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To: StolarStorm
All I said was that if you join any major trend, if you take up the most popular career training of the moment, you will be, statistically, at higher risk of unemployment if the field of your choice becomes too saturated with people. It's obvious. It's not gloating--it's simple fact.

Those of us who are interested in preparedness, as a way of life, know that depending for your livelihood on the highest-tech around means you will be vulnerable to being unwanted to any number of changes. Are you a nanotechnologist specializing in superconducting carbon polymers that must be kept near absolute zero? SUPER DUPER--as long as things stay good for high tech industries. You'll write your own paycheck for as long as it lasts. Will it last? If it does, it's guaranteed that in 25 years there will be two YOUNG, HEALTHY nanotechnologists with fresh training and a willingness to take a MUCH lower salary for a chance to do your job. I don't know if you've noticed but employers do look for ways to get out of paying retirement benefits. It's simple supply and demand! Demand goes up, supply goes up, demand goes down--and so does the price. Read your Thomas Sowell's BASIC ECONOMICS.

A man I know was a major part of the Human Genome project. No one knows more than he knows about sequencing deoxyribonucleic acid; he is a big part of the mouse genome project, and has done rice, hundreds of bacteria. Guess what? The big job done, the funding has dried up, and his lab is in real danger of having to do layoffs. The rumor is that he'd have sex with anyone for a grant.

I've watched my dad lose jobs because he finished a project too well...there was no continued need for him because he set up the system so that a much cheaper engineer could maintain it. Big mistake, eh? Do your job right, lose your job. That's another way it can happen. I'm sure it happens in pure IT--write the code so well the customer stays happy and doesn't need you again. (Microsoft, of course, never made THAT mistake.)

What is with you and that other guy, taking such offense at an obvious fact? Whatever causes a field that was once in shortage of workers to become a glut of workers, it's easy to see it coming. 9 million people and 10 million jobs is a happy situation for the worker. But it becomes not very happy when 2 million of those jobs go away. You and the other guy counted on those 10 million jobs forever, and you think you're a victim because it didn't work.

98 posted on 09/19/2003 11:23:36 AM PDT by ChemistCat (I have two daughters. I know peacemaking. What we're doing in Israel ain't it.)
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To: ChemistCat
"You and the other guy counted on those 10 million jobs forever, and you think you're a victim because it didn't work."

We didn't count on our own government selling us out. There is just as much demand for IT as ever, perhaps even more demand than before. BUT, the jobs are going to foreign workers, here via the h1-b slave trade and overseas via government assisted offshoring.
99 posted on 09/19/2003 12:19:27 PM PDT by StolarStorm
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To: ChemistCat
I've watched my dad lose jobs because he finished a project too well...there was no continued need for him because he set up the system so that a much cheaper engineer could maintain it. Big mistake, eh? Do your job right, lose your job.

I've done that at least a half dozen times. It's a source of considerable pride, as long as there is another job to move TO...

117 posted on 09/19/2003 6:33:59 PM PDT by null and void (Tomorrow's another day - and there's always the FBI files...)
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