Discussion on:

Should I go into software development?

IT technologies come and go, but domain knowledge remains. It's what you know besides programming that counts, not programming itself.

is more prevalent than just IT. ALL the clothes I am wearing right now came from somewhere else. My "american" car was built right up to the "final assembly" stage in Asia. Most of the mechanics around here "No habla Ingles." The US is now a net importer of food.

Someone mentioned "World Competition". We have always competed with the world. But we have been isolated also. The realization is just now coming to us. We can no longer think, "We're the US and we're number 1." We need to reevaluate ourselves and the world we live in.

As to the article's question, "Should you go into software development?" I think Tony Hopkinson said it best. "If you don't find writing software interesting in and of itself, then not just no hell no." But I think that's true of whatever you want to do.

There is a huge difference though, between the clothing and auto industries and the IT industry. The clothing/ auto industry may purchase a bulk of their product from foriegn countries, ... but they "employ" US workers to sell, market and manage the industry! That's where the differnce is, ... in the IT sector companies are replacing US workers, with foriegn workers, as seen in the thousands and thousands that are inscourced (H1Bs, other 1Bs) and outsourced (a.k.a. off-shored). Said another way, in IT, the product is labor (like clothing is to the clothing industry), so the impact of outsourcing an 100 jobs to India, has a far bigger impact than purchasing shirts from India and selling/marketing them in the US. In the 1st scenario, the 100 jobs were outsourced, there's nothing left to sell/or market, the jobs are simply gone. This is especially bad news for US owned, IT consulting/software companies that labor centric... In the 2nd scenario, the shirts are purchased in a foreign country, however US citizens are generally hired to sell and market the shirts and jobs are being created.

While it's not exactly an apple to apple comparison, ... overall outsourcing too much of anything always has an impact. Back in the day, the US used to care about producing the best products, keeping jobs in house and managing a reasonable balance of imports vs. exports...

Sadly we are inept in this area today and we don't have this balance. IMO that's why unemployment is as high as it is today. My hope is that the populous recognizes these issues and start to "politisize" this issue (as with healthcare), ...it's the only way to force politicians to implement socially repsonsible policies. =)

Enough said, thanks for the post.

Best.