Outsourcing the VSE to the Private groups and to India ?

[vt_hokie]

josh_simonson - 8/9/2006  11:24 PM

Don't be ashamed of the government, be ashamed of the parents.  They raise their kids to be idiots and tell them it's okay to major in tie-dying if it makes them happy.  I tell mine to do something hard and once they're used to it it'll seem easy, but they'll get paid in the top 5% for it.

In graduate school I got a free ride + $1300/month to do engineering, so few US citizens go that route that it's easy to get help.  

You think engineers can expect to get paid well enough to be among the top earners in this country?  I disagree.  Even with a Ph.D., engineers aren't likely to get there, although a few do.  

If I had kids, I'd tell them to study hard and get into an elite school to study business or finance if they want to make money.  I honestly don't know if I'd recommend engineering at all, except perhaps as a good undergraduate foundation before pursuing advanced degrees in business, law, medicine, or whatever.  Personally, I've had about all I can take myself.  I need to get on the ball and take the GMAT, so I can start applying to business schools.  The alternative is to be happy with my 2% annual raises and periodic layoffs for the rest of my career, as I go from one understaffed, overworked engineering group to another.

As an aside, I was channel surfing last night, and I caught part of one of those "house flipping" shows...Property Ladder I believe...where people buy a fixer upper, re-do the house, and sell it for profit.  They sold a small two bedroom home with no propery for something like $700,000!  Are you kidding me?!  I think this was in El Segundo, CA.  Who'd buying real estate at these prices?!

[vt_hokie]

Certainly, average starting salaries for those with an M.S. or even Ph.D. in most engineering fields will not compete with those of the top business schools.  I don't know how much salaries taper off as you move away from the top tier schools like Stanford, Penn, etc. but certainly the "elite" schools seem to pay off.  Of course, there's the issue of hours worked, type of work, etc.  Six figures means nothing if you have no time to have a life and you don't enjoy your work.  But I'm concerned by the fact that it seems to take six figures to live an ordinary middle class lifestyle these days, at least in many parts of the country.

MBA grads to net six figures

[Avron]

JulesVerneATV - 8/9/2006  5:10 PM

The Falcon rocket was no good, the latest claim by Musk was $8 million for a trip to the Red Planet but many thought he was all hype and just trying to make an extra impression at the Mars-society conference ??

I am sorry for the late answer, but Mr Musk, it from a world of "Meaning"... He stands for an idea... not only that but he finances it.. he plays the game.. but in this game he is playing a game of much higher stakes.. to him I take my hat off!!!

 "Falcon rocket was no good".. (but to use Jim's words) Wrong,wrong, wrong.. its a start (show me a new LV without an issue, financed by one man) .. make no mistake its has its risk..

Now Mr Musk is not outsourcing.. if anything he his trying to make work for his new country.. I see a good man!.. I see no evil..

Why is this man targeted?

[vt_hokie]

As a counterpoint to my assertion, here's another article I stumbled across:

EE Times finds U.S. engineering salaries average around $100K

Maybe I'm just working in the wrong place!    I have my doubts about that average, though.  And this passage says it all...

Eighty-five percent of engineers got raises in India. As a result, Indian engineers expressed optimism. By contrast, some dissatisfaction exists among U.S. engineers.

"We are not professionals," Eric Gene Price, senior software engineer with Honeywell in Phoenix told the magazine. "Engineers must sacrifice to keep CEOs, marketing types and bean counters living the lifestyle they are accustomed to. If you show up five days a week to work for the man, guess what? You're just hired help."

[vt_hokie]

But hey, it's a great time to be a CEO!

CEOs' Free Ride ... to Perksville

[josh_simonson]

You should check out the bay area then, but with decent houses around $800k that takes alot of lustre out of a 6 digit salary...

[vt_hokie]

josh_simonson - 18/9/2006  1:08 AM

You should check out the bay area then, but with decent houses around $800k that takes alot of lustre out of a 6 digit salary...

Yeah, I've been out to Palo Alto on business, and I've visited friends from college who are living in San Francisco and the surrounding area now.  Parts of the bay area are nice, but as you said, it's insanely expensive!  I think the only way I'd consider going out there is if I managed to get into Stanford or Berkeley for grad school.

Actually, the valedictorian of my high school class majored in computer science at Cornell and then went out to the bay area, where he got his masters at Stanford.  I think he's well into six figures as a CS geek!   He deserves it though...he's a hard working guy, not a lazy bum like me!  

[josh_simonson]

Engineering may have less super high end potential than some other (highly competitive) fields like medicine and law, but it's pretty much a slam dunk to make a very comfortable living.  Of course all engineering degrees aren't equal.  I'm definitely glad to be an EE rather than a CSE.

