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Businesses Programming IT Technology

Exporting Myself? 145

Posted by Cliff from the moving-to-where-the-jobs-are dept.
sennomo asks: "Years ago, I was told that I needed a degree to get a programming job anymore. So, I went to college. A couple of years and thousands of dollars later, there was still no job for me, in spite of my all-powerful B.A. in C.S. The most common explanation I get is that jobs are being exported out of the country. So, I've decided to export myself. Moving to higher ground, so to speak. I have heard a few others discuss this, but how many are actually trying it? And how is it going for them? Are there any hotspots for American expatriate programmers?"
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Exporting Myself? More

Exporting Myself?

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  • i thought i'd be you, but wasnt (Score:3, Informative)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:35PM (#7837072) Homepage Journal
    i graduated with my bachelors last spring without having a job lined up. my main avenue of search were the websites of companies in my area and my school's biannual job fair, and those didnt go well. i didnt want to, but I sucked it up and put my resume out on careerbuilder and monster. found a job in less than a week after graduation. and it pays well too!

  • I don't think it's going to work. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why would another country want YOU to move THERE and take jobs away from THEIR people? I've heard people talk about moving to India and such, because all the work is being outsourced to them. Well, guess what, they have plenty of native citizens to perform the work. Unlike the United States, most other countries don't have an open door for anyone that wants to just waltz in. Being skilled doesn't matter, if you're just going to end up taking a job away from one of their own people.
    • Plus, you will make 1/3 what you would working the same job in the U.S.

      Write your congressman. Organize a protest. Find someone to get active with. Boycott companies that use large amounts of foreign I.T. labor (IBM, G.E. & subsideraries are two). H1b visas are just as bad. Boycott companies that use large amounts of technical H1B visas.

      Check out http://www.h1b.info/ [h1b.info]
      • You're right. There is no difference between the power of the gun (your congressman) and the dollar (the economy). Let's legislate everyone a job. It worked for Franco in Spain, it worked for FDR, it worked for Stalin. /SARCASM

        Here's another thought:
        Get a night job, go back to school.
        Develop a decent app on Sourceforge, use their compile farms, use their networking tools, all while collecting unemployment, and use the experience and resume-padding to get a job.
        Stop whining.
        The world keeps turning, you c
        • The world keeps turning, you can't expect it to stop because your skillset no longer matches the 'hot' jobs.

          I wish that were the problem. The jobs didn't go away, they just got moved to people I can't compete with because it costs less to live in their country than it does mine. 1 Million jobs in a decade is significant. [zazona.com]

          Moving jobs to other countries only benefits the owners of the company. American workers get displaced and thrown into unemployment while companies in the targeted foreign company go b
          • It's amazing to me that the US in this modern age still does not seem to offer a decent safety net (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Here in Sweden, for example, people making a small (around $14 or so) monthly payment to the unemployment insurance typically connected to their union (which nearly everyone are a member of) entitles them to 80 % of their salary if they should lose their job, capped at a certain level. Some unions have additional insurances that raise that cap. While unemployment could s
            • I'm not sure of the specifics, but out of each paycheck, a small portion is taken for 'unemployment insurance'. This is government mandated. If you lose your job for certain reasons, you are able to collect unemployment at a certain percentage of your former income for a certain amount of time, as long as you are actively seeking work and you have to prove that to the unemployment office.

              I'm sorry I don't know more about it, but thankfully I've never had to look into it.
              • But the ceiling is so low, it means certain disaster for anyone in the I.T. industry.

                Here [ohio.gov] are some rules for the state I live in. As you can see, an I.T. worker making 50k a year would make 22k on unemployment. Unemployment benefits are taxed, btw.
          • I wish that were the problem. The jobs didn't go away, they just got moved to people I can't compete with because it costs less to live in their country than it does mine.

            Like it happened to the garment industry. Like it happened to the auto industry. Like it happened to most manufacturing industries.

            And what happened after that? Well, now you can buy a t-shirt for less that the price of a Bic Mac and cars cost a fraction of the average salary. Sure, people lost their jobs and whined about it, but even
            • Sure, people lost their jobs and whined about it, but eventually they found other jobs and benefited from the improved living conditions made possible by exporting a lot of jobs to cheaper countries.

              Yeah, like the better living condition where both parents have to work to make ends meet where they didn't have to before. Before, one parent could stay home and concentrate on the job of raising kids. Now, the lowest bid teacher or day care gets to raise our kids. But your wife isn't working to create a bett
              • What percentage of your wages do you spend on food? Now compare that to what your grandfather spent. If he didn't have to grow it himself.

                You complain about the cost of medical care. Hell, at least you can GET medical care. Remember, in your grandfathers time medicine wasn't much more than guesswork. Things are improving.

                We shouldn't have to spend half the year working just to pay taxes.

