On Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 10:49:08 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thu, 18 Apr 2019 02:39:00 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

Tim wrote:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/educati...cGUEuPignWMCjY

That's what PBS is saying. Around here, I know of high school grads who
are making 50,000+ a year in the oil patch. Only requirement is be
willing to work and pass a drug test.


One of the expletive in my group who went to Slidell, LA after Katrina had
been a shop teacher. Head of the state industrial arts teachers group.
When the state universities and community colleges came to him saying they
want all high school to be college Prep programs, and if they needed other
training to go to the state or community college system. He told them they
were idiots. Couple years later they came back and admitted they were
idiots. Almost all the schools, at least in the Bay Area have got rid of
shop classes, and sold off the equipment. I think Livermore high is the
only school I know of locally that still teaches shop. And with the cost
of buying equipment and the lack of people who could teach the classes who
have the degrees required, I see a hard time bringing sense back to the
primary/secondary education systems.

They are starting to find those "sit and think" jobs are the easiest
to export. An engineer or software geek in a cube in Mumbai is as good
as one here for 20% as much money. His work just gets delayed 250-750
MS depending on how many satellites it bounces off of.

There is a lot of truth in that. One thing that is not discussed a lot is how hard it is to manage that remote engineering effort. There is a very real language and cultural divide, and the time difference is 750 mSec plus 12 hours.

Our company dipped our toe into the offshoring thing, and it wasn't successful. Partly because we didn't manage it well, but also because our product isn't some standard consumer deliverable. The engineers have to have some product knowledge to be able to function, and that takes a while. Hell, our field installation peeps take 6-8 months of OJT and classroom training before we can send them out on an install alone.