As is evident by HP stating that most of the companies consulting and 
Software jobs will be located in India/China later this year so they can

Make a profit due to the cheap salaries....


Larry Letterman
Cisco Systems




-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
n rf
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 11:39 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Technology, Certification, Skill Sets, and Looking
[7:70816]


> 
> The dark side is that technology changes, and has a way of becoming 
> more appliance like, meaning that what as skilled labor yesterday is
> out of the
> box tomorrow. Thin about it. All you folks who are AVVID
> experts and
> therefore in high demand. How long before AVVID is nothing more
> than another
> PBX, and routers self configure for QoS? Think the telco
> employee who drives
> the truck and installs your DSL is making 100K? not likely.

There's an even more ominous trend afoot and what is ironic is that
network engineers may be actively sowing the seeds of their own
destruction.  One of the holy grails of networking is to foster
telecommuting and virtual offices
- the idea was that through ever cheaper and more reliable bandwidth
which enables ever more powerful and complete networks, you may never
need to step foot in your office - you can replicate your entire office
from your house using videoconferencing, unified communications, remote
control of complete systems, and so forth.  Sounds great, right? You
don't waste time in a rush-hour commute, you can work while still
watching the kids, and in short the quality of life of your employeer's
improves dramatically - so there's no downside, right?

Uh, well, not exactly.  Virtual-offices sounds great when you realize
that it frees you from geographical barriers until you realize that it
also frees your employers from geographical barriers too.  Specifically,
employers can now hire workers from anywhere in the world, and we all
know exactly what they're going to do - they're going to hire guys who
are a hundred times more skilled than you but are wiling to work for a
fraction of your salary. 
Guys from India, China, Russia, and places like that.   Instead of
hiring a
bunch of high-priced American network engineers to run your NOC, you can
just hire a bunch of guys from India on the cheap to watch over your
network remotely, and just hire an American cable-monkey on minimum wage
to do all the physical stuff like checking cables and racking gear.  Or
let's say you need a complete network design.  Again, why hire an
expensive American network designer when you can just send your design
requirements to China and get back some well-done Visio's and router
configs, and you can videoconference/whiteboard/IM your remote designer
and hash out all the details to your heart's content, all for cheap.
Sure, that might seem harsh, but surely you can see that if companies
can use these tactics to save money, you know they will.

Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not a Luddite and I'm not a nativist.
Truth be told, a lot of those guys from India, China, and Russia are
smarter and work harder than many Americans.  All you have to do is go
any American high school and remark on just how lazy and unmotivated the
kids are today. In this new global economy, service-oriented work is
going to go to wherever the sharpest, cheapest, and hardest-working
minds of the world happen to be.  That's the way free-market capitalism
works.




Message Posted at:
http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=70915&t=70915
--------------------------------------------------
FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html
Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to