                Oh, sorry. 50% tax rate? So you live in Europe then? Taxes in the US are allready lower than most countries. I agree,

        • Re:I don't think it's going to work. (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Get a night job, go back to school.

          Don't you have at least a bit of sympathy? People are coming out of four year schools at the age of 21-23 after spending 10's of thousands of dollars and finding that there is no job market and that they'll have to return to school for another two to four years that they can't afford nor get any more loans for.

          This is a major set back for people who, up until now, were probably hard working students who had a goal since their first year in highschool and thought that if
      • Man O' Man--I love it when a goth says quite wining. Didnt you guys perfect wining. First of all this is not about a technology that outgrew anybodys skill set. This is about a technology that is being bought off a market where a programmer makes good money if he makes 8000 USD (IN INDIA. Also medical doctors make 15k, just to give you an idea of the scale) You can not tell me anybody in the United states can live off of 8000 dollars (poverty level is 17000 USD in the US)Capitalism is about "fair" play
    • The United States hasn't had anything approaching "an open door" for quite some time now. Your visa controls are pretty stringent and activelty policed. The qualification criteria for most countries are youth, training, marriage, but most of all, a sponsoring company with a specialised position.

  • Accept less money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:39PM (#7837126)
    Erm, if you go overseas to work in India or such, your standard of living is going to go way, way, way down.

    Why not just accept less money than you've been asking? Look for non-profits and similar who need programmers but can't pay competitive salaries. Then, when you build up some experience, you might be worth something more than the paper the degree is printed on and won't have trouble if you decide to look elsewhere for work.

    • your standard of living is going to go way, way, way down

      Rubbish. I moved from the UK to Sri Lanka and my standard of living has improved in many ways. I earn less in absolute terms but the cost of living is MUCH lower.

      whether my standard of living is better or worse is actually quite subjective. Examples:

      • My car is a Hyundai, but I pay someone else to drive it for me.
      • I eat out more and mostly at better restaurants, but the best here are not as good as the best in London and there is less choice.
      • I ca
    • Erm, if you go overseas to work in India or such, your standard of living is going to go way, way, way down.

      Not true. Depending on what sort of position he manages to get you can live a life of luxury in India relatively cheaply. A middle class white collar worker can very easily afford a servant to do cooking and cleaning for them. A very nice property is also affordable.

      The problem is that once you move there long term, there is no comming back as your life savings will be near worthless in the st

  • Stop looking for "programming" jobs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:41PM (#7837137)
    Go for a design job. There's plenty of those if you're good (did you have good grades in your CS classes?). Lean towards the Science part of your degree instead of trying to pimp the programming skills you learned as a side effect. Who wants to be just a programmer anyway? It's like manual labor for your fingers.

    Also, be an example for others. You are living proof that you should get a BS in computer science, not a BA. Yes, employers notice, and also, the background courses for a science degree will actually relate to real world exprience in your field, where the types of employers you're looking for probably don't care in the least about the non-CS stuff you did for your BA.

    • Re:Stop looking for "programming" jobs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mugnyte ( 203225 ) * on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:54PM (#7837300) Journal

      Sorry, but to be a good analyst (this IS the type of "designer" you suggest, correct?), one should put in the time, so to speak, as a programmer for awhile. Nothing is more mismatched than a book-only-learned analyst. They are good at design patterns, concepts of reuse and well-read, but give them a real-world legacy mess (or just an older interface or module) and they suffer a breakdown in productivity. "Here's fix this crappy site in 2 weeks. No you cannot rewrite it."

      That "manual labor for your fingers" is actually quality time spent solving a pool of math, logic, algorithm and communication problems. Also, the trials of explaining such tasks, issues and achievements in easy-to-understand words to PHBs is valuable. Don't underestimate simply being a programmer.

      To poster: I am guessing you didn't want to live in debt forever, so you skipped the BS and got just the BA. Maybe you can work part time using whatever skills relate to your field, and get the other 2 years over with. Heck, some people make a career out of attending classes just that way. As to your question, I'm at a loss. I'm doubting you'd like living as a programmer in another country...

      • Re:Stop looking for "programming" jobs (Score:5, Informative)

        by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @03:07PM (#7837436)
        A BS and a BA both take 4 years typically... Depending on the school, you can easily spend more on a BA than a BS. You have to do more math to get the BS, which may be what scared the poster off. You're probably thinking of an Associates degree.

        As for the "analyst" thing, that's not really what I was talking about. There are plenty of entry level design jobs that involve implementation. The only types of tasks that are getting outsourced with any success are fully speced out. He needs to get in on a new product that needs some independant thinkers instead of somebody to read the spec and write the code as specified. Maintnence of legacy code would also be good for him. If you're not the type of person that can be productive dealing with a legacy mess, you're in trouble, because soon there won't be any jobs for that type of person.

      • You are completely correct in that hiring a person with only classroom experience to be a "designer" is a recipe for disaster. It is the software industry's version of the military's "90 day wonder".

