Overhead rates are at 2x at least. That makes a higher paid engineer you speak about, costing at least $300k.You can hire (no overhead) an Indian engineer for less than $30k. But he is not the equivalent engineer. $120k engineers are highly technical and have tons of experience.
Now, before you start talking "engineering" you must realize that Indian engineers are replacing US engineers involved in the "implementation" engineering tasks. Software is the easy example. You cannot outsource system design or R&D.
This is where the media does not get it. Implementation engineering is like manufacturing. The cutting edge is dull. All the new innovations are expensive and cannot be burdened by the average company. Further, the new innovations are few and far between, hence, India and China can easily compete.
The US is still very strong in the System Design and R&D areas of engineering. We retain a lot of head knowledge, and more importantly, experience.
One last point, IMVHO, we are in an age where engineering is dull. The last several decades of amazing engineering innovations (ICs, wireless, DSP, CPU ....etc) have levelled off. We are ahead of ourselves. We have not integrated these technologies into our products and lives to saturation yet. Look at CPUs, way more power than the average person needs. Look at wireless, how many wireless technologies do we need (CDMA, WCDMA, 802.11a/b/e, ZigBee, Bluetooth, WiMAX, UWB)? I mean really, internet access on my phone, nobody knows What to do with that except the most tech-saavy engineer.
Alas, I ramble. |
