<p>Not everyone wants to be a doctor, a pharmacist, a dentist, or an optometrist.</p>
<p>I don’t want to drill out tooth rot all day.
Dispensing pills behind a counter? How thrilling!
“Which one can you see better?” Sounds equally as exciting.
With Med, you don’t start living until you are in your 30’s; and you’re past your prime years.</p>
<p>I have the marks to do anything that I want, and those are some of the last things that I’d EVER do.</p>
<p>Nah, aibarr, nobody is entitled to know anything about anybody here. That’s what an anonymous discussion board is all about. If that impacts how much you trust a particular poster, then so be it. For example, Ariesathena has consistently refused to divulge much of any information about herself, and I think we should respect her wishes. </p>
<p>However, the general point is simple. Economics is NOT a zero-sum game, and this is something that has been proven by basic economics, but continues to be highly misunderstood even to this day. Just because somebody gets a job does not mean that somebody else has to lose a job. You can both gain, and you often do in a free market.</p>
<p>Consider the initial claim by the OP that because Delphi has hired 360 Indian engineers, that means that 360 US engineers have lost jobs. Just simple common sense would tell you that that is not true. After all, the whole point of hiring Indian engineers is because they are cheaper than American engineers - meaning that you can hire several Indian engineers instead of one American engineer. Basic economics dictates that when something is cheap, you buy more of it. I think that each Indian engineer costs about 1/5 of an American engineer. So at worst, the hiring of 360 Indian engineers translates into the loss of 72 American engineering jobs. </p>
<p>But it is highly disputed as to whether any jobs are lost at all. Like I said above with my Ipod example, the outsourcing of jobs can actually CREATE a net number of jobs in the US. That’s because cheap foreign engineers allows companies to create new business models and new business initiatives. Without Asian manufacturing outsourcing, the Ipod would cost at least a $1000 each, and nobody would buy it and hence all of Apple’s American design engineers in Cupertino would not have jobs. But it goes further than that. A lot of companies were founded to make add-on products for the Ipod - i.e. carrying cases, chargers, adapters, etc. These companies have created plenty of jobs for American engineers; these jobs would never have been created if the Ipod had never become popular. . A lot of startup tech companies today have outsourced much of their engineering to India. Their founding was predicated on cheap engineering. If they were forced to employ American engineers from day 1, many of these companies may not have ever been started at all because it would be too expensive to start them. For many of them, the business model is to have lots of cheap foreign engineers, all tied together by some expensive American engineers who work as project managers and liaisons. Without outsourcing, these Americans would not have their jobs. </p>
<p>In fact, let me talk about this at a more macro level. I think everybody who has examined the computer industry has noticed the tremendous drops in prices of computer hardware accompanied by tremendous advances in computing power. The computer that I am using now is more powerful than the supercomputer of a few decades ago. Most computing equipment is manufactured in Asia. That’s a huge reason why it is so cheap and so powerful. If PC’s were all manufactured in the US, PC’s would be far more expensive than they are now. Just take apart any PC and you will notice that practically every component you see was manufactured outside of the US. The computer itself may have an American brand-name (i.e. HP, Dell, IBM), but almost all of the internal components will have been made in Asia. </p>
<p>Much of the Internet boom is predicated on the fact that PC’s are cheap and readily available to most consumers. Much of the software boom is predicated on the same thing. If PC’s cost $10,000 each, then the Internet would be far less popular. Most Internet companies would not exist today, or would be a lot smaller than they are now if PC’s were expensive, because fewer people would be able to afford computers to get on the Internet. Hence, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay would not have created anywhere near the number of US Internet jobs that they did. Microsoft and Intel would be far smaller companies, and hence would be hiring far fewer people. Cisco and the other network vendors would be smaller because there would be fewer PC’s to hook up to the Internet. In fact, the entire computer and information technology industry as we know it would be far smaller than it is today, hiring far fewer people. Outsourcing allowed the pie to grow large by cutting prices, therefore allowing more customers to buy computers, which increases the demand for all sorts of other industries and jobs. </p>
<p>That’s the dynamism of a functioning economy. While some jobs get destroyed, others are created. Labor is constantly being repurposed. Old jobs and old industries must die in order for new ones to be created.</p>
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<p>Uh, this sort of thing happens all the time. The entire H-1B visa program brings in plenty of technically savvy engineers (usually electrical engineers and computer scientists) from overseas to the US to work temporarily. So why couldn’t the same be done for civil engineers? </p>