        As far as the degree is concerned: in the U.S. both BS and BA degrees are "Bachelor" degrees which means they are both four year degrees. Two year degrees are "Associate" degrees.

      • Re:Stop looking for "programming" jobs (Score:4, Funny)

        by EABird ( 554070 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @03:38PM (#7837839)
        Amen to this..... In fact it reminds me of a joke I once heard on /.

        A Mathematician, a Biologist, and a Statician are watching people going in and coming out of the building on the other side of the street. First they see two people going in - after awhile three people come out.

        The Biologist concludes, "They're mating!"

        The Statician says, "No, no, no - The measurement wasn't accurate."

        The Mathematician says, "If someone else goes in, it'll be empty."
      • The BA may also have been a limitation of the schools available to him (as well as his financial/academic standing) in the area he was limited to. Not everyone can pick up and move to the city with the big BS programs and afford to pay the tuition as an out of state student. I was in the same position and eventually just gave up. I should add, I was interested in completing my BS at an accredited school to go on to and engineering MS solely to get a better salary, but now that the economy has gone to hel
    • Go for a design job. [...] Who wants to be just a programmer anyway? It's like manual labor for your fingers.

      If you think that, you'd be doing the job wrong, whether you're a designer or a programmer. As a consultant who has seen a lot of projects, I find few people more dangerous than self-styled architects who consider themselves too good for coding.

      On my last project, it was my great pleasure to recommend that they fire all 20 of their architecture group, and then offer them the opportunity to intervi
      • I find few people more dangerous than self-styled architects who consider themselves too good for coding.

        Hmm... Where did I say that he shouldn't code? There's as much difference between mindlessly writing what somebody else designed, and writing what "you" (it's usually a group) designed, as there is between writing what you design, and farming all the coding for your design out.

        I agree with the rest of your post.
    • Before one becomes a designer, of the caliber you suggest, one must be a supreme codemonkey. In other words, in order to truly become an artist (designer) at computer science, one has to first master the science.

      You won't get there fast. Especially not fresh out of college. And even top education from best C.S. schools won't guarantee you will ever be good at designing software. You either know it, get there on your own and are good at it, or you aren't and remain a codemonkey forever.
    • Also, be an example for others. You are living proof that you should get a BS in computer science, not a BA.

      I can't speak to the poster's experience, but A) my school didn't offer a BS in Comp Sci because "it's not a hard science" so the choice may not have been his and B) it has never been brought up in an interview that I had a BA vs. a BS, nor has it been mentioned at any job I landed. Any job I did not get was due to not knowing how to interview.

      psxndc

  • The reason companies hire work elsewhere is because of price -- it's cheap! Just stay in America, work an lower-skilled (but still relatively high-paying) IT job. When I was going to uni I worked IT in a hospital near Seattle, and at the time (1999) they paid about 35-38K USD / year for full-time IT staff. I declined and luckily found a job, and have held on to it.
  • Before I found my current employer I toyed with the idea of seeking a tech job overseas, preferably somewhere in Europe. In my head this seemed like a good idea because I could start my life over, fixing the parts I didn't like. I had a phone interview with a consulting firm in Ireland but the very notion of being in a country on a work visa scared me away.

    Shortly thereafter (in 2000 mind you) I posted my resume on dice.com and phone calls started rolling in. I interviewed with four or five companies an
    • Shortly thereafter (in 2000 mind you) I posted my resume on dice.com and phone calls started rolling in. I interviewed with four or five companies and picked the one for me.

      *sigh* God, I miss those days. When I was looking for work in 2000-2001 my phone was ringing off the hook for jobs here, in other states, all over. My only limiting decision was that I didn't have a car, so had to stay local. But like you, I had a CHOICE.

      It's a little different now. My resume is MUCH better than it was then, and

  • hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:54PM (#7837299)
    Years ago, I was told that I needed a degree to get a programming job anymore.

    They lied.

    So, I went to college. A couple of years and thousands of dollars later, there was still no job for me, in spite of my all-powerful B.A. in C.S.

    Sucker.

    The most common explanation I get is that jobs are being exported out of the country.

    Awfully convenient explanation, huh? Just in time for the retirement of the "Bad economy" excuse.

    So, I've decided to export myself. Moving to higher ground, so to speak.

    Or, so to hope. Higher ground. Yep. That's what I'd call a third world country.

    Here is the painful truth - if you had anything to offer, you'd be employed. My company is hiring like crazy, but we are extremely selective (about 1 in 100 candidates pass the tests.)

    Actually, let me back it up a little and not be so terribly insulting. The situation is this - companies are hiring, but they are scared of repeating the bust. One of the least talked about reasons that everything has fallen apart in the tech sector is the sheer worthlessness of so many of the people in it. I have worked with some of the worst programmers I can imagine over the last three years. These people will be shed, but it will be a painful process.

