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In response to a comment claiming outsourcing was the issue, I responded with this and thought it relevant to post here: FWIW, the very cap on H-1Bs plus the d

In response to a comment claiming outsourcing was the issue, I responded with this and thought it relevant to post here: FWIW, the very cap on H-1Bs plus the decreasing attraction of coming to the US is the very reason ALL companies are going overseas. I once did a research on outsourcing and the pivotal reason I found for outsourcing was not the "cheapness" of the foreign markets, but the decreasing flexibility and opportunity to continue development at home, and this decrease was dominated mainly by inability to find people to do the work. It may seem hard to believe but it isn't once you add up all the pieces. While factory workers may seem abundant and easy to find, finding upper-level factory operators across various disciplines from IT to Management to Operations was very difficult. Conversely, the two places where they were the easiest to find was China and India in that order. After all, who wants to work in a factory when they grow up anyways? So what do companies do? They go above and beyond plus bend backwards to make overseas operations feasible. This problem is not just limited to factory workers, or electrical engineering, but any industry that has a hard time finding good quality workers. My industry of civil engineering is probably going to go next. I could write an entire paper on this, but I will stop here.

pm90 11y ago
This is a great observation. I wonder when cooler heads will prevail and reform the worker visa program into one which is more flexible (and sane) than the one that exists currently. I understand that there are a lot of difficulties but the present situation just cannot continue unless more jobs are outsourced completely. With the difficulty in obtaining worker visas, US corporations might have to resort to outsourcing wholesale.
coliveira 11y ago
You are buying a completely flawed argument. The reason there are fewer and fewer American factory workers is that nobody is going to pay for a degree for which there are no jobs. If you are in the US and you have to decide on a degree, would you go to do factory-related work, knowing that companies are moving oversees as soon as they can? The only way to get workers for a particular field is to have investments in that field, especially in a country where citizens have free initiative. If the industry and the government continue to subsidize companies that open factories outside the US, it is not a big surprise that they will have trouble finding workers for this kind positions. This is the logical consequence, not the cause for this big shift. The cause is that big business want to take advantage of cheap labor and no regulation at third world countries, while at the same time slashing the taxes they need to pay in the US.
- mtanski 11y ago
  There are a lot of degrees that are unlikely to prosperous career after schooling and people still pursue those.
- nashashmi 11y ago
  > [If] you have to decide on a degree, would you go to do factory-related work, knowing that companies are moving oversees as soon as they can This is a case of which came first: the chicken or the egg? One industry that seems to have rebounded significantly is computer science. In 2003, after the bubble burst, few were pursuing CS. A huge insatiable demand followed afterwards mostly from the emergence of Google, and people started pursuing CS in hordes once again. And today, companies still have an insatiable appetite, and pursuit of employees has encouraged companies to go abroad once more. In your argument of subsidization, cheap labor, laxed regulation being the culprits of job loss, you are ignoring the friction of traveling abroad and the loss of legal power that comes with outsourcing. There are many advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing. The end result once it all sums up is you get a different product, and a different business. These are not easy things to accept, no matter how much money you save. And as for your suggestion of a solution, current events have thought me that you swing your strengths in ways where the enemy longs for what you and ignores the advantages they have. Industrial China makes us feel we are weak because our costs are high. And China feels weak because we have the knowledge and technicality to achieve more than what they have. Let's stick to what makes us unique and swing that strength in ways that others feel weak.

pm90 11y ago

This is a great observation. I wonder when cooler heads will prevail and reform the worker visa program into one which is more flexible (and sane) than the one that exists currently. I understand that there are a lot of difficulties but the present situation just cannot continue unless more jobs are outsourced completely. With the difficulty in obtaining worker visas, US corporations might have to resort to outsourcing wholesale.

coliveira 11y ago

You are buying a completely flawed argument. The reason there are fewer and fewer American factory workers is that nobody is going to pay for a degree for which there are no jobs. If you are in the US and you have to decide on a degree, would you go to do factory-related work, knowing that companies are moving oversees as soon as they can? The only way to get workers for a particular field is to have investments in that field, especially in a country where citizens have free initiative. If the industry and the government continue to subsidize companies that open factories outside the US, it is not a big surprise that they will have trouble finding workers for this kind positions. This is the logical consequence, not the cause for this big shift. The cause is that big business want to take advantage of cheap labor and no regulation at third world countries, while at the same time slashing the taxes they need to pay in the US.

mtanski 11y ago
There are a lot of degrees that are unlikely to prosperous career after schooling and people still pursue those.
nashashmi 11y ago
> [If] you have to decide on a degree, would you go to do factory-related work, knowing that companies are moving oversees as soon as they can This is a case of which came first: the chicken or the egg? One industry that seems to have rebounded significantly is computer science. In 2003, after the bubble burst, few were pursuing CS. A huge insatiable demand followed afterwards mostly from the emergence of Google, and people started pursuing CS in hordes once again. And today, companies still have an insatiable appetite, and pursuit of employees has encouraged companies to go abroad once more. In your argument of subsidization, cheap labor, laxed regulation being the culprits of job loss, you are ignoring the friction of traveling abroad and the loss of legal power that comes with outsourcing. There are many advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing. The end result once it all sums up is you get a different product, and a different business. These are not easy things to accept, no matter how much money you save. And as for your suggestion of a solution, current events have thought me that you swing your strengths in ways where the enemy longs for what you and ignores the advantages they have. Industrial China makes us feel we are weak because our costs are high. And China feels weak because we have the knowledge and technicality to achieve more than what they have. Let's stick to what makes us unique and swing that strength in ways that others feel weak.