<p>Well I just changed my major to Computer Engineering from Music and now I’m scared. lol I try to get out of one dying field only to enter another? According to what I’ve read here even if I get a job, I’ll likely be laid off or fired by the time I’m 40? awesome. . . /sarcasm</p>
<p>Make yourself valuable enough and they won’t fire you.</p>
<p>I think that there’s a sort of victim culture now in America in which the employee is entitled to a job and the employer is somehow in the wrong if they take that job away. It wasn’t always like this and I think it’s a shame… a long and winding road to the socialism and inefficient bureaucracies of Continental labor.</p>
<p>More pertinently: if you lose your job, don’t whine about it! If you’re worth what they pay you, they won’t send you away.</p>
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<p>I think that it is bigger than that, at least where outsourcing is concerned. You see, since WWII and our “fued” with Russia, Americans have always been suspicious of other countries trying to steal our stuff and take over the world. First Russia, and then in the 70’s and 80’s Japan was supposed to become the world leader. Now China and India are supposed to take all of our work away…see a pattern?</p>
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<p>Don’t believe everything you read on here. Besides, I doubt there are many professions more secure than engineering, health care being an obvious exception.</p>
<p>I just saw an email from one of the largest computer companies in the world looking for four coop students with at least two years of undergrad in CE or CS in the suburbs of Boston. They would like students to start this month and work through the end of the year at which point they would resume their studies. It seems like it would be a bit of a headache to ask your university to let you skip a semester but the experience may be worth it. I was a bit surprised to see this kind of offer.</p>
<p>After all, they could just outsource it, right? Well, maybe not.</p>
<p>sakky, your post makes absolutely no sense;</p>
<p>2) I would seriously be mortified to live in a world where engineers where demoted to the level of “Exalted” technicians as you propose. Perhaps you won’t use every last equation they taught you in Calc II, so what? Even in the purported “skills based” classes you recommend engineers to adopt, the relevant “skills” that you are forcing these engineers to take will soon and quickly be outdated as is the nature of nearly everything in the technological field. Perhaps a student in this curriculum decides to study, say, the structure of a specific type of computer architecture. The class offered gives “practical” and “hands on” experience with this type of device. Of course, no “high level” maths or physics will be required of the student because this is far too “Esoteric” and “academic”. The student learns this skills based course intensively but what happens? The architecture goes outdated, the “practical” class the student payed thousands of bucks for is now useless, and because broader topics weren’t introduced, the student gained little more than a technician’s understanding of the subject. However, what happens if you take the said differential equations and calculus courses? One, the material is very likely to be used to some degree - those engineers who are working for NASA, GE, and other high up companies use them daily, I assure you - the major isn’t preparing those engineers who’ll end up in humdrum careers pushing papers, but the ones who will be solving the fundamental technological problems at the top. In addition, even if the calculus is NOT used AT ALL, what the course did do is make you mathematically competent - it provided you with a viable toolset for thinking and reasoning mathematically, an EXTREMELY important skillset for any engineer.</p>
<p>So my question for you is why teach engineers hands on vocational skills when you could be teaching them a broad and viable skillset that is good not only for developing a scientifically competent workforce, but is also widely applicable and helps facilitate the process of standardizing the expectations and rigour of the discipline?</p>
<p>This is a very good thread. worth reading, tho it is from a yr ago. The issues of outsourcing and what is a good major to choose are still with us today. I liked auburnmathtuor vs lou costello on using BLS stats or not to make decisions NOW. sakky and lacero was good too. sakky said interesting ideas that challenged the status quo of teaching hi tech.</p>
<p>Long live Newton and integrals - but don’t forget the Tesla and routers!</p>
<p>I think a mixture of theory and practice, more inclined towards theory is most appropriate for students. Especially in subjects such as computer science, one cannot really understand a concept well unless they are able to program it. For example, one cannot really understand the fine details of a file system without really implementing at least part of one. Top schools such as Stanford and UCB require OS students to construct these components and I would certainly consider them to be “practice”. Similarly, one cannot be a CS major knowing all the theoretical foundations (lambda calculus, turing machines, computability) without knowing how to program!</p>
<p>Similarly, in EE, I feel people should know how to construct circuits from breadboards and should have some exposure to soldering and using circuit components. Without some degree of practice, theory can be easily forgotten. Also, theory often simplifies aspects of how devices work in the real world and exposure to practice helps students to understand the limitations of the theory model. But yes I agree that all practice without theory is a step to failure and that students must understand how to think generally and that the theoretical foundations apply similarly for most vendor products. Math and physics (even higher level ones) are central to being able to innovate.</p>