    My advice is this: suck it up, do some hobby programming, build a portfolio of samples (nothing sells a candidate like good sample code), and keep on plugging. You'll have to prove yourself.

    The whole expatriation thing is a terrible idea. If you go through with it, have fun.

    Anonymous Hoser
    • Actually, let me back it up a little and not be so terribly insulting. The situation is this - companies are hiring, but they are scared of repeating the bust. One of the least talked about reasons that everything has fallen apart in the tech sector is the sheer worthlessness of so many of the people in it. I have worked with some of the worst programmers I can imagine over the last three years. These people will be shed, but it will be a painful process.

      You hit the nail on the head. When the bubble burs
    • Actually, let me back it up a little and not be so terribly insulting.

      Too late.

      ...These people will be shed, but it will be a painful process.

      As a supervisor I have always preferred the unskilled but eager over the self-important assholes. The unskilled can be taught but have you ever tried to get a know-it-all jerk to be a part of the team? Impossible.

      • Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

        by KILNA ( 536949 ) * <kilna@kilna.com> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @04:35PM (#7838400) Homepage Journal

        Teaching costs time and money. Trying to train up non-programmers is a cheapskate recipe for disaster. If the project is in any way important or time sensitive, do a good job of picking a couple of knowledgible and driven programmers and pay them well. If the project is worth doing, it's worth doing right. Repeat after me: "There is no such thing as a redundant array of inexpensive programmers".

        Let me guess, you manage tech support or some other non-project-based job. Unskilled and eager may work at a variety of tasks, but there has to be a knack for programming for the person to succeed at it. Yes, you just may get a Tiger Woods or Stephen Hawking or Linus Torvalds by scouring the homeless shelters, but the odds ain't good. And you'll never know if things panned out until you put them in the thick of it... you need to see the person actually programming. Which costs time and money you could have just used to hire someone good in the first place.

        My advice to the original poster: Prove you're a worthy programmer and employee by doing hard work on things like open source projects before entering the workforce. Don't leave the country unless you have more than just the job shortage as a reason. If you do, go to the UK. They know Americans are hard workers, the work visas are a lot easier to get than here, it's a very American-friendly place to live, and though the cost of living is higher you get about 3 times the amount of vacation/sick pay as here.



        • Let me guess, you manage tech support or some other non-project-based job.

          Bzzzt!! you guessed wrong. I supervise a team of engineers creating J2EE-based apps at a major, well-known online shopping site. Want to move on to Double Jeopardy now?

          The bottom-line is that a pain-in-the-ass, prima donna programmer costs more than he/she makes in re-work, duplicated efforts and morale-crushing complaining about how all the other programmers aren't nearly good enough to breathe the same air.

          • I said you ought to hire well, not hire assholes. You seem to think that paying good money automatically neccessitates a pain-in-the-ass prima donna who has to have work re-done. If you're doing your job hiring, it doesn't have to be that way. You can weed out attitude and programming skill in the first couple of weeks if you're not training. If you are training the new blood to be a programmer, their programming skills are a complete crap shoot. If you're trusing important projects to that practice, I

            • If you are training the new blood to be a programmer, their programming skills are a complete crap shoot.

              No, they're not. If you've got a well-designed code based and are willing to spend a few weeks upfront training them in how to use the API, then anyone with the willingness to learn and communicate can be trained to be a good programmer. It's the people who think that the data layer is too poorly written for them to bother with that cause all my headaches.

              • I completely disagree. I worked for a guy like you once. Want to know what happened to the company?

                Training the hire to use an API isn't what I was talking about, and wasn't your first assertion. You said unskilled. UNskilled. Not partially skilled, or somewhat green, but completely without any prior skill at programming. Getting them up to speed on the programming toolkit you currently use is completely different than training them to be a programmer, so you already seem to be a bit self-contradict



                • Dude, lay off the caffeine. We're doing just fine on our milestones. Thank you for your concern.
                  • Perhaps a 2-liter of Mountain Dew before breakfast is a bit much. At least there's one person taking your job seriously, even if it isn't you. :) You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
          • >Bzzzt!! you guessed wrong. I supervise a team of engineers creating J2EE-based apps at a major, well-known online shopping site. Want to move on to Double Jeopardy now?

            Gee, talk about about a pain-in-the-ass, prima donna manager.

        • Re:hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

          by __aafutm5472 ( 188247 )
          "There is no such thing as a redundant array of inexpensive programmers".

          RAIP? Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure that's what my employer is doing to me...

      • I also prefer the eager over the prima-donna. But not every skilled, experienced programmer acts like a prima-donna. An experienced, talented programmer who doesn't have a big ego will produce more quality work faster than an unskilled eager programmer. And I've worked with plenty of eager unskilled prima-donnas, too, and they poison the pool just as fast as the skilled ones.

