6/19    Programming Jobs Losing Luster in U.S.
        http://tinyurl.com/737b8 (nytimes.com)
        \_ Oh darn.  You mean those opportunistic little shits who clogged up
           all of my project groups in CS classes aren't around anymore?  Cry
           me a fucking river.
        \_ is there a CSUA password?
           \_ No, some dumbass disabled it.  Just use http://bugmenot.com.
                \_ Just checked out http://bugmenot.com. what a great site!
                   \_ If you are using firefox there is a nice bugmenot
                      plugin:
                      http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/02/07/bugmenot
        \_ err... if you think of it, programming jobs *ARE* manufacturing
           jobs... manufacturing of software, that is.
           \_ Some computer jobs could be classified as manufacturing
              (ex. build/release engineering) but stuff like actual
              design of new software products and development is more
              like classical engineering work than manufacturing jobs.
              \_ just like design of new consumer electronics and other
                 traditional products are done in USA, and manufacturing
                 is done somewhere else.
        \_ If asian countries can do better at software and engineering,
           they can also do better at other things.  What will the US
           be left with?  More than half the new jobs created are related
           to real estate.  Besides that, what else?  Scientists, lots
           of accountants, MBAs?  Service jobs are being outsourced too,
           and pay tend to be low, and those won't help in balancing the
           trade deficit.  The top people will be making more and more,
           while the others will become poorer and poorer.  "Learn foreign
           language and become cross-cultural managers"?  huh?  Once
           language and become cross-cultural managers"?  snicker.  Once
           everything moves to asia, they don't need no stupid cross-
           cultural managers from the US.  I find it a little funny that
           some people seem to think that we can just let asians do
           the software and engineering work, and we can just be their
           managers.
           \_ What's gonna happen? Possibly, the US will continue hemorrhaging
              those jobs until the wage differrentials between US and East Asia
              are not so wide as they are now. Another possibility is to come
              up with new types of products and jobs to replace them.
           \_ America has thrived because it's able to invent new things
              that have never been done. Look at all the cool things that
              came from America: aeronautics, automobile, consumer
              electronics, DRAM, LCD, GPS, etc. At first America has
              the lead on these things, but in a matter of 5-10 years,
              foreigners find ways to perfect techniques and out produce
              better automobiles, TVs, stereos, LCDs, DRAM, and other
              common things.  Go to Fry's or Best Buy... how many products
              are really made in the US? My point is America has never
              really been good at perfecting existing products. They invent
              something new, and move on to something else. The way I see
              software and hardware development is that it's maturing, and
              a lot of complexities are broken down in such a way that SW
              dev is more and more like designing automobile and consumer
              electronics. Despite what we know about OO, scalability,
              reliability, usability, QA, verification, and other things
              that complacent Americans think they're the only people who
              excel at, it's just a matter of time before Indians and
              Chinese really understand computer science, and catch up.
              \_ The assumption is that America can out invent the
                 Chinese and Indians.  The thing is, the Chinese
                 and Indians ain't bad historically at inventions
                 (compared with say the Japanese), but just haven't had
                 the opportunity (wars, poverty, easier to just copy
                 instead of invent when you are behind) to lead and
                 invent.  Once they have lots of engineers doing leading
                 edge work, they will become very competitive with
                 inventing new things.  The other thing is that with
                 internet and globalization and how fast information
                 travels, the benefit you get by being the inventor has
                 been reduced.
                 \- Some years ago on the cover of the IEEE Spectrum there
                    was a pictures of the Pentium design team. That should
                    tell you something about the Chinese and Indians as
                    ethnicities vs. nations. See also winners of programming
                    olympiad type stuff.
                    \_ I am thinking more in terms of culture / nation
                       and not race / ethnicity.
                 \_ The advantage America has is one of numbers. We have
                    so few people and so much resources that large numbers
                    of creative minds can simply sit around and tinker w/
                    things until they make something new.
                    It is not so in Asia (my experience is w/ India, but
                    China is the same from what I'm told). In Asia there
                    are a million people competing for every single dead
                    end job that is out there. If you just want to live
                    you have to stay w/in the system. This societal setup
                    does not allow for the freedom to invent new things
                    b/c if you sit around wasting time tinkering your
                    kids end up starving to death.
                    \- The US universites benefitted from the Oxbridge
                       braindrain. They got some big names who were paid
                       ass there and were picked up here. On the other hand
                       some junior faculty and grad student types I have
                       known seem to feel kind of threatened by russians
                       and chinese people who are way better at math than
                       they are ... these people are not mathematicians but
                       in related disciplines like stat, finance, econ etc.
                       People losing out to competition are not happy.
                       But the structural metaphor isnt outsourcing but a
                       raising of the bar in a field like applied stat.
        \_ "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or
            values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying
            organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact,
            non-Westerners never do."
            \_ Where's this from?
           cultural managers from the US.
            \_ Bet they said this about the huns or the Ottomans as well.
               \_ Or the Mongols.