't worth having, and I returned to school to get another engineering degree. I landed back at a good employer in '99, but I'll never recover the salary and benefits that I lost in the 90's. Fifteen to twenty years ago, engineers constantly received calls from headhunters wanting them to consider other jobs. I haven't been called by a headhunter in years.
I understand that people who find themselves in a dying industry are going to have problems. We're going to have work pretty hard just to stay above water, and we're going to have to put up with many situations that we don't like. I don't like it, but it's a part of life. However, there's no reason that I would push someone else to put himself in the same situation that I'm facing. There will be a few engineering jobs left for a long time, but it won't be as it once was. I'd certainly not push anyone towards engineering the way that my generation was pushed.
There are things that we can do to reverse the situation. If we'd do those things, the chemical, petrochemical, and refining industries would recover somewhat and there would again be a high demand for engineers. At that time, I think encouraging people to go into the engineering disciplines would be a good thing to do.
Bill