<p>Besides, keep in mind that while you may say that temporary workers may be living like crap according to our standards, but the fact is, they are probably living better than if they just took a job back home. It’s all relative. That’s why, not to push a political hot button, that Mexican workers are willing to come to the US illegally to work for what we consider to be low wages. It’s low wages to us, but it’s a heck of a lot better than what they can get in Mexico. By the same token, it’s also why poor Chinese people will pay mobsters to smuggle them into the US so they can work for slave wages in Chinatown. It’s still better than what they can get back in China. </p>
<p>And besides, who ever said anything about the company having to pay to fly them in and helping them adjust to their new living environment and then paying to ship them out? The company can simply say that it is up to the worker to shoulder those costs. The company can basically say that we have a job here, it’s up to you to figure out how to get over here, how to get back home, and how to live here, take it or leave it. A lot of people in poor countries would happily take it even if they have to shoulder all those costs because, again, it’s better than what they can get in their home country.</p>
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<p>I never said all of the smart competition should become engineers. In fact, I even said myself that the smart competition is probably better off doing other things - i.e. banking, consulting, law, etc. </p>
<p>However, the not-so-smart competition is better off doing engineering than what they are doing now, which is usually one of the liberal arts. I think even you would agree that a guy getting a Art History degree at a no-name school is probably better off becoming an engineer instead. All those guys who end up working at the mall or who end up flipping burgers are certainly better off becoming engineers. But I never see you bothering any of them. Why is that? </p>
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<p>Like I said before countless times, not everybody can become a doctor or a pharmacist or an optometrist. And if you’re an engineer, you can still become any of those professions. </p>
<p>My question to you is simple - why is it that you are constantly telling the engineers to do something else, but you never bother any of the liberal arts students to do something else? If anything, for you to be consistent, you should be constantly harrassing all of those Art students (on the Art section of CC) to go into the health professions.</p>
<p>Quote:
I never said all of the smart competition should become engineers. In fact, I even said myself that the smart competition is probably better off doing other things - i.e. banking, consulting, law, etc. </p>
<p>However, the not-so-smart competition is better off doing engineering than what they are doing now, which is usually one of the liberal arts. I think even you would agree that a guy getting a Art History degree at a no-name school is probably better off becoming an engineer instead. All those guys who end up working at the mall or who end up flipping burgers are certainly better off becoming engineers. But I never see you bothering any of them. Why is that?</p>
<p>I think you answer this question on your own. Why is the not so smart better off doing engineering? That is an absurd question which claims that those pursuing liberal arts degrees can all switch to engineering. Engineering is a highly technical field suitable for the brightest minds in our country. It is not a career for the weak minded and someone flipping burgers cannot simply become an engineer. This major requires dedication, great intelligence, and critical thinking, skills that many just do not have. Please do not suggest that those who are not smart enough to become doctors/lawyers should go out and get an engineering degree. Though I am premed, I see my engineering friends work themselves to the ground over vector calculus and circuit design. It is an insult to all the brilliant engineers in our country to claim that this field is more suitable for the average Joe.</p>
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<p>great point, i can’t believe i overlooked that</p>
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<p>Oh, I think it is. You forget that most engineering programs are no-name programs that are really not that difficult. Look, it’s not that hard to get an engineering degree from a no-name schools. I agree that it’s harder than getting a creampuff degree from a no-name school, but it’s not THAT much harder. </p>
<p>Hence, you don’t have students really working themselves into the ground at all in these no-name programs. Sorry to say it, but I’ve seen engineering students at places like Central Connecticut State University. Honestly, they’re not really working very hard at all. Yet they are getting engineering degrees that will make them better off than if they had gotten some arts degree. There are lots of programs out there that are like that that frankly aren’t very hard to complete. </p>
<p>Only a fraction of engineering students go to top schools. Most go to no-name schools. And for them, engineering is an excellent deal.</p>
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<p>Yeah, damn, I forgot about all those Mexican doctors and engineers coming up here to work for crappy wages after getting certified! Come on, this is weak.</p>
<h1>1, most engineers don’t need to be certified. The largest engineering discipline is EE, and certification matters little in EE.</h1>
<p>But more importantly, the point is, there are very few jobs that are truly ‘safe’ from outsourcing. Even medicine is vulnerable to medical tourism - i.e. guys getting LASIK or plastic surgery in cheap foreign countries. And many aspects of medicine can be easily outsourced. I.e. many hospitals today send X-rays electronically to the Internet where they can be read by Indian radiologists. With the rise of telemedicine, I would expect to see many more doctor jobs affected by outsourcing. </p>