        Learning to program well takes a lot of time. A college degree or self-study can make for a good start, but programming well takes f

    • (Am I the only one who was reminded of the old Joe Isuzu commercials by the parent to this post?)

      The whole expatriation thing is a terrible idea. If you go through with it, have fun.

      Do you have first-hand experience to back this up? Just curious. On the 1-year anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks, I submitted to "Ask Slashdot" the question "Best Country to Expatriate To?". While intentionally inflamatory (probably best for the audience of Plastic [plastic.com]), I felt a forum of tech-heads, who knew what to loo

      • Making $12k/yr in a suburban environment in Mexico (just pulling a ficticious example out of my hat here), might very well land you a better standard of living than making $50k-to-$100k somewhere in California.

        ...but don't drink the water.

        I don't mean this as a funny statement, but rather to illustrate what previous posters meant by "lower living standards". Better start taking such mundane details seriously if you really mean going to another country. The pay/expenses ratio may be better in that othe

      • Re:hmmm (Score:1)

        by Otter ( 3800 )
        Do you have first-hand experience to back this up? Just curious. On the 1-year anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks, I submitted to "Ask Slashdot" the question "Best Country to Expatriate To?". While intentionally inflamatory (probably best for the audience of Plastic [plastic.com]), I felt a forum of tech-heads, who knew what to look for while the feds were (and still are) eroding our rights with technology, was an appropriate venue.

        As a one-time expat in Japan -- if you live in a developed country, mov

    • One of the least talked about reasons that everything has fallen apart in the tech sector is the sheer worthlessness of so many of the people in it.

      This is very true, and it doesn't apply just to the line programmers.

      A gold rush mentality meant many people made a lot of decisions that worked in the short term but screwed them in the long term. The theory at the time was that if things worked you'd get VC money (or go IPO) and have so much dough that you could make up for the screwups. This was approximat

  • Wait a bit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:57PM (#7837333) Homepage Journal
    I'm in no better of a situation, with my all-powerful BSEE degree. But I am fully confident that no matter where you go, the best opportunities will always be in the U.S. Why else do you think everyone tries to come here to work?

    We have an abundance of industries, no bloody civil wars at the moment, a great environment of free speech, and an astronomical average standard of living. Even if you don't get a programming job right now, you'll still be better off than most of the rest of the world. Assuming you could even manage to arrange it, consider the conditions you would have to accept. Work 14 hour days in cramped conditions with 100 people speaking a different language, make perhaps 10% of what you would make in the US, live in a tiny apartment in foreign city, and face termination at any moment because there are 100 more people waiting outside every day to take your place. Yeah, people might joke that it's already this way in the U.S., but that's just not the case. Even if you sell auto parts, or pour concrete, you're still better off.

    The economy IS turning around. I'm optimistic even though I was laid off right before Thanksgiving. At this point, 1.5 years of mechanical engineering experience isn't really helping me get an electrical engineering position, but I am confident that I will find something. If you leave now, you might miss out on our next boom. And this one might be real growth, not a bubble of hopes and gambles by investors.

    Maybe our garden-variety programming jobs are all moving overseas. OK...maybe this is just a natural progression? We used to make shoes and T-shirts here, right? And then the other developing countries said "Hey, we can do that!" and we moved on to more complex and technological things. Now the other countries have had a chance to pick up some engineering textbooks and say "Hey, we can do that too!" So now it's time to find something even more specialized and technologically advanced. I think that the future of engineering in the U.S. is the consulting specialist. Boilerplate work is already being taken over by other developing countries; here we have to target the jobs that are one-of-a-kind, bordering on actual research instead of just application. I may be wrong, but that's one possibility.

    Anyway, get some job, or get some more school. All of this engineering talent floating around in the U.S. is a huge untapped resource, and I happen to know that the U.S. doesn't let untapped resources just sit there forever.

    • Re:Wait a bit (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Having worked in the US and elsewhere, I can say that you have a strange idea of work and living conditions outside of the US.

      * US office workers recieve less days off than workers in any other country. 14 hour days in cramped conditions are the conditions *here*, not elsewhere!
      * In 3rd world countries, basic office space usage is the same or better than the US.
      * Housing differs throughout the world, but my experience is that US housing is small, cramped and overpriced.
      * You may earn less elsewhere, but
      • I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but "economic gains without meaningful job recovery", is probably just a sign of short term efficiency.

        We're been harping for decades about how computers and technology will save money. Now they are doing just that. New fields open up, old ones get destroyed. Right now I'd bet the new fields just reqire less head count than the old ones.

        The good thing is that labor will become cheaper, and already has to a good extent. This will create new opportunities for i

    • Re:Wait a bit (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      I have no degree, and yet I have a programming/admin job, imagine that!

      And I don't even live in a tech centric area.

      Here's the secret, work for a company that actually produces something. Something other than just software, or intellectual property.

