fyi

I came across this in my reading of "the world is flat" (an overall great book recommended to me by PK) and something that I think all young people should know. I might be running into some copyright problems but here goes anyways.

How to ensure your future job doesn't get outsourced

There are four ways to accomplish this.

Firstly, be special (and I'm not talking about the special you hear about in elementary school). I'm talking about ur favorite tv star, sports star or artist. They have a special talent and no one can touch them. As this is sort of a rare thing, I'll move on.

Be geographically anchored. Have a job that requires you to be physically there. This could be a barber (I don't think a remote haircutting device will ever take off), a family doctor or any number of service jobs that require face to face contact. This is a shady category as it's true that these jobs will not get directly outsourced but productivity will be continually increased through it. So a family doctor will have people checking out x-rays, blood tests etc.. from halfway around the world, but in the end that face to face contact is necessary. Overall, still not extremely applicable to me.

Be specialized. How can they ever replace a chemical nanotube nanospecialist?.. as there are likely very few in the entire world. This just tells me to go to graduate school. There are millions of computer engineers graduating every year from india and china. It's not good enough to spend those four years and be done with it.

Lastly, be adaptable. This is where engineering science comes through. How many times have we been thrown a bunch of new stuff and forced to learn, make sense of it and apply on a super tough test or exam? As markets will shift quicker, todays technology will be tomorrows paper weight, being able to learn quickly and change roles will be a great asset for tomorrow's cutting edge company.

So overall, don't fret my eng sci friends, we're well positioned. Our acquired ability to learn quickly is an extremely useful asset today and will continue to grow in usefulness in the future. You've likely heard the line "Learning to learn" and never gave it a second thought. But I must say that this is ringing true nowadays especially after experiencing first hand how little school directly prepares for the work world. You learn on the job all the way.

I'll likely post a few more times as I continue through the book but that's all for now.