Different field, same frustrations

Em Ter 16 Mar 2004 02:47, victoriatangoman escreveu:
> True. Also, with the recent economic structural realignment many
> engineering and programming jobs are being outsourced. What isn't
> widely reported is the drop-off in college majors being graduated in
> these fields. The oursourcing scare has made kids think twice about
> their prospective careers and they're choosing fields like law,
> finance and marketing. Not too much innovation comes from these
> fields. Maybe the US can supply the lawyers for the world and we can
> maintain our wealth by suing each other. OK, sarcasm off. :)

This is becoming a bit offtopic but I can't resist to jump in the
discussion...

I am one of the evil "outsourcerers" who are stealing jobs from
Americans. (And from Europeans too. My company,
www.vettatech.com , has clients in both places and even several of our
so-called "Brazilian" clients are in fact Transnational companies.) I
understand that we are contributing to make tech careers less appealing in
the West. However...

... My alien perception is that, in the US at least, tech careers have been
unpopular for decades, and outsourcing is just the coup-de-grace in a already
weak popularity. Basically all products of the American culture show tech
people as "social losers", and "nerd" is a derisive term AFAIK. And I am
talking about cultural products that at least *care* to show nerds, even if
as comical figures; for most of the movies and TV series show professions
that apparently give social status, like lawyers and doctors. So, you produce
series like "IR" and "The Practice", but I can't quite remember of a series
named "The Nuclear Power Plant" or "The Software Company" :-). Sometimes I
wonder how the US kept the leading edge of science and technology for a whole
century with a memetic background apparently so unwelcoming for techies.

Finally, it is true that here in the Third World (or in Brazil at least...)
tech professions are not considered exactly "sexy" either. However, AFAIR
they are not scorned/ridiculed, and they have the reputation of paying well;
and that suffice.

BTW, I am not sure that Law is a field that promising in the long run; I think
that most of the paperwork/bureaucratic strata in Law can also be
outsourced...