[vt_hokie]

I don't have a burning desire to get rich, although of course it's nice to have wealth if you don't have to sacrifice too much in order to get it.  There are certainly more important things in life than money.  But it just seems to me that a middle class lifestyle is getting harder to maintain as wages in this country fail to keep pace with the cost of living.

Here's a good example of that:  My grandfather earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia and then worked for Grumman out in Bethpage on Long Island for most of his career.  My grandparents lived in a nice but not extravagent house in Huntington just a few blocks from the bay.  They had a small sail boat that I used to love going out on when I was a kid.  There is no way I could afford a house in that neighborhood today - not even close!  I doubt many engineers can.  

You know, I wouldn't mind living in northeast Pennsylvania so much if I could work for Dunder Mifflin!    

[vt_hokie]

Just for kicks, I looked up some real estate listings for my grandparents' old neighborhood.  Holy ****!

$1.1 million for a 4 bedroom home

Granted, that one is right on the water, but you're not going to get below half a million anywhere in that area it seems.  I guess that area has become rather exclusive.

Sometimes I think employees in the public sector are better off than those in the private sector.  Salaries may be somewhat lower, but pensions are not yet a thing of the past for most public servants and they get to retire at a decent age with good benefits.


(I apologize for straying so far off-topic, although this is somewhat related to the issue of outsourcing and loss of high wage jobs in this country.  I was going to delete this post, actually, but it seems the delete option has been removed.)

[vt_hokie]

josh_simonson - 18/9/2006  1:04 AM

You should check out the bay area then, but with decent houses around $800k that takes alot of lustre out of a 6 digit salary...

How much do you have to be making in order to realistically afford an $800k home?  Or even a $500k home?  Certainly, $60k or $70k per year isn't going to cut it these days.  Like you say, even $100k isn't all that much anymore.  Maybe a married couple, both members working and earning at that level, can do it, but it used to be that you didn't need two full time incomes in order to afford a home.

[MartianBase]

bad_astra - 11/9/2006  11:43 AM

Outsourcing the VSE or any other government aerospace program is ludicrous. This is one of the last industries we have an edge in and crucial to our continuance as an actual nation state, as opposed to a corporate oligarchy.

China and U.S. May Team Up on Space Exploration
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2488274
Because of the High Cost of Continued Manned Missions to Space, the U.S. Is Looking for a Partner

[vt_hokie]

An interview I just came across:

Conversation with a Policy Maker: Norm Augustine Comments on the Impact of ‘Rising Above the Gathering Storm’

[MartianBase]

braddock - 18/3/2006  10:06 PM

JulesVerneATV - 18/3/2006  1:27 PM
President Bush has further expanded these commitments to defending outsourcing and pledging to build closer ties in space exploration, satellite navigation and launch.

Remember that Bush has been courting India the past few months, particularly the folks in their military missile and nuclear programs, in an effort to convince them to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (in whatever watered-down form).  But talk is cheap, now that the NPT deed is almost done.  And I'm not sure there has been a president in 30 years who didn't defend free-trade and "outsourcing" as their established economic policy.

NPT is dead now that the DPRK blew the nuke, not sure how much of an ally New Delhi will ever be as India were often called Soviet stooges

[MartianBase]

vt_hokie - 29/9/2006  2:12 AM

An interview I just came across:

Conversation with a Policy Maker: Norm Augustine Comments on the Impact of ‘Rising Above the Gathering Storm’

good interview


Outsourcing again
US engineering jobs that are being 'offshored' to countries like India and China, is 'gaining momentum', according to a recent study, made by the Durham, NC-based Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering Research.
http://www.andhracafe.com/index.php?m=show&id=11747
The study titled 'Industry Trends in Engineering Offshoring', challenges the often-accepted view that China and India 'graduate 12 times the number of engineers as the US.

[vda]

lmike - 9/9/2006  11:50 PM

If you don't believe me take a look at how Eastern Europe, India, China and Russia are coming along (although at different rates.)  Eventually China is going to make the flip from communism to democracy and then they will cease to be a military threat, and then think of how great payoff will be to the rest of the world.

Sharing and cooperating creates a more integrated world that will have less major conflicts.  Its a good thing, but there will be bumps and adjustments along the way and that is what we are experiencing now.

The first paragraph is good.  The rest is "Kimbaya".  Thinking that democracy (the US is a republic btw) is a natural state of affairs and "all we have to do is trade" will fix things is naive.

It is not "natural state of affairs". It's just proved to be better that anything else we've tried so far. (In my opinion, maybe one flaw in US foreign policy is that US supports some "friends" which are absolutely not democratic, and it backfires badly. Like it did in Vietnam)

[Avron]

We really should be focusing on giveing our children a future than the short term money making gig of Outsourcing... We have govenments to protect the people... so protect the people or do we want the people to protect themselves  --- "V"