Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments The world is changing,.....

A good programmer with good DB skills is in great demand right now in the USA.

The real problem in the Anglo-Euro Sphere is that taxes are too high. You cannot take 50%+ of what a person earns or what a business makes and not stunt a nation's opportunities.

In ranching it is called overgrazing. Too many cows on too few acres. The grass dies. And that is what is occurring to the industrial base of small machine and IT shops.

I'll caution you not to conflate that with "the person who works at the office gets paid $Y for working one hour."

If your dishwasher guy is self-employed, he pays for wear and tear on his vehicle, licensing, continuing education, supplies and tools, advertising, insurance, employer-borne payroll taxes, and other "overhead" out of that $100 - and got paid nothing for the time it took to drive to and from your house. If he's someone else's employee, he doesn't have the overhead, but also didn't get paid anything like $100, even if that's what you paid to his employer. Rule of thumb in the service industry I'm most familiar with is that the employee's gross wage is 1/3 of their hourly billing rate, so a tech billed at $100 an hour might have a wage of $30 an hour (or $60k a year).

Spending money on an expensive hobby is more an issue of limiting outgo in other areas than it is in having significant income.

Hey Austin
One of the things is that a lot of the IT work is outsourced to the subcontinent - this has happened massively in the UK, and especially by the US banks in the City. I know, I worked for 'em. A programmer earning $45000 in the UK can't compete with a far eastern person earning $15000 - and well paid locally for that!

A lot of my mates are business analysts who are working on outsourcing projects. there is a reduced need for professionals 'on site'.

25 years ago to set up a company in the UK you needed to speak to an accountant, pay him $300 and he would set up a company. Now, you do it online, it is set up and docs. arrive by email - cost $40. That's a big slice of work for the suits gone.

Which was why I posed my initial question.

I have good d/b design skills, years of experience in IT in Banks/Financials using iSeries. I'm afraid US work permits are harder to come by than the proverbial snowball in summer (even a UK summer )

I remember what you said about the school. Have you sat down and made a pros and cons list with your little guy to see if he really even wants to put up all the drama in exchange for a Really Awesome mentor in one class which he loves? This was a about the art class right? Actually, let me go look before I assume.
Yeah that was the same story.

Hi Raddy,

I am the contrarian for the bunch that say they live in the US and jobs are available. Every day on CNBC they talk about the lack of jobs here, and estimated GDP growth just got downgraded to less than 2% which means there isn't enough growth, let alone job creation to provide for new entrants or take care of the 9.5% unemployed.

Maybe there are a few pockets where some jobs are available, but overall not so much. And knowing many financial IT people, jobs are getting harder to come by. That boom ten years ago, when a second or third level IT executive could claim 4MM in compensation is lucky to get 400K now. Yes, that still is great money for most but so many more people are trying for that job, obviously for the price to fall that there are not jobs.

So I agree with you Raddy, times are changing. But not for human nature and there are always people that believe that it will be different for them or for their child(ren). Until the lack of opportunity strikes, as it appears to have hit you.

I am not sure of what the difference public school vs private provides there. I have opted for a gifted public with a bunch of supplements. Like a daily vitamin. Online math acceleration, science programs at the museum, Mandarin.

Don't know what will help, what won't but I am trying to make the options as broad as possible so that my child has options. I hope she has options.

Ren

Here is my perspective and I think its a good one.

I am the senior technical person at my firm and that provides financial services. I do high level analyses of competing approaches and lead the technical delivery of the selected approach plus support the other teams in the company and also program artificial intelligence projects. I also do outside consulting looking at firms' cost structures.

My main firm has 7 million customers. We have an IT staff of about 100 people in the US and about the same outside the US plus operations staff of about 200. Many of our inshore staff are from India or the PRC, too.

We lost four good database/java and one good operations people in the last four weeks and all my system admins are getting calls from recruiters. I know I can go into any firm and cut their costs by 25% and I get the hard sell from executives about once a quarter to come help them.

I have a number of friends who were laid off in the last three years. They all went back and got their Java certifications and are employed again. The longest was out of work for 9 months. None of my classmates from college or high school are out of a job.

I can see how if you are stuck in a high tax state things might look bad. But I don't see it from where I sit. I am glad I am in Texas.

