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Export of core tech jobs could imperil the US programmer
San Jose (California), July 15: Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s and `90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a burgeoning industry.
San Jose (California), July 15: Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s and '90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a
burgeoning industry.
But he lost his network engineering job at a major telecom company in August 2001 and remains unemployed. Now 43, the veteran programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering.
"I told him, 'unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,'" said Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those jobs have moved to India."
Like many unemployed programmers, Kerrigan blames the sour labor market on offshore outsourcing - the migration of tech jobs to relatively low-paid contractors or locally hired employees in India, China, Russia and other developing countries.
The hemorrhaging of tens of thousands of technology jobs in recent years to cheaper workers abroad is already a fact of life - as inevitable, us executives say, as the 1980s migration of rust belt manufacturing jobs to Southeast Asia and Latin America.
But a new wave of technology outsourcing – involving tasks that require greater skills - could be cutting to the industry's bone, threatening to prolong the three-year US economic downturn.
Bureau Report
"I told him, 'unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,'" said Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those jobs have moved to India."
Like many unemployed programmers, Kerrigan blames the sour labor market on offshore outsourcing - the migration of tech jobs to relatively low-paid contractors or locally hired employees in India, China, Russia and other developing countries.
The hemorrhaging of tens of thousands of technology jobs in recent years to cheaper workers abroad is already a fact of life - as inevitable, us executives say, as the 1980s migration of rust belt manufacturing jobs to Southeast Asia and Latin America.
But a new wave of technology outsourcing – involving tasks that require greater skills - could be cutting to the industry's bone, threatening to prolong the three-year US economic downturn.
Bureau Report