<p>What is ‘weak’ is the assertion that there are all these professions out there that will never be affected by outsourcing. ALL jobs will be affected to some degree by outsourcing. The difference is how will it be affected and so forth. Some professions will be hurt by outsourcing - mostly low-level manufacturing and services. However, other professions will actually be HELPED by outsourcing. But to say that there are jobs that will not be affected by outsourcing at all - now THAT is weak.</p>
<p>I said ME,ECE, CS will be outsoucred b/c that work can be done in india and china whereas the others cannot, or cannot be done to large extent</p>
<p>have u ever heard of Lockheed, NASA, rayethon shipping jobs to india china. It wont happen</p>
<p>also, most schools in india and china dont have bioengineering programs and hence the knowledge base is in the US. Just look at nano, jobs in this area cannot be outsourced, maybe 10-15 yrs from now, but not at the present time.</p>
<p>Also, civil, as other posts kept mentioning, there is a large degree of interaction with ppl and u need to have ppl here locally</p>
<p>whereas CS, ME, ECE, running code or debugging or CAD stuff that can be done in india while we are sleeping states side</p>
<p>bioengineering is hott !! </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.prism-magazine.org/nov03/pursuing_paths.cfm[/url]”>http://www.prism-magazine.org/nov03/pursuing_paths.cfm</a>
<a href=“http://www.prism-magazine.org/nov04/tt_bioboom.cfm[/url]”>http://www.prism-magazine.org/nov04/tt_bioboom.cfm</a></p>
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<p>Oh really? So what’s are these news stories talking about then? </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=42060&headline=Now,~missile~companies~heading~for~India[/url]”>http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=42060&headline=Now,~missile~companies~heading~for~India</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1569.asp[/url]”>http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1569.asp</a></p>
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<p>Yeah, but many other countries have extensive bioengineering resources - in some cases, better than the US. For example, South Korea has an extensive biotech R&D effort push going on, mostly led by the government. So do Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore. Europe already has a well-established biotech industry (i.e. Dolly the Sheep was cloned in Scotland). And yes, India and China are beginning to develop their biotech industries. Granted, they are small right now, but keep in mind that it took a relatively short period of time for the Indian IT industry to become huge. </p>
<p>The point is, outsourcing and foreign competition are going to be issues even for BioE’s. Maybe not from India and China in the near-future, but certainly from other countries. What does it matter if your biotech job got shipped off to India, or to Scotland? All that matters is that it got shipped off. </p>
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<p>Look, there’s no doubt that there will be interaction with people locally. But there is also a lot of civil engineering work that can be done anywhere, including potentially overseas. In fact, it is already happening, as can be seen in the following article. </p>
<p><a href=“http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1088076,prtpage-1.cms[/url]”>http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1088076,prtpage-1.cms</a></p>
<p>The problem that I have with BioE is that, frankly, it doesn’t pay its new bachelor’s degree recipients particuarly well. For example, consider the salaries earned by BioE’s coming out of UCBerkeley, one of the top engineering schools in the country. Compare them to the salaries earned by, say, EECS or ChemE grads. Keep in mind that biotech is one of the biggest industries in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yet the Berkeley Bioe’s are frankly not getting paid very well. If BioE was really so hot, then why don’t these companies pay BioE’s better? There’s about a 20k difference in average starting salary between BioE and the other engineering disciplines. </p>
<p><a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2005Majors.stm#salary[/url]”>http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2005Majors.stm#salary</a></p>
<p>The same can be said for the various Biology majors (in Berkeley parlance, the bio majos are Molecular Cellular Biology majors or MCB majors, Integrative Biology majors, and Molecular Environmental Biology majors). As you can see, the bio majors get paid quite low starting salaries. Again, if Biotech was really so hot, then why aren’t these bio majors getting paid more? </p>
<p>Nor is this a strictly Berkeley phenomonom. I have noted conspicuously low starting salaries for bachelor’s degree BioE’s at many other schools as well.</p>
<p>Basic economics would dictate that if a field were truly hot, then salaries ought to be high. This does not seem to be happening in biotech. In fact, numerous reports indicate that the biotech industry really doesn’t pay its employees that well, relative to other tech industries.</p>
<p>The overseas-designed structures that you’re talking about are essentially just plans that are sold to local developers for cheap. They still need consulting engineers to sign off and PE stamp and to do land development… tie-ins for utilities, parking lots, tie-ins to roads, geotechnical consulting for the foundations, seismic provisions (if need be), and really, all of that land development is where the money is. For simplistic plans, sure, I suppose those can be outsourced, provided the plans are based upon AISC or ACI local codes… But pretty much the only people who learn those codes are American-trained engineers, and in order to be qualified to design those buildings and sign off on them, you’d more or less have to be a PE. I don’t think you can sit for the PE exam anywhere outside the states, so, again… You’d need a PE somewhere in the mix there, to double-check all the plans. That means that there are really very few cases… VERY few cases, and very <em>simple</em> cases… where you can really get <em>any</em> work done overseas, in terms of civil eng design.</p>
