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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (67504)	4/10/2005 6:47:47 PM
From: pfalk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Amy J said: " how many engineering parents do you know that want their kids to go into engineering now?" None, I've got kids (2) myself, and one of them has the aptitude for engineering, but I DON'T want him to go that route. Today engineering is becoming a low wage job. Here's an interesting tidbit: 10 years ago I was working as a contract engineer, making $50 to $65 / hour while going thru agencies (more if direct). Then I started working for Cisco, full time, and "retired" last year. I was planning to make supplemental income by going back to contracting. Now I'm offered jobs paying $35 to $45 per hour, with much higher difficulty level (technology has advanced during the last 10 years). I think it's fair to say that due to inflation, $55 dollar 10 years ago would equate to $90 - $110 today. Thus the "pay" for a contractor, today, is about one third of what it was 10 years ago. BTW most "agencies" today are run by Indians, and therein lies the answer: Contract engineering is by far the easiest to outsource: If you can turn it into a well defined "contract" then you can probably ship it overseas, or at least use Indian salary ranges when you negotiate the price. In the long run I'm still optimistic about the US, all us unemployed engineers WILL start new companies, and successfully compete with foreign companies, probably in new areas like biotechnology. Nano tech, by the way, is either only a buzz word, or the natural continuation of the (semiconductor) micro technology, so it's actually sewn up by the existing semi conductor companies (the only exception to this that I know of, is Affymetrix that combines bio tech with micro chip technology. Do you know of any non semi- nano tech corps? I'm sure Banc of America took their number from us (actually it would not surprise me at all, "our" number is quite reasonable.