The Trouble with Onshoring

This is not good news for US workers. Then again, most of the smart Americans who would have been doing software have likely moved to hedge funds betting on software companies in India. It's not uncommon now for mathematics majors to go to finance.

Mr. Hamm,
The problem is not with the skills of engineers domiciled in the U.S. If you look under the surface, the AT&T folks don't want to touch older Americans. There are plenty of unemployed and under-employed older (age > 45) engineers around. This issue has to do with age discrimination. {As an aside, you will hardly find any engineers at Google here in the Silicon Valley who are in their forties and fifties.}

Making education more affordable is the key. Germany has free education why can't US!

Once in college, students are always lured into 'cool' things and engineering and math don't fall in these cool categories.

Over half the students in Engineering, Science or even business are foreign students. Why are the students shying away from hard work?

One interesting answer I got was 'I pay the money for tuition and why should I make it hard on myself. Why not take a easy major and graduate.'

The United States of America is undoubtedly on its way down. It is not because of Iraq or Bush, although they do contribute to it. It is how this country decided to treat her scientists and engineers.

A lawyer or saleman can get paid $500k+ a year and corporations are not complaining they are too expensive. An engineer, no matter how talented and valuable, his job would be targeted for outsourcing if he makes more than $100k a yr.

This is perfectly okay if the US does not owes her "superpower"/"richest nation" status to her world's most advanced technologies and her engineers and scientists who created them.

please give my 26 year old son,who is fast at the computer a job in michigan.we are tired of him working low pay jobs and having to live at home with us.

Mr Stephenson's (and by extension, Mr. Hamm's) claim, "We just don’t have people here with the right skills," is as intellectually dishonest as that about illegal aliens' doing the jobs "Americans won't do". The problem for such executives is that they cannot find Americans who will do such jobs (or with the right skills) for the dirt cheap wages they want to pay.

Although the subjugation element isn't present, the motivation behind offshoring today is akin to that of antebellum plantation owners in the South: Profits are king, and to hell with those who interfere in any way!

Capitalism is a wonderful concept, and it has served this country well, but only when tempered by charity and humanity. Unfettered, however, it can rival tyranny, and that's where we're headed should we follow our present course.