<p>Also, if you read the article you cited, the reason they’re shipping <em>any</em> of the even <em>simplest</em> designs to be done overseas is because there’s a shortage of civil engineers here in the US.</p>
<p>So go forth, become civil engineers. It’s a pretty darned stable career.</p>
<p>aibarr shut up, ur creating more competition for me
im probably going to let sakky keep talking cuz ppl going into EE, ME or whatever doesn’t affect me
ill let these self righteous simpletons delude themselves, since these kids are really just looking for confirmation of their decisions</p>
<p>BTW a requirement for a PE license is that you must go to an ABET accredited university</p>
<p>LMAO…weird,trainwreck thread.</p>
<p>Well, yes, but there are lots and lots of foreign students getting engineering degrees at ABET accredited universities here in the US. Anyhoo, sorry 'bout that, unggio! Guess you’re just gonna have to hit the books a little harder now! =)</p>
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<p>The point is, as in eny field, more and more of the grunt work (the work that doesn’t actually require much customer interaction) can be done remotely, and I’m sure it will be. Furthermore, you only need one PE to sign off on anything. Most of the work can be done by non-PE’s, as long as one PE is there to look it over. Hence, in theory, you woud only need one American overseeing a large cohort of foreign engineers.</p>
<p>Besides, outsourcing does not necessarily have to be done within a foreign country. I do not particularly see the difference between a company choosing to outsource to a foreign company and a company choosing to outsource to a cheap part of the United States. I’ll take Puerto Rico as an example, as Puerto Ricans are American citizens, and Puerto Rico is arguably the cheapest place to live in the US (although this example works equally well with cheap states like Mississippi or Arkansas). What’s the difference between a theoretical company shipping off civil engineering work to India and a company shipping off civil engineering work to Puerto Rico? At the end of the day, the work is being shipped off to a low-cost place. </p>
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<p>This is not strictly true. The rules vary from state to state. </p>
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<p>I said it before, I’ll say it again. The vast majority of college students out there would be better off financially in studying engineering rather than what they are currently studying, for the simple reason that the vast majority of college students are studying one of the liberal arts at a no-name school. A lot of them will end up working at the mall of some equally low-end job. Engineering may not be the greatest profession in the world, but it sure beats the heck out of working at the mall.</p>
<p>sakky, I realise that engineering is a better option than an art history major or similar (as you point out), but what if you don’t compare engineering to that extreme? i mean to say how does it compare to say a math or physics major? or any of the other majors in between?</p>
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<p>If anything, this is where I think engineering really stands out, particularly because I believe that if anybody is really getting screwed in the market, it is the physics majors (and to some extent, the math majors). That’s because, as many people have pointed out, engineering tends to be one of the harder majors at any school. For example, even at a no-name school, it’s usually harder to get an engineering degree than to get a humanities degree. {Like I said, I personally think it’s pretty easy to get an engineering degree at a no-name school. On the other hand, I agree it’s even easier to get a cheesepuff degree at that same no-name school. } Yet physics or math degrees also tend to harder than the average major at any school.</p>
<p>Hence, the physics and math majors get the worst of both worlds. Not only do you have to work harder than the average student at a particular school, but you also don’t get a high-paying job either. So basically, you end up working hard for nothing. The way I figure it, if you’re going to work hard, you might as well reap the rewards. </p>
<p>To be fair, I can see that if somebody wants to teach math or physics, whether in high school, or later as a college professor (after g getting at least a MS and probably a PhD in the subject), then I can see why somebody would want to get a math or physics degree. But honestly, I think all of the rest of the physics or math majors would be better off becoming engineering or CS majors. There really isn’t that much difference between the majors in terms of workload and content, yet the latter majors can get you a significantly higher paying job. Engineering is basically just applied physics/applied math.</p>
<p>“But honestly, I think all of the rest of the physics or math majors would be better off becoming engineering or CS majors. There really isn’t that much difference between the majors in terms of workload and content, yet the latter majors can get you a significantly higher paying job”</p>
<p>What happened to studying something because you actually enjoy it? Who cares about money, there is more to an education than the bottom line.</p>
<p>Math majors can go into business.</p>