Is Your Job Vulnerable to Outsourcing?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

Poll question: Is Your Job Vulnerable to Outsourcing?

First it was "unskilled" manufacturing jobs. Then it was "service" call center/tech support jobs. Americans were assured that if they were educated in the wonderful world of technology and computers/programming that they would have excellent careers.

Someone forgot to tell Americans that one huge side effect of the computer/internet revolution is that not only can the chips and PCs be made overseas, but that learning computer programming does not require massive expensive mainframe computers anymore but can be easily done on PCs so that bright, motivated, educated young people in Eastern Europe, China, India, etc. are able to do much of the "skilled/educated" tech jobs at a fraction of a U.S. salary for such a job.

I work in a field, medicine, that has one of the highest barriers of entry for foreigners to obtain the necessary credentials to be my competition. I'm paid well for the work I do. For the time being, I'm relatively safe from overseas competition.

However, I'm very familiar with the training and ability of physicians in my specialty from other countries. There are many countries, particularly the U.K., Australia, and many European countries where the training and certification requirements for my specialty are at least as rigorous, and more so in some cases, as in the U.S., and the level of practice in these countries is equivalent to here. I'm under no illusions that with sufficient economic pressure that insurers, corporate payers, etc. would not consider bringing in such foreign competition to decrease their cost outlay for medical care.

There's already a group of radiologists (not my specialty) who live abroad in places like Australia and Switzerland, who provide night coverage radiology study reading services, via the internet I believe, from those sites. Currently I believe those radiologists are U.S. docs with U.S. licenses who happen to live abroad and take advantage of the time zone differences to seize what would otherwise be undesireable night work that their domestically domiciled counterparts would probably demand increased pay to do. However one could easily imagine that it wouldn't take much to transfer these services to cheaper foreign radiologists, well trained, or not...

http://www.nighthawkrad.net/

So while I would consider myself in a situation relatively safe from foreign competition, I look at it as a "for now" scenario.

What about the work you do?