      Consulting/support companies that do custom things for each customer are OK, but you are still liable to be replaced by a very small shell script someday.

      It's funny that Slashdot is basically a site about how intellectual property is being reformed in huge w

  • Hired as a local vs. hired as an expat (Score:3, Informative)

    by DaRat ( 678130 ) * on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:57PM (#7837336)

    The reason the jobs are being exported is that the cost of labor is cheaper there. If you want to get hired as a local working those lower wages, you might have some advantage since you can set yourself up as the interface with those in the US. But, you will be making local salaries.

    On the other hand, if you want to get hired as an expat (making US salaries), you're probably out of luck. The expats, especially the expat geek, who make a ton of money in a foreign land and get quite a few fringe benefits are rapidly disappearing. Best bet to be an expat is to get hired in the US and then get transferred to a different office. Even Saudi Aramco, who once really recruited in the US for expat postings in Saudi Arabia, is shrinking its US expat force.

  • Networking is more important than education (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cybermancer ( 99420 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:57PM (#7837339) Homepage
    I have a High School degree with only a couple additional formal education classes. I am currently a Senior Software Engineer with a software consulting company that has me in a long term placement at a large multi-national technology firm.

    Most every job I have I got through networking. I am president of a local software development group (PC users group for developers) that I attended for years previously. I always try to work with other people to help them so they know I am a resource. I look for opportunities to present at conferences or other groups. I look for writing opportunities and other avenues to promote my skills and abilities.

    Sometimes I have worked for far less then I should have for what I was doing, but the result is I have acquired enough experience that my lack of degree is less important. Be willing to start at the bottom and work your way up. The opportunities are there, if you are willing to look.

    As an example, I was laid off about a year ago. I had a new job in 2 days, and 3 or 4 other offers within a week. All the offers were from networking. Most the jobs I get interviews through Monster or other listings they say I am over qualified for. Imagine that.

    I would eventually like to go to school and get a C.S. degree. But I imagine that I will get my employeer to pay for most of it while they are paying me to work and apply what I learn. Education is a good thing, but it is not what will get you a job.
  • Go to German Consulate Info website [germany.info] and look around there for some info on how to get a 5 year work visa for IT and highly technical jobs paying 50K euros a year. They recently opened it up for all non-Germans in an effort to re-tool their IT industry.

    • Re:Germany (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Wudbaer ( 48473 )
      No good. Germany is in an even worse situation in regards to IT employment than the US. While in the US the economy finally seems to take off we over here are far from a turnaround and Germany's economy still is in crisis mode, both spending- and employment-wise
      • In spite of unemployment the German industry can't find enough skilled people (sorry to be blunt, bute there are really dumb people out there in Germany doing IT work) and the Goverment was forced to allow IT workers (mainly from India) to work temporarily as explained above.

        The German economy may be in not too good shape, but lack of skilled workers in certain areas may be a contributing factor, not a consequence, ot the economic situation.
        • Well, IMO Germany just rode the bubble as anybody else, which caused lots of really dumb idiots to get IT jobs. Additionally the German unemployment system shunted lots of people who never worked on computers and never had the intention to into IT via state-funded retraining (and AFAIK still is *argh*). Like in the US, a lot of these people where let go when the bubble burst (a lot still stick around, as it is much harder in Germany to lay of people than in the US).

          Also we started a so-called Green-card

  • I suggest seeking a position with an international company. When I worked for ICL we had Americans living and working in places like Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Zimbabwe. ICL also had many employees in Commonwealth countries. Most people don't want to work overseas so you have a competitive advantage there.

    You should know however that such working conditions can lead to "war stories". One of the people I worked with (briefly) was among the last half dozen Europeans to escape from Iran when the Ayato

    • Usually it just means having some staff around to ensure you are correctly briefed before you go somewhere. Things can happen in such countries that do not happen at home (you definitely aren't in Kansas anymore), but in reality it can also be more interesting.
  • A few other people commented that networking is what the difference is. I can't reinforce that more. I lived in Europe for a couple years, working for a medium sized software firm. The reason I had that job (and the two other offers at the time) was because I networked. A history prof from my university happened to have a friend of his wife's who was the HR director of the software firm.

    When it came time to leave that firm, I was unable to find anything in that country. The reason was that I didn't network

  • Look harder, get a hobby, improve your resume. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @03:21PM (#7837597) Homepage Journal
    I'm in Spokane, a city suffering from chronic economic problems, and I didn't have any trouble getting a job. I sent out a grand total of a half-dozen resumes, got two job interviews, and one job offer (I accepted). A few major factors that helped me get a job were that my degree was a BS in Math and Computer Science, rather than straight CS, that I'd held jobs (computer programming and otherwise) before, and that I'd been involved in several major freeware projects as a hobby.
    • I thought Spokane was doing pretty well for itself. Portland or San Jose are suffering from economic problems, Washington is still diverse enough that it holds up pretty well in recessions. Not a ton of jobs there yet, but that's a growth issue more than an economic one. Aren't they still building like crazy out on sprague and up division?
  • You are either really dumb or really naive.

