Technology Jobs-Education & Retraining the Holy Grail

[mrbowler]

Hey can we blame the tech bubble

Just trying a catchy subject line

Job Cuts in Tech Sector Soar, Report Finds:

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[mrbowler]

If anything maybe it will make you ask some questions

This leads into this:

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"Aside from the economic risks of losing access to the front-line "economic soldiers" to other nations, there are less training paths in which future managers and marketers can learn their trade. How can a US manager of software development learn how to manage software developers without ever having the chance to be a software developer? Software development will no longer happen in the US frequently enough to cultivate future managers. Can we have generals who never experienced live battle? Are we going to have to start sending manager jobs overseas also because we lack the experience at home?


"Someone who would otherwise be an above-average computer programmer cannot compete with an average-skilled computer programmer in India because of the huge labor rate difference. Resources are NOT being efficiently allocated by "free trade" because the one who is technically better qualified will not get the job. This is not a logical allocation of labor. It would be like giving the job to the "C" student, not the "A" student. Free trade is failing to allocate based on merit."

The Next Big Thing, Where are You?
The Next Big Thing usually came around to save displaced workers in the past, but we don't know if that will always be the case. Usually the disruption was in relatively low-skilled or physical-labor-intensive areas. Thus, the transition to another low-skill occupation was not that difficult. One could simply trade in one low-skill occupation for another with a bit of training. When farming disappeared there was factory work or mining to take it up. When mining and factory work started dwindling in the 1960's, there were more low-skill jobs in food services, retail, phone support services, etc. Also, semi-skilled and specialized trades such as electrician and plumbing came of age.
The higher-skilled workforce was mostly immune to all this. A four-year degree in a technical or knowledge-intensive field generally gave one a relatively safe middle-class or upper-middle-class career.

Until now. The internet and high-speed communications is eating into many technology and knowledge-based professions, rendering them a dead-end career or long-term unemployment risk. Unlike the prior blue-collar migrations, one cannot easily just hop on to the next profession. Formal education is more expensive and time- consuming than most blue-collar training. Plus, the college degrees offered that are not at risk of being globalized are rapidly dwindling.

One could perhaps go from being a farmer to a factory worker to a retail clerk in one life-time, but it is not realistic to expect everyone to get three college degrees and master 3 different professions in a lifetime. The only option for a displaced "knowledge worker" may be to go back into the blue-collar trades. They might as well burn their college degree to risk not appearing "overqualified"