Posted on 11/13/2005 4:56:24 PM PST by jb6
In this economy you want to be a specialist in something that people will pay for. If someone gets a general business degree or some liberal arts degree, they might as well take the LSAT now, cuz I know that is where they will end up. If you can help a company build their IP, you are in a good spot. Engineering is a great place to be in that respect.
when a company like Cisco - dominant in their particular space, tells you they plan to hire more engineers in India then in the US - don't put too much stock in what you might think your "job prospects" are. sure, there are jobs - but fewer and fewer careers. more contract work means people are employed for 9 months out of the year, and looking for their next assignment for 3 months (unpaid). and trust me, the mid and upper level managers are actively working every day to figure out a way to get job functions moved offshore.
I judge it based on my colleagues at work, what they are doing with their own college bound kids - I cannot think of a single one, who are sending their own college bound kids to "follow in their parent's footsteps".
my advice to you - complete your undergrad engineering program, and go get an MBA in finance or business or marketing. that combination does very well, as US corporations will not offshore their management cores. you can earn good money with that combination.
I am in IT, for a short while longer as I finish my MBA....and good ridence to short term contracts, no promotability, declining over all pay, no stability. My father is a life long mechanical engineer and he put it quite right: when the manufacturing is all getting outsourced, who needs the engineers?
Cisco can probably attract a good critical mass of strong candidates.
The work is harder than the average America job, but I have no doubt that there are enough Americans that can and would do this work if they could be paid a decent salary. The smart students will excel despite the public school systems, or any school system for that matter, they always have.
There is another reason. Competing with people paid Third World wages is not a viable career.
Change of plans? See my tagline.
Fortunate for the GOP that the Democrats have, for now, come down on the side of "open borders, free trade." If they ever decided to make this an issue (or figured out a way to play both sides of the fence,) it would be Katie Bar the Door.
After the crash, rates came down quite a bit, and it was much dicier. Over the past year rates seem to be back up to late 90's rates.
The fact that manufacturing goes overseas does not imply that design/engineering will follow. I think design/engineering is going to be somewhat focused in the target markets.
I don't think that employing foreigners violates any allegiance to the U.S. If he did not run the best operation (including utilizing overseas resources) that he could he would be hurting other U.S. citizens. There are a lot of people who have CSCO in the 401(k)s who would like to see CSCO move up. Customers would essentially be taxed also, if he did'nt utilize the resources as best as he could. You may disagree, and say that what he is doing is not the best for business, but I don't think it is fair to say that this is an allegiance problem.
ping for laTER
And the higher ups wonder why morale is so low among their best and brightest developers. Giving them an extra months salary so they can go to Bangalor and train their replacement doesn't help very much.
I work for a large consulting company that has a very large contract with a major Telecom player. For some reason they believe saving 10 to 15 bucks an hour on highly skilled labor will cut the bottom line. What you really get is buggy software that has to be released quarterly and there's no such thing as an emergency release. Nimbleness and flexibility be damned. I'd really hate to be a Project Manager with all Indian developers in Bangalor.
We've got two lists at work. One is for the people who's jobs have gone overseas, and the other is of people who have quit since the outsourcing was announced. Guess which one is longer. The real irony is that a lot of the developers who have quit or had their jobs shipped to Bangalor are Indian.
There's a lot of good talent in India but most companies that have outsourced there have scaled back. Generally it seems like some sort of disconnect develops. I wouldn't want to invest a majority of my resources there.
In IT myself, I find it very discouraging to be the core for the success of the company and have management not compensate you for your work - and make no mistake about it, the IT geeks in your company are the foundation for its success - just have a little database downtime and you'll know what I mean.
In the meantime, project managers and financial managers are all compensated better but are not utilizing a mental genius like the IT guys are having to do every day.
Hi Willie!
I have a funny story. Last month we had a supervisor module go out in a 6000 series Catalyst switch. I called Cisco TAC to report the problem. The guy took my ticket and said he had to transfer me to his tech center. I told him to hold it! The I did not want to talk to anyone from India since they are not only hard to understand, but with my experience with them, generally clueless. The tech laughed at me and said that he would transfer me to the San Jose office. He transfered me and I got a guy.......that lived in San Jose.....who was from India.
Yeah, they are pretty sure their better than Americans, that's for sure. When reality hits them soon, they will won't be laughing at all.
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