Generalizing here,nothing serious, it sounds like you plan to make it through anything by being needed and I plan to make it through by needing nothing(very little).That probably goes according to what suits us each best. BRING IT ON!
Sorry SDR, I couldn’t help it :).[/quote]
Good morning, I had a nice 3 hr power nap… Hope you’re not still up and don’t read this for another 8 hrs.
Anyway, I see your point, and frankly that’s great. You’re in a position that for which you seem to be financially set, you probably didn’t make as many financial oops that some of us *cough* did. That’s a great position to be in.
Me? Regarding, actually, frankly I really don’t care that much about what happens to me. For one I got a good 30 years or so to wallow around, 10 years max probably left for me in this engineering field, 20 later years to screw around, make bad decisions etc….So it’s not really about me making it through by being needed.
What does concern me a lot these days along the lines of what something that is going on in the auto industry right now and our good ole “service industry”. As some have mentioned and that I agreed with, I never bought into the notion that our economy could sustain itself by the massive shift to be a “service industry”. You can only be a “service industry” if you are production a service what others want. There ultimately would be a limit of what a service your can provide in terms of domestic, international, markets, since service industries are drastically dependent on geographical location. For example, a lawyer her is useless in china and vice versa. A $250/hr mechanic year would be challenged to see 200 Yuan per hr in china, etc..nt.
What IS alarming is the shift away in America from actually producing GOODS. GOODS that internationally could be sold and purchased. We(I) have grown up, seeing the demise of the US Auto industry, and the demise of uS high tech manufacturering, as we saw a shift of these tasks to offshoring and overseas work..Those are some of the key fundamentals that are needed to prosper and evolve in this country.
The more sinister thing in my generation, is seeing this issue move upstream. Into engineering, R&D, product development. That is ALARMING. Because if this economic mess is proving anything, it is that all those college grads that banked their future on a service industry job (minus doctors), are rudely awakening to issue that this isn’t going to look pretty in the service industry for the next 5-10 years if people are broke in the U.S. and cant afford to spend money on non-essential services.
There will be too many MBA’s (even if those MBAS are from the top 10) chasing too few MBA-like jobs, how many realtors do we really need (no offense to anyone here),etc….
Where does this leave america? Well, people like me may very well be close to the last foothole before entire engineering departments, R&D, product development ships overseas just like our manufacturing. It’s not about cost and outsourcing, though some people are really worried about that (I’m not…)
If you reach a point which the majority of your knowledge base is overseas, there is little value you (an American engineer with an american standard of living) can bring to the table that your foreign counterpart cannot do. And let me tell you, those foreign counterparts AREN’T cheap these days. BUT, being that some of our companies had shipped opportunities over there, they have caught up, and in many cases they know more than us AND are cheaper or at least cost the same as us. And then there is the wrinkle. If R&D/PD move overseas, why do you need management here? And then if management + R&D/PD move overseas, why do you need Product Managers/Program Managers here? And then arguably when few people here have fewer opportunities, and have less money to spend here, why do we need so many people in Sales (TheBreeze, take note)? See where I am going with this? We’re all interconnected… If there is a breakdown somewhere, it’s gonna ripple through.
So I guess, the bigger problem and is my concern is we lose a majority of our R&D and engineering and product development here in the U.S……… where does that leave our kids? What will they be doing, in the absence of the massive service sector opportunities that we were fortunate enough to have, albeit only a temporary period? If all the sudden all of some of us middle experienced folks get suddenly riffed from producing/product development/R&D, who sustaining the opportunities here, who’s going to be training our fresh college grads so that they can just be on par with our foreign counterparts? Is the expectation some person a Beijing or Bangalore is going to sit down with our college grads give help build them up? Or while they need to apply for a green card and work overseas, under their living standards, to survive?
That is what really concerns me when I go to sleep. Not knowing what sort of future my kid will and will not have, because we didn’t take the time to keep on top of the competition. There’s very little in what we can do with the massive exodus in manufacturering that shifted overseas. There’s also very little we can do with some of the hardware stuff that is built overseas (since technology, knowhow, and cheaper labor) all are weighing against us. The last foothole we have is R&D and product development. We can’t compete on cost, there will always be cheaper alternatives. The only way we can compete on are (1) quality (2) completeness (3) innovation (4) creativity/ingenuity. You can’t regulate yourself to ingenuity either, through trade sanctions, particularly if the bulk of your customers in the future will be overseas (which I predict will happen).
So, if that means working to keep one step ahead or on with your foreign counterparts, or even to bring work needed overseas back, so that your kid does have something to come back to in the future, so be it…But frankly, it doesn’t look too promising these days. We’re not winning this at the moment, because like some many said, getting a college degree/engineering degreeing/etc is “not necessary” to be successful here. Maybe this implosion of the service sectors will finally get some of our smarter younger generation to start thinking about core science/engineering fields again. I hope so…
Personally, I think in some ways, America has lost it’s way. We have forgotten (in some cases) how to compete to survive. And by all means this is not meant as disrespect to this great country.