<p>How many outsourcing threads do we need on here?</p>
<p>…almost as many as CS vs. I.T. vs. SoftE vs. EE</p>
<p>damn</p>
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<p>No those are the regular engineers. But the MIT and Stanford educated engineers would be working in finance or consulting. No offense to Sakky.</p>
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<p>Iridethewave, your post makes absolutely no sense. </p>
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<p>Who said anything about engineers being “demoated” to the level of exalted technicians? I am simply proposing a notion that engineering students learn about topics that may be conceptually difficult, yet still highly practical. Note, that’s not to say that hey actually have to take jobs pertaining to those particular topics. But they would know about them. </p>
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<p>As I explained before, the ideal curriculum would combine both theory and practicality. Why settle on deep theory that is impractical, when you could teach theory that is also practical?</p>
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<p>–we need as many as it takes to understand the topic. </p>
<p>My IT job was downsized due to something called outsourcing and I am trying to figure it all out. I am not the only one, too, that this happened to. Also, my hs sr son is seriously thinking on embarking on a similar path. At the top of this thread mathauburb points some hi tech paths that might be subject to this outsourcing phenomenon in the next 8, 10 yrs. These paths in fact are the ones that my son is interested in pursuing now, EE CS, CpE.</p>
<p>So we need more light , more understanding on the subject. I dare say the subject is all understood , figured out and, more important, ACCEPTABLE. One of the reasons to to get more understanding on a subject such as this is to try to amend or fix it IF it is discovered to be broken - hey, htat is what a good engineer does - fix problems. THe kids of today are going to be leadibng the world later, and they should try to improve on and do it better than the status quo.</p>
<p>let more light be shed on the subject. If someone has got it all figured out and does not want to read more on the subject, then do nt click and go on to another subject that needs discovery and clarification.</p>
<p>We just crash the dollar by 50% and the price of foreign labor goes way up.</p>
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<p>$USD has already dropped from 122 to 77. Do we have hyperinflation?</p>
<p>Furthermore gold has gone up $400% in the last ten years.</p>
<p>Silver has gone up by 500%. Can you say printing press?</p>
<p>I just happened to see an old work mate of mine and he said that ‘you would not want to work for what we are giving them’ which I discovered was $30 / hr. I said sure I would. THen he said that the $30/hr is what the company was giving the outsourcing company and who knows what the underlings are getting. I’d take the $30 / hr w/o benefits immediately. Once companies get into the relationships with the overseas, the relationship of which itself was started on faulty grounds due to h1b visa abuse, I bet it is hard to retract even if they could make better deals with Americans.</p>
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<p>(if this is true, we have reduced the value of USD by almost 50 pct) but Has the price of foreign labor gone way up?</p>
<p>The falling US dollar is causing some problems with our foreign trading partners and you may have noticed that Ford stock has gone up 40% in the last 3.5 months. They are the surviving US automaker (financially) and foreign carmakers will have to raise prices or lower their profit margins to maintain marketshare.</p>
<p>The charts indicate that we might have an intermediate bottom in the USD. But the actions by the Fed after the mid-term elections and the actions of the lame-duck Congress could continue the US dollar slide. This is already showing up in gasoline prices and food prices.</p>
<p>carmakers are going to raise prices to maintain marketshare? I thought that no one is buying new cars today even at the current prices? If they raise them , wdn’t that just make it harder to sell units?</p>
<p>ford’s stock is up . Are units sold up commensurately?</p>
<p>as far as food and gas goes: they are not discretionary commodities such as a car ( mine 215k and going still; knock wood); also . gas is crazy since a bunch of unstable shieks control THAT. isnt a lot of our food produced right here in the US of A? Aside - yes, I heard that ag is one of the better industries nowadays. maybe i s/ lose the IT gig and head back to the farm (after my grandparents on both sides left it at the turn of the last century). oops, I probably could not get a job THERE since I’d be competing with people south of the border. </p>
<p>Note to mod: this might SEEM off topic to the outsourcing subject of the thread, but eagle thought that valuation of the USD might be important when considering whether a foriegn service such as outsourcing might be cost efficient and therefore used - I think. eagle, please clarify the connection to outsourcing. if foriegn labor gets too costly, then the US corporations might go back using (now newly) poor U S of A people?</p>
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<p>[CPI</a> Tame in September - Zacks.com](<a href=“Zacks Investment Research: Stock Research, Analysis, & Recommendations”>Zacks Investment Research: Stock Research, Analysis, & Recommendations)</p>
<p>The other noteworthy area of inflation is in car prices, particularly
used car prices. That finally changed for the better in September, as
they fell 0.7%. On the other hand, in August, the price of a used car
