<p>I heard job prospects for engineering would be good, but not for Americans. They would most likely go to people outside of the US (China, Japan, India, etc.) because they would be willing work for less. How true is this? I know some engineering jobs get outsourced, but I thought it was a small fraction of jobs. Are more engineering jobs being outsourced?</p>
<p>It’s nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>It’s nothing to worry about if you live in one of the recipient countries. Also, nothing to worry about if you are an H-1B visa immigrant who lands an engineering job in the US. Hey, welcome to 2010; the world is globalized.</p>
<p>Most of the jobs that are outsourced are ones that do not require any specialized skills nor much training (e.g. tech support, manufacturing). The quality of Indian engineers, for example, is substantially worse than that of American ones on average. You don’t outsource the design of your next CPU to the lowest bidder in India.</p>
<p>Only the most qualified immigrants are going to have an edge over American citizens. Most companies just won’t bother with foreigners unless they really have something special to bring to the table, and even then they still might not hire foreigners. This was very apparent at job fairs. I would say at least 80% of the companies were only giving out internships to American citizens.</p>
<p>There are also tons of engineering jobs that require the engineer to be on-site. Those won’t be outsourced. Maybe robots could take over some of the jobs in the distant future, but we’ll all be dead by the time that happens.</p>
<p>Outsourcing is real, but it’s overplayed. It’s a common excuse amongst people who can’t find jobs for extended periods of time. The reality is, most of them just aren’t trying hard enough and would rather complain about it than do something about it. Sure, you might have to go back to school, take a pay cut, or something else that is far from ideal or wanted, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Subsequently, the media will play up the outsourcing story as foreigners stealing American jobs. They will leave the impression that there is a mass exodus of jobs from this country and in the future everyone will be unemployed. It’s far from the truth, but it does make a good story.</p>
<p>You could always try working for defense companies that support federal agencies. I highly doubt the CIA, FBI or the No Such Agency will outsource to India.</p>
<p>Is that agency that secretive or is that an industry joke?</p>
<p>Both.</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>Indian and Pakistani engineers are not low quality. They are just as good as American engineers. South Asians work much harder in college than Americans have to in order to get there degree. My uncle got his B.S from Punjab university and his masters from Oklahoma and told me about how much easier education in the US is.</p>
<p>[Testing</a> India’s graduates: The engineering gap | The Economist - Smart-sourcing strategies: Technology, Business, Finance](<a href=“http://blogs.mantrasys.com/blog/2010/02/testing-indias-graduates-the-engineering-gap-the-economist.html]Testing”>http://blogs.mantrasys.com/blog/2010/02/testing-indias-graduates-the-engineering-gap-the-economist.html)</p>
<p>Ok. So those statistics focus on software but there are many other types of engineering disciplines. My argument is that the education system in south Asia is much more difficult than the education system in America.</p>
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<p>Comparing any school to Oklahoma as a way of comparing engineering programs is pretty laughable. I don’t know anything about Punjab University, but OU is not exactly an engineering powerhouse.</p>
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<p>Be that as it may, it says nothing about the quality of education. A good education is not necessarily difficult (though I suppose it often is). The difficulty of the program can say just as much if not more about the teaching philosophy in the country. For example, I know many of my Indian colleagues have said that they have to literally memorize everything over there and it is really nice coming here and seeing things like open book tests. However, that has nothing to do with the quality of the education, and if the programs were so much better over there, then their top students wouldn’t be coming here for school.</p>
<p>With that said, I do agree that the idea that the Indian/Pakistani trained engineers are so vastly inferior to American trained engineers is pretty laughable. While those trained here may still hold an edge, I would bet that it isn’t as much of an edge as we would like to think based on everything I have experienced.</p>
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<p>Like Boneh3ad said…both. At times I question the “secrecy overkill” but that is the way they are.</p>
<p>That’s the way who is?</p>
<p>"Only the most qualified immigrants are going to have an edge over American citizens. "</p>
<p>If engineers from India are inferior to those educated in the US as a whole is true, its irrelevant because there are tons of Indian engineers. We have lots from India and Pakistan and I work for a very high tech company.</p>
<p>^ The No Such Agency</p>
<p>We have roughly equal numbers of electrical, mechanical, software, systems, physicists, mathematicians and optical engineers. Those in software are overwhelmingly Indian.</p>