Education is not sufficient

We tend to think that better education gets better jobs. While this may be true for comparing individuals, it turns out that better education does not mean a higher standard of living for the society as a whole, as far as the Western society is concerned. Everybody has heard of BPO (business process outsourcing). Only a few years back on my way from India did I hear of LPO (legal process outsourcing). Again because of similar accounting practices in India and Australia, many accounting tasks were outsourced to India. While all this is bodes well for India, the situation cannot continue indefinitely. Pretty soon professionals like lawyers, accountants, programmers and engineers will have to start collective bargaining. That is the conclusion I drew from Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times (March 3, 2011).

Outsourcing is just one side of the story. Computers at one time were thought to replace manual jobs. Now computers are becoming more sophisticated that many of the routine jobs that skilled people do can now be done by computers. An average manager spent more time looking for a document than actually reading it... until recently. With the smart document searching tools, that time searching is reduced. Managers become more productive and hence fewer managers are required. In my own work I spend less time thinking original ideas and more time looking evaluating existing solutions... not the case about ten years back and my productivity is much higher. This is partly because of the huge amount of information that people have put up for free. The solution for the individual is to be creative and to constantly work on improving his/her productivity.

The way I see it the rat race will become even cut throat. Gone are the days when you could do your job and you can skirt office politics. Now you'd have to be naive to think like that.

Working in USA

I always thought America was the most rabid capitalistic country in the world. Barack Obama's “Audacity of Hope” reinforces that impression. What surprised me when I worked there was that it was far more egalitarian than Australia. Let me elaborate. In America when you join a company there is no such thing as probation period. You can be dismissed at any time without any prior notice. By the same token, you can leave the company at any time with little notice. In practice though an employee gives a notice before leaving and most companies when they retrench people for no fault of theirs, normally pay a salary of a month or two and continue with health care insurance for even longer, six months is not rare. But in Australia I was given a job offer which stated that the probation period was three months and during that period the employer can terminate me with two weeks notices but I had to give four weeks notice to quit. Hardly a worker's paradise...

It must be said that America being such a large country employers don't fire that easily... although I am told that in the Mid-West companies like Walmart are run like serfdoms. That is why Walmart's TV advertisement don't talk about price or product but portray happy satisfied Walmart associates, a euphemism for employees who are hired and fired depending on the mood of the manager. In general, if it is difficult to join a company it is less likely that you will be fired frivolously.

Nevertheless, the way people are usually treated in good American corporations is remarkable. It is as close to socialism as you can possibly get. “Hierarchy is a necessary evil” of business organization, as Mark Templeton the CEO of Citrix emphasizes repeatedly. Most employers treat their employees well, simply because the opportunities within the country are so huge that a good employee can find work elsewhere. Notice that while unemployment is close to 10% in the US, the unemployment rate for graduates is less than 5%.