Outsourced staff are actually a lot cheaper than you posted. Here is why. It is a service therefore the hiring firm does not have to pay all the overhead required by state and federal regulations. No matching taxes, no workers comp, no unemployment insurance, no HR, no compliance costs, etc. All this works out to about 2.2 x the in-shore worker's salary. So in reality, the cost of outsourcing per resource works out to about 1/10 the total cost. It has to be managed right, and that is the hard part. I do not think it will last for long though as costs for Indian services have doubled in the last three years and Vietname/PRC is starting to show the same trend. But I doubt if it will end in the next 20 years.

Looking at small and medium firm's cash flows the last three years, I find that their biggest overhead items are their 941 non-withholding line entries and workman's compensation/unemployment insurance. For instance, a 20 million dollar firm will pay $500,000 in these areas. And this is in Texas. It far higher in other states. Why have employees if you are taxed to have them?

Wren - you are absolutely where I am coming from. Little'un has just 6 years left.This from this morning's 6 a.m. radio news:

(paraphrased) "The joyful boys and girls with their good passes in their GCSEs (aged 16 exams) will find themeselves today competing with hundreds of thousands of 18 year old students who can't get jobs or college places. And all in turn will be competing with the recent slew of graduates who can't get a foot in the world of work"


Austin - you are right outsourced jobs are cheaper then the $15k I quoted.
Let me tell you how it is in the UK. The country is stuffed to the gills with "qualified" people. The whole economy - well 80% - revolves around London and the City. I have another friend with 15 years(?) Java and was out for 9 months. he now travels 150 miles round trip a day to a job where the Java got him in, but he is brain dead doing non-Java related documentation (it's still a job, right). - I could go out and sign up for a Java course and graduate in 9 months and here it would mean zip. In IT in the UK a piece of paper is worthless, and experience is everything. Employers are just not that desperate, or are willing to pay $astronomical for the right experience. (having said that some would want, say ".Net, ASP, HTML, XML, SQLServer, some knowledge of c#....." I mean, come on who has this skillset to any depth. Oh, and he might pay you $27000.) Also the rules are so relaxed employers can just import the skills (which is why I mentioned the work permit/Green Card issue with the US which offers some kind of protection). I just wonder if this is what I want my son to be groomed for? Next time I'm being born in Switzerland or Germany

La Texican - wise words. At the moment he is dreading going back in because of the bullying which is dragging on...and on. The Gifted Children Advisory organisation (NAGC) were point blank - pull him out now! But he loves the school, It's tough.

Thanks all again

I have two in college. One will be a senior this year and he is alreadyn planning on going for a Masters degree. Why? Not because he wants to but because he says there are no jobs so why graduate? In the meantime he racks up school loans and then what? His goal is to get an internship or something that will give him experience and connections but it still looks like a tough sell. Other DS will be a sophmore in pre-law so he has a lot of school and a lot of loans ahead of him and then he becomes another one of the millions of lawyers - hopefully not the unemployed kind.
My little ones are too young to have serious career plans but I can tell you that I share your worries Raddy. I have a Master's degree and I am unemployed. DH has more work than he can handle and he is....tada!...a mason. So here I am hoping that my HG DS9 finds stone work interesting so he can learn a trade to fall back on when his excellent intellect and schooling fail to secure his place in the world.
DD7 - My only DD and I would love to have her as a strong independent woman someday. Right now she wants to be a veterinarian....it does seem like there are job opportunities here but I know getting into a good school is tough. Plus she is only 7...LOL

Raddy - any chance your little one could get a student visa in another country? I had two classmates in my professional degree program who were on student visas here in the US, and both are still here working now >15 years later - one in Washington, DC and one in Los Angeles. I'm not sure what paperwork is involved (I'm sure it's cumbersome), and it's difficult to be away from their families, but it worked out well for each of them.

FWIW, in the last 6 months, my company has increased our professional staff by 10%. It does sound like IT is tough right now. Throughout this recession, other sectors (e.g.healthcare) seem to have maintained/survived more or less.

Breakaway
Well we have it in the newspapers today that 15,000 law graduates are chasing 5,000 vacancies.

Mason - I always wanted to do that. For a moment I thought you meant 'freemason' - then our worries might be over

twomoose - the future is always uncertain I guess - and what is down today might be up tomorrow. Just what kind of educational path do you put a boy heading into High School in a years time? As somebody else said - best act before the reality bites that the hard work and certificates jut represent wasted energy that maybe could have been put to better use? But what? Maybe just finding a piece of land and trying to build something - that could be a useful & practical education that might in the long run prove more worthwhile in every way? (Imagine having it on your CV!)