rose 0.7%, and that is on the heels of a 0.8% increase in July and a
0.9% increase in June. Hey, the trend is in the right
direction. Still, we are talking about a 12.9% rise over the last
year.</p>
<p>In contrast, the price of new cars rose just 0.1% in September, down
from a 0.3% rise in August and after back-to-back increases of 0.1% in
June and July. Year over year, new car prices are up 2.1%. While that
is still more than the overall rate of inflation, which indicates more
pricing power on the part of Ford (F - Analyst Report) than the
average company has, it pales in comparison to the jump in used car
prices. The differential seems obviously unsustainable to me, but yet
it persists month after month. That is probably good news for the big
used car dealers like CarMax (KMX - Analyst Report).</p>
<p>However, if it were to continue for a few more years, a 1999 Ford
Escort would cost more than a new Ford Focus. Somehow I don’t see that
happening, and the September drop probably signals the end of this
sharp rise in used car prices. What we are probably seeing is a large
“inferior good” effect. In other words, in tough times people
gravitate to buying the cheaper product, even if is of inferior
quality. Used cars relative to new cars meet that description.</p>
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<p>I have no idea. I do technical and fundamental analysis. In the case of
the automakers, I’ve been mainly using technical analysis to make money
on Ford. It’s an abstract approach.</p>
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<p>[St</a>. Louis companies cash in as Missouri’s exports to China top $1 billion | St. Louis Business Journal](<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2008/04/21/story2.html]St”>http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2008/04/21/story2.html)</p>
<p>Wallach Trading is among several Missouri companies, both large and
small, that have grown their business in China significantly in recent
years. In 2007, Missouri’s exports to China broke the $1 billion mark,
up nearly 32 percent from $769 million in 2006 and double the $500
million in 2005, according to the World Trade Center St. Louis.</p>
<p>The increase equals about 40 percent of the $600 million rise in
Missouri’s total exports last year when the state sent $13.4 billion
worth of goods to more than 200 countries.</p>
<p>Canada remains Missouri’s largest foreign market, taking in $4.96
billion worth of goods last year. But China is quickly gaining on the
next two trade partners – Mexico ($1.35 billion) and Korea ($1.2
billion) – and very well could surpass them by the end of the decade.</p>
<p>China last year imported $48 million worth of copper waste and scrap
from Missouri, compared to $20.6 million in 2005. Logan’s company,
which buys significant …</p>
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<p>Asia has controlled their currency for decades to win global jobs.
I should think that this is obvious to anyone paying even the
slightest attention to world economic news.</p>
<p>^^Not obvious to me and thus worth it for me to try to consume and understand. This stuff is not in my bailiwick. Buying cars , food and other consumables ARE in my bailiwick. Being outsourced is now in my realm of direct experience; and so I am interested in WHY? As BAbe, the Pig in the City, as s/he was being relentlessly chased by the ravenous pit bull dog, finally said in utter exasperation, </p>
<p>WHY?
<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube; </p>
<p>The dynamics behind it I am interested in but am in a fog about. THUS the posts and the questions. Thanks for the input.</p>
<p>So the Missouri companies exporting of copper waste is considered a apart of the ag industry (You put that after I made the post on agriculture).</p>
<p>Inasmuch as I have read <em>headlines</em> (but also see my stmt of my ignorance above) about macroeconomics, I thought that there was a HUGE trade imbalance or trade deficit between china and the USA, with the USA on the losing end? I wd think your citation of the MO. companies would be exceptions to these headlines.</p>
<p>I’m glad used cars might start going down in price.</p>
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<p>I alway thought that engineers take economics to meet their social
science GEDs as these are the most numerical of the social sciences.</p>
<p>BTW, you’re not supposed to link to YouTube videos on CC. It violates
TOS.</p>
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<p>No. But I thought that it enhanced the point about other countries
wanting our raw materials. A colony of an empire typically imports
finished goods and exports raw materials. You can see that this keeps
the colony, a colony. An economic power wants to import raw materials,
make finished goods and then export those finished goods. Guess which
countries are doing that.</p>
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<p>There is a huge trade imbalance. We are selling them raw materials and
they are selling us finished goods. Guess which is larger in the
aggregate.</p>
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<p>The top of the real estate bubble was in 2005 so we’ve had many years
of people trying to hold onto their old cars for as long as possible.
At some point, old cars cost more in time and maintenance than a newer
vehicle and the fleet starts to turn over with new cars for those that
can afford them, and then newer cars for the rest.</p>
<p>My local Toyota dealership is doing rather well. They gave raises to
their employees this year; something that they didn’t do last year. I
usually see a car carrier when I’m at the dealership and they have
been hiring.</p>
<p>I see new cars at the office. It’s nice to see smaller vehicles. For
many years, it was trucks, SUVs and Minivans. Now I see more sedans
and more of the Prius.</p>