The April 2004 issue of FastCompany magazine puts a human face on the outsourcing debate by chronicalling the stories of 40 people who either lost jobs in IT or saw their income drastically reduced. A recent article I saw estimated that up to 10% of IT jobs may leave the country in the next few years. So, even if the overwhelming majority of "high tech" people keep their jobs, there is a tragic side to this transformation.
There are several aspects to this latest dislocation in the American economy. For one thing, there is the "high tech" mystique. Most people still think of programming and other computer skills as somewhat esoteric and rare. Unfortunately, schools have been graduating programmers around the world for many years now. As someone employed in a computer services company once told me, "If all you are is a database coder, then your job can be done by thousands around the world." Those jobs are going to see wages go down over time.
Another aspect is the speed with which this dislocation happened. Manufacturing jobs paid well enough for a person (usually a man) to earn enough for a family to maintain a middle class standard of living for over 40 years. The dislocation there started in the mid-1980's when Reagan-era laws enabling employers to hire replacements for striking workers coupled with a burgeoning workforce willing to take unskilled jobs at half the price. It's less than 20 years that high paying programming jobs are finding that same fate. That's within one generation that good jobs have become almost commodities.
Yet, presidents of software companies in the manufacturing sector still tell me that they have trouble filling programming spots.
The answer, at an ever faster rate, people must upgrade their skills, both technical and personal, in order to fill these new positions. Honing creativity and innovation skills are also essential to finding the higher paying jobs.
Do I feel for all those people? You bet. But I don't think that we're going to see the clock rolled back. We're just living in an age where things just don't stay the same for very long. We all have to reinvent ourselves every few years.
12:38:38 PM 
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