    Go ahead, move to India. An unskilled programmer makes about $3,000/yr and often has to work overnight to communicate with people in the US.

    There are plenty of good reasons why millions of people migrate to Western nations other than jobs other than work! You don't fathom the difference between your standard of living and that of a third-world citizen.

  • if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (Score:3, Informative)

    by avi33 ( 116048 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @04:07PM (#7838151) Homepage
    I've thought about what I'd consider doing if my job were outsourced...something along the lines of this.

    If I were in your situation, I would get some tech experience (of any kind, even the low paying sort), find a partner or three (ah, there's the rub), and form an outsourcing company yourself. That is, land and manage gigs, and get some outsourced help to do some bulletproof coding for you. You will succeed if you stick to the 'commoditized' projects. You'll need lots of design skill, lot of management expertise, QA experience, and a committment to nothing less than excellence. You need to have a reputation for never fucking up, and admitting it if you do. Then , and only then, can you think about landing serious gigs.

    Sure, you need more experience, but you could hone some of those skills working on open source projects in the meantime.

    I'm sure I'll be flamed for generalizing and simplifying (of course I have a bit), and hear anecdotes of 'my company spent $xMM outsourcing a component to india and it sucked' but frankly, this is what people have been doing for years, just (mostly) inside U.S. borders. I personally have taken a couple of $80k jobs away from big firms by doing just that. I recently managed a job with a developer in New Zealand, and the 'client' in Chicago, London, and Moscow. (I didn't just land it out of the blue though, and that's another post entirely.)

    Of course, I'm not talking about stealing the Ebay rebuild project from IBM, but something smaller, more manageable, with a good chance of success. To put it another way, think the Doctor/Pharmacist role. If you have a serious malady, you probably don't want to use a Doctor on the other side of the world, but once you get your prescription (in this case, a bulletproof technical spec), you don't really care where it gets filled, do you?

    With that said, the protectionists may now commence flaming...

  • Why does everyone assume he's talking about India? He doesn't even mention India.

    That said, there's a bunch of the usual advice posted that I don't want to repeat, except maybe I'd say pay attention to the "networking" mantra when looking for jobs, and I find it harder to find a job when you have education but no experience. And make sure you're doing stuff: get out of the house, join the local LUG, and keep a log of every job that you apply for, whether doing here or abroad.

    Oh yeah, if you do show up

  • Go get some experience! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by d2tu ( 589189 )
    A BA in Computer Science is not going to get you a job. I don't know where you got that idea. I recently graduated so I know several people who have a BA, BS or even an MS in computer science and they are terrible programmers. All the degree means is that you took a bunch of courses so you might know something about the Science of CS. It says nothing about your ability to produce quality code though. What got me a job offers are my previous 3 years of web development experience and also some networking - th
  • Are there any hotspots for American expatriate programmers?"

    The unemployment office seems to be a hotspot right now.

  • 1) Learn dialects of Chinese or Indian.

    2) Emmigrate to China or India as a native/English speaking software development go-between.

    3) Profit in very small amounts!

    • 1) Learn dialects of Chinese or Indian.

      2) Emmigrate to China or India as a native/English speaking software development go-between.

      3) Steal underpants

      4) ?

      3) Profit in very small amounts!

      (Ref: South Park)

  • economics 101 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sboyle ( 139324 )
    Why does everyone immediately start up the old "those evil foreigners are 'stealing' our jobs and the even eviler bosses are letting them!" argument? For years the USA has been getting a free ride on exchange rates since everyone has to have dollars to buy oil. An overly strong dollar makes all imports (including foreign programmers) incredibly cheap, but makes exports expensive and hard to sell.

    The dollar has plummeted on currency markets, so steel workers and programmers should start being thankful that

  • Interesting replies (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sennomo ( 537173 )
    I find many of the replies I've received interesting.

    I purposely limited/changed some of my information to try to get more general answers from people than if I had been specific and entirely accurate. For example, I already know what country I'm going to next, but I wanted to see where people thought I ought to go.

    I was surprised to see how many guys mentioned working in India. AFAIK foreigners are not allowed to be hired there.

    It cracked me up how much people harped on how "crappy" the standard of li

    • It cracked me up how much people harped on how "crappy" the standard of living is in other countries. The fact is the worst home I ever has was in Pennsylvania, complete with cockroaches, mold, and even sulphur and fecal matter in the water. One guy said that I was "naive"...well, the fact I didn't mention that I have lived in other countries before doesn't mean I didn't.

