Comment To answer the question you asked. (Score 1) 1032
You asked what you can do to improve your chances. It seems we have gone off on several moral tyraids. Being an IT professional, I feel the same pressures you do. There are a couple different directions you can go here. The point of all of them is to move where your competition isn't.
Option 1: You can gain new skills that they are not adept with. You can start working on that management level education. They will likely start moving into these fields as well, as the moat is shallow, but it is deeper than pure engineering. There will always need to be an American face.
Option 2: Stick to smaller companies. You have less security the smaller you go, but you will find people that need very fast turn arounds, with little documentation, and that requires someone who is going to put in hours, and is good at interpreting what the "customer" wants. Outsourcing is not good at this. You can live the rest of your life here.
Option 3: Move over there. The standard of living will be similar, if not now, in the near future. You might make US minimum wage, but that will set you up nicely in other countries. This is a difficult choice to make, but you would be a rarity and possibly quite promotable for your communication skills.
Option 4: Start your own company, do your own thing, compete with US companies that are size based and grow rapidly, until you hit speed/mass quotient and have to outsource your own work.
Option 5: Make sure that no lawyer ever had a job again! Why do you think the cost of living is so high?
Option 6: Don't be a consumer. One of the very real issues of the US economy is that people have forgotten how to be producers by and large. We buy entertainment, we buy food, we buy transportation, we buy everything. We don't produce anything, and this has lead us to a disposable society with highly inflated lifestyles, where many are on the brink of destruction if they miss a financial milestone. Buy and sell stock, gain new skills, make money on the Nasdaq and free yourself from the necessity of these milestones.
None of these are a silver bullet. Take a few and mix and match. All you can do is statistically improve your chances and outlast the majority. Once it becomes painful enough to the majority, it will change, through war, or politics or whatever. Just make sure you aren't part of the group that is the source of the pain that makes the US move. (at which point your standard of living will be caca anyways)
Option 1: You can gain new skills that they are not adept with. You can start working on that management level education. They will likely start moving into these fields as well, as the moat is shallow, but it is deeper than pure engineering. There will always need to be an American face.
Option 2: Stick to smaller companies. You have less security the smaller you go, but you will find people that need very fast turn arounds, with little documentation, and that requires someone who is going to put in hours, and is good at interpreting what the "customer" wants. Outsourcing is not good at this. You can live the rest of your life here.
Option 3: Move over there. The standard of living will be similar, if not now, in the near future. You might make US minimum wage, but that will set you up nicely in other countries. This is a difficult choice to make, but you would be a rarity and possibly quite promotable for your communication skills.
Option 4: Start your own company, do your own thing, compete with US companies that are size based and grow rapidly, until you hit speed/mass quotient and have to outsource your own work.
Option 5: Make sure that no lawyer ever had a job again! Why do you think the cost of living is so high?
Option 6: Don't be a consumer. One of the very real issues of the US economy is that people have forgotten how to be producers by and large. We buy entertainment, we buy food, we buy transportation, we buy everything. We don't produce anything, and this has lead us to a disposable society with highly inflated lifestyles, where many are on the brink of destruction if they miss a financial milestone. Buy and sell stock, gain new skills, make money on the Nasdaq and free yourself from the necessity of these milestones.
None of these are a silver bullet. Take a few and mix and match. All you can do is statistically improve your chances and outlast the majority. Once it becomes painful enough to the majority, it will change, through war, or politics or whatever. Just make sure you aren't part of the group that is the source of the pain that makes the US move. (at which point your standard of living will be caca anyways)
