Most people have heard about how hard it is to get a programming job because much of the programming work was out-sourced to India. I just heard it on the grapevine that automobile engine design work is now being out-sourced. Supposably there are engineering houses in India with competent masters level engineers driving CFD packages like "Fluent". Rumor has it, they're billing out at $16/hr [including overhead] to design automobile engine combustion chambers and are producing acceptable results.

American high tech is about to get its doors blown off.

Remember the yarn about how all the nice, well paid high-tech work was supposed to remain in America while only the nasty low paying work would go to the developing world?

Sorry, you've been lied to again. The whole enchilada is going to the developing world! Over the last 20 years, we allowed "high tech" to become a commodity (we did not spend enough R&D money on genuinely advanced technology). Now, any joker with a cheap PC, Linux, a third world masters degree and a bootleg copy of Fluent can design automobile engines.

Take your salary in real dollars and divide by ten. That's what you'll be making sometime in the next decade assuming you still have a job. Our only hope is the US dollar drops so much in value against foreign currency that our labor again becomes competitive.

Can we maintain our standard of living with the real value of the dollar reduced by a factor of ten? I doubt it.

Gary