U.S. high school students polled the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers say the current trend in outsourcing American high-tech jobs makes them wary of taking a computer-related career path.
According to an article in WashTech News, students entering college worry that studying IT or other computer science-related courses might be a waste of their time -- if they lose their jobs to outsourcing in the future.
For instance, Rogan Kriedt, 17, a student at Pacific Collegiate in Santa Cruz, Calif., said: "I like Math a lot but after I saw the rapid pace of American IT jobs outsourced, I decided to not choose Computer Science or IT. I am choosing Economics. Outsourcing worries me and I feel powerless to do anything about it. "
Another student Ciara Proctor, 16, of Northside College Preparatory High School in Chicago, told the WashTech News: "The thought of pursuing this career for years only to be left jobless is a terrifying one, especially with the rising cost of college. I decided that I was not willing to gamble my future wondering if I would get a job in a market that is outsourcing these positions at a staggering rate."
Others feel the high-tech market changes enough that they do not need to worry about finding and keeping jobs in IT.
"I have been interested in choosing IT as a career since my freshmen year. The reason why I am hardly worried about the outsourcing of IT jobs is because it is a constantly growing and changing market. I have heard that as many as 8 of the top 10 growth jobs by 2010 are technology related," said Klaudia Leja, 17 of Northside College Prep in Chicago.
And Matthew Ramir, 17, from the same school said he believes the area of IT he plans to pursue is not a likely candidate for outsourcing. "I'm not very worried about finding a job. I'll try to get into Information Security, or system/network administration. Both are growing fields, with a good chance they wouldn't get outsourced. Information Security is safe simply because it's a huge risk to let someone outside of a nation run its security and network admin is extremely hard to do from a remote location."
WashTech is an union for high-tech workers. Read the full story here.
Dubie is a senior editor at Network World.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
|
|
Job Opportunities
I was speaking to a couple of people last week and incidentally the same topic came up during our discussion. And I presume when you wrote "outsourcing" you really meant "offshoring" because outsourcing has been there for years now but those were delivered by service providers' team in-country.
Having a view from the trenches, I would say that there will definitely be an impact on the way youngsters should look at opportunities in IT. However there are areas where offshore based providers would need employees in-country in the states and back at their delivery locations for specific activities. Most of the the large Indian IT companies today boast of 10-15% of employees being non-Indian. Further, close to 30% of their total workforce (Indian and otherwise) is located outside the offshore locations.
So, true the opportunities and their nature will change but there will some news ones that will open up. Willingness to travel and relocate (outside country) will be a great plus as work and workforce now move around the global village.
Post new comment