Worried about your job going overseas, and ending up as a burger flipper despite having a CS degree?

Much has been made in the media over the past year about hi-tech jobs being shipped overseas to workers making a fraction of what their US counterparts do.

Of course coming out of a long labor slump, with unemployment at 9-year highs, these stories resonate easily. Jobs were being sent overseas in 1998 and 1999 too, but you didn't see it reported because jobs were so plentiful here then, that nobody cared.

What doesn't get reported much is the coming labor shortage caused by a shift in demographics... Baby boomers will start retiring in large numbers, and there just aren't enough workers to replace them.

I've seen this reported in a few places, but Business 2.0 has just run a story on it called The Coming Job Boom. This is the best one I've seen yet, with charts showing job growth vs. labor force size, etc.

To summarize this article.

1. A labor crunch is guaranteed even if the US only experiences a meager 3% annual GDP growth rate. (Most recent reading was 3.1% BTW)
2. The effect of Boomers retiring later, more H1Bs, workforce automation, and overseas outsourcing won't be enough to negate the US labor crunch, article explains why on each point.
3. Most of the fastest growing professions will be in tech. I know this may seem hard to believe now, but here is a quote from the article: ...But Sargent, an authority on economic measurement, defends the BLS numbers, calling them the "closest you get to absolute objectivity." To assume that the [tech] sector's current weakness is permanent makes no more sense than believing in 1999 that the gravy train would never end. Several studies show that where the bureau [BLS] has erred, it has traditionally underestimated demand for tech.
4. We should start seeing the first signs of this crunch in 2005.
5. Most companies aren't doing enough to prepare for the crunch. They should be working on key employee retention now. Instead, many are taking advantage of the labor market weakness, cutting benefits, raises, perks, hiring people for less than the going rate.
6. Analysts like Forrester and Gartner are overstating the number of jobs that will be outsourced to India and elsewhere. The article even suggests that Forrester may be trying to drum up business for its own outsourcing consultancy business.

The next time you see a doom-and-gloom article about tech jobs going overseas, this is a good article to refer to keep a sense of balance and optimism.

So the first bits of leaked code look like they were derived from Unix, but it looks like they are in Linux legally, and ironically Caldera may have given the license to allow this.

I wonder if heads will roll at SCO over this leak.

Hopefully this turns the tables and puts SCO on the defensive. They will probably have to release more code without NDA to convince people that they do have a leg to stand on.

I think it's a good time to short SCOX...

This Journal entry was sponsored by IBM for an undisclosed sum of money.

I've long suspected that the BBC talkback/Have your say has a political bias in determining what they publish on the site. They've never published any of my comments, (so I gave up trying), but it seems like they'll give a high priority to any anti-American/anti-Bush comment no matter how silly.

Today they have a talkback on "Are you Affected" by the power outage that hit the US and Canada. Keep in mind that the order the comments appear in is NOT Chronological (sometimes new comments appear before older ones, sometimes after so apparently the editors determine the order). Here was the first comment:

All I have to say is that Bush and his administration should be held responsible for all this mess in the United States.
Preston, USA

Not only is this comment offtopic, it's silly, since it's not just the US grid we're talking about here. We very rarely see events like this, so is it really such a disaster? Here's another:

...The worst part is that Bush did not address the people for hours. The obvious fact that this was not an accident was completely denied through the media and government.
Lawrence Teten, US

Oh yeah, they love to print conspiratorial comments to, for whatever reason. I guess this comment is insinuating that it was terrorism, but the govt and media is covering that up. Why would they? Terrorist acts do wonders for politicians approval ratings and national unity.

Oh well... Next time I waste my time reading one of these talkbacks, and get aggrivated and am tempted to waste my time sending in my own, I'll have this entry to remind me not to bother.