My basic point is this, however moot. I am not talking about NOT hiring foreign workers. I have no beef with that. My beef is with CORPORATE GREED. You claim to be a free-market capitalist. Are you a business owner? Or do you invest in the market, or both? Maybe I should have said this in my previous post. My disgust in Corporate America stems from the total lack of morals and sense of responsibility to the people who put them where they are, their workers. Believe it or not, I am not a Democrat. I sway towards the conservative side. But I believe you have to have some morals when you run a business. There is a symbiotic realtionship that exists between the worker and the employer. I know employers hold the cards and can dictate the rules as they see fit. But laying off 10,000 workers after reporting 40,000,000 dollars in profit for the quarter is callous. The cliche "we have to do what's right for the business" comes to mind. Enron and MCI are shining examples of corporate greed. How many people lost their retirement, their lives?
I guess we could come down from the mountaintop and say "Weeellll, here's how it is. You don't have a PhD and a wonderful stock portfolio so you can just go by the way side. No life for you. You don't have the education to be a CEO, you have morals so you can't go into sales". Management has been pretty shaky for a while too. I know guys afraid to lose their jobs because they know they can't find another one that pays as well without having a BA or BS or higher. >>From your reply- "in short, the high-end, "high-touch", work that is not easily outsourced at all. And who tends to make more money, the engineers or the business leadership/finance/sales? Right. Therefore, the high-yield, high-margin work will stay here." > Ok n rf... I will admit before I go any farther, this is a rant > ;) > > You have hit the nail on the head. The one that puts me over > the top. I > am going to refer back to my first rant over CCIE numbers. > hehehe. The > part where Corporate America oughtta go hang out with the Nazis > in S.A. > When is enough, enough? NAFTA brought about the demise of the > labor > sector (as far as assembly line workers, and more menial tasks > that > employers did not want to pay minimum wage here to do). The > spin was > that higher tech jobs would be available. Well we had a nice > run for > about 8 years. Now the higher tech jobs are being farmed out to > "off-site" locations. I can almost picture a bunch of poor > souls locked > in a NOC and having to ask to go to the bathroom like they do > in the > Mexican plants run by a few rich guys hired out to American > interests. > All in the name of $aving money. I haven't checked but I doubt > Caterpillar passed on the savings when they moved their > production > facilities to Mexico. > > The way things are going the only jobs left will be food > service and > nurses. The only problem is nobody will be working to afford > either one > of the services. I changed career fileds in the mid-to-late > nineties > hoping I would be able to hold on to something worthwhile. I > chose > networking. It turned out to be an addiction. I love doing this > stuff > but un-employment sucks! In retrospect nursing would have been > a better > choice, but hey the market wasn't to good for them either back > then. > Will American companies EVER realize they have a commitment to > keep this > country strong. After all, if no one is working who will buy > their > services? > > I know you are not the cause, only the messenger. So please > forgive my > rant. > > Mark Well, as a free-market capitalist, I have several points to make * Own any stocks? Perhaps a mutual fund in a 401k? If so, guess what, you're part of the very Corporate America that you apparently despise. If you own shares in American companies, then your portfolio is helped by any and all cost-cutting moves made by those companies. *Ever use any foreign products? I bet you have. Just go out to the street and check out all the foreign cars. There's a good chance you have one in your garage. Or just look at the clothes you wear. I bet you that your underwear was made either in Mexico or in Asia. In fact, just take a look around your room at all the househood goods. How many of them were manufactured in other countries? Probably most of them. In fact, look at your PC. Probably only one component of your PC - the microprocessor - was actually manufactured in the US. Most of your PC was probably built in Asia. The point is that you as a consumer want the best product for the least cost. I want to pay as little as possible for my socks, which is why the socks I buy tend to be made in Mexico. I want to drink the best beer in the world, which is why the beer I buy is never American-made, it tends to be made in Germany. Surely you have bought goods that were made in other countries either because they are cheaper or higher quality or both. But if you choose the most optimal good, whether domestic or foreign, then is it really surprising to discover that companies will choose the most optimal workforce, whether domestic or foreign? * I detect a strong tone that American companies should hire only American workers, is that true? If so, does it then follow that foreign companies should hire only foreign workers? For example, should Nortel fire all its employees and replace them all with Canadians? Should the Shell oil refinery near my house eliminate all its American plant workers and replace them all with Brits? Should CBS fire all its American workers and replace them with Japanese (CBS is owned by Sony). The point is that turnabout is fair play. If you want to say that American companies should not employ foreigners, then you have to be prepared for the logical conclusion that foreign companies should not employ Americans. * I think your view of the future is a tad bleaker than it needs to be. While service-work will be more outsourced, what kind of work will stay here? Yes, the cable-monkey work. You will actually need a pair of hands here to do the grunt work. But what other kind of work? Simple - the business leadership/management, the finance, the sales, - in short, the high-end, "high-touch", work that is not easily outsourced at all. And who tends to make more money, the engineers or the business leadership/finance/sales? Right. Therefore, the high-yield, high-margin work will stay here. Perhaps some historical perspective is in order. 200 years ago, the United States was a backwards nation on the fringes of the levers of power, where most of the citizenry worked in agriculture. 100 years later, the US was the strongest and most industrialized nation on earth. How else could this have happened had not millions of people been essentially forced to stop farming and work in factories instead? Where else were the newly-born American factories supposed to find workers, if not from the farms? Labor is not just conjured out of thin air, it has to come from somewhere. The only way for the US to have made the transformation from backwards farming country to a super-strong industrial nation was, essentially, for millions of farming jobs to be lost due to mechanization and foreign competition. Only through these job losses was labor freed up to enter the booming American industrial sector. But what would have happened if this progress had been impeded? For example, what if one of the many "save our farming jobs" campaigns that were run in the 1800's actually succeeded? Then the US would still be a poor backwards agricultural nation and it would be a European nation or Japan which would be the strongest nation on earth. And besides, think about this. You may lament the fact that jobs are going to India, but the net immigration from India to the US is still a large positive number. Many Indians come here to work, but it's rare to find Americans who move to India to work (only ones I've heard of are Indian-Americans). So clearly there are still more jobs created here than being outsourced to India. Anyway, it's all stuff to think about. Chuck's basic premise is correct in that if you want to maintain employability, you have to demonstrate why your job is important from a business perspective, not just from a technical one. Who cares about the ability to move packets around, what's important is that you understand how that ability translates into dollars. Guys who understand the business case of networking will tend to keep their jobs. Guys who only understand the technical aspects of this job are easily outsourced. 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