      I am glad you were entertained. That is the sort of conditions expected in India or Mexico; That is hardly common in Pennsylvania;

      • I don't think I wasted their time. If they didn't want to respond, they didn't have to. Aside from the fact that I may use their input in my plans, I am not the only one who can benefit from this discussion. I am apparently not the only guy with expatriation on his mind.

        If you think you wasted your time, that's your problem. However, you are probably a troll, who would post something nasty no matter what I said.

        Furthermore, you demonstrate why I tried to stay vague and general. People like you

        • Re:to a less-than-interesting reply (Score:5, Funny)

          by Mad Marlin ( 96929 ) <cgore@cgore.com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @01:45AM (#7843045) Homepage

          I don't think I wasted their time. If they didn't want to respond, they didn't have to.
          ...
          If you think you wasted your time, that's your problem.

          No, I think you wasted my time, and yes, that is my problem. But hey, what is Slashdot for, if not wasting time?

          However, you are probably a troll, who would post something nasty no matter what I said.

          Yeah sure, that's right, I'm a troll.

          People like you all over Slashdot are happy to attack details (relevant or otherwise) and ignorantly go off on tangents about which you know little or nothing, while blatantly ignoring or baselessly refuting key issues.

          I think you are the one blatantly ignoring key issues. Let's have a little more information, in order to get at why you have had such issues with success.

          18 November 2001: [slashdot.org] I sometimes dream of mixing languages to get the best from each. However, wherever I work, the boss tends to pick out everything for me, which usually means VB on a completely Microsoft platform.

          So you were a VB "programmer".

          20 November 2001: [slashdot.org] I used to work for a company whose star product was an AI-drive porn-filtering web proxy. Our biggest prospective clients were the governments of China and Saudi Arabia. They didn't want just a porn filter, though; they wanted to block plenty of religious and political sites, too. Fortunately, the filtering software never even worked in the first place.

          So, you had no issues working for people who were doing something that you apparently find immoral, and also have no issues with your employer failing.

          22 November 2001: [slashdot.org] I used to be employable without a college degree. Since last fall nobody will even interview me. Now I'm wasting two years and thousands of dollars in a small university where I'm learning next to nothing, just so I can get a damn B.S. so someone might hire me.

          So, as a high-and-mighty VB programmer with roughly 3 years experience at this point, went to college for a computer science degree, thinking you were wasting your time and not learning anything, and were only there to try to get hired.

          28 December 2001 [slashdot.org] Before last year, I could find work without a degree. However, I found that since October 2000, nobody even wants to interview me. So, I'm back in college for a BS of CS. The fastest I could possibly complete it would be in 2 years, but since I'm trying to work at the same time, it will take me 3. C'est la vie.

          So you rushed through your degree as fast as possible.

          11 February 2002: [slashdot.org] Before the bubble burst, I had a measly B.A. in Spanish, but I still got hired at startups for various jobs, mostly web-oriented stuff like search engines. I made as much as $650/wk for a short while, which ain't too shabby for where I live.

          So, I've decided to use up my remaining financial aid (even though it will add to my debt) to return to college for a B.S. in Computer Science. I'm hardly learning anything, since I already learned plenty on the job. (Unfortunately, my university does not count life experience for college credit.) Some professors have even told me that I am capable of teaching their classes, but that won't get me out of the credit requirements.

          So you think you already learned plenty as a VB programmer. I am sure the average VB programmer is qualified to teach computer science classes, yeah right. I suspect that the only thing you are qualified to teach is Freshman Spanish (which would pay $30,000 in the right area, by the way).

    • I mean, someone with a BA or BS in Computer Science is just another person looking for a job...

      Now, if you push some of your other traits, you might have some better luck.

      First, you're willing to relocate, and that's a big thing... it means that you'll go to where they pay's good. But then you also have that liberal arts degree... you might want to look at a company that's trying to sell products to spanish speaking persons -- I would assume that having programmers who are mutlilingual would be an advant
    • You have a US training and Spanish, why not just head south. Working in foreign countries may not pay that well, but I assure you that you can live on a lot less. The only issue is that the savings you make aren't worth much.

      However, the experience that you get is invaluable and will look good later on the resume. The maintrick for resume engineering is to work for a recognisable organisation.

  • The reason IT jobs are going overseas is that you can get cheep labor. Stay in the US get a low paying job in order to get some experance, then if you're good or easy to work with you'll be able to move on to somthing better.

    If you're having trouble getting invterviews hire someone to rewrite your resume. If you're having trouble landing a job go on interviews for jobs you don't want until you feel comfortable. Temp agancies are good for practice interviews since they're always looking for people and ar
  • I've seen lots of negative comments, but I would think you have a very good chance in Shanghai, China. I've worked there as part of my graduation and although I've gone home again afterwards, I always check the internal jobsite of the (huge American) company I work for, and they have lots of offerings in China.

    What can you expect: a booming city with a pretty large gap between poverty and richness. It's bustling with activity, full of ambitious people. If you work against local standards, it's not bad for

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