Musing on Working in America
I have been thinking about my career and the future of working in America. Most people have heard news about outsourcing, unions, executive pay, big corporations, etc. All these issues are related to working in America. This story simply contains some of my thought on each issue.

One issue with whch I am very familiar is outsourcing. I do not want to get in to the political posturing on whether outsourcing is good or bad, especially in how it relates to America. The fact is that outsourcing is happening and businesses are opting to adopt this form of business. It's reality. As a worker in America it's something that will have to be mitigated into each person's career life.

I have been in the computer software industry for many years and have seen the outsourcing trend grow from an experiment to a way of life. On a tangent note it is very ironic that the software industry is one of the industries most affected by outsourcing. The ironic thing is the technology that enables outsourcing was largely created by the software industry itself. I remember being in college and planning on developing software for the next 30 or 40 years. After college I went to graduate school. It wasn't until I was well into a Ph.D. program in Computer Science that I relaized that I might have too much invested in the field. The outsourcing trend was also starting to bloom at the same time. I had the thought that maybe it was best to be more of a generalist than to be deep in one skill. That thought is turning out to be a mantra in this industry. Many workers are finding the job the have invested many years in learning and perfecting and being transferred to more economically effective parts of the world. At that point what is the worker to do. One effective tool is to have other skills to use. This requires breadth as opposed to depth.

Another issue facing Corporate America is the current state of worker unions. I believe the unions are getting a bad representation albeit some might be well-earned. Corporate management seems to be using unions as an easy scapegoat for negative business performance. I don't really know what the future will contain for unions but it is obvious that some changes are needed.

Executive pay is an issue that gets a mention in the news every now and then. It is out of control in America. I certainly believe in supply and demand but it's hard for me to believe that one person can do anything that deserves an annual compensation of $100 million dollars. It seems that the government is enacting a bunch of "band-aid" type laws to try and fix matters. One thing about people in executive positions is that they are usually very intelligent. This quality usually enables them to figure out ways to skirt around the intent of the laws. I guess greed will always be there and perhaps the executives will take it to a point where the shareholders will awaken.
- posted by Unknown @ 1:49 AM