Career advise PhD or MBA 9

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Mike McWilliams

For all I've seen, all my life, and noticing the vast revolution taking place in jobs, careers, offshoring, consolidation, layoffs, mergers, aquisitions, and...the zero change in age discriminatio, my advice would be for anyone who wants to survive, have a job most of their life, have money for retirement then head for niche small businesses. Where you can be the boss-owner-manager with a small number of employees. Integrate with the local community and network with other small businesses. Over the next 1-2 decades, more office jobs are going to India, China, and now they are talking about breaking down the borders from Canada down to Latin and South America. That means exporting even more jobs to THEM, and more immigrants coming here to compete with locals by offering to work for cheap in jobs that just need physical labor. Around me a guy just told me he heard about illegal Mexicans being paid $3.50 an hour for tough-difficult work with concrete and stones. Around me, at the beach resort restaurants, about half to three quarters of the waitstaff are from Eastern Europe and Russia (I've asked every one of them after they talk and reveal an accent, "Say, where are you from?"). They don't make much money. They are on employer-sponsored visas so they can't quit until their "term" is up. They get charged outrageous rents. And, take very little money back home but have to have two jobs (70-80 hour weeks) to have anything left.

One other thing: Start learning Spanish. Now. I talked with one young, polite Russian lady who got a job in a Mexican restaurant because she spoke Spanish. Virtually all of the other waitstaff there spoke broken English with a Spanish accent and looked Mexican (I like some Mexican food). California will become Mexifornia, soon. And, America will soon be Meximerica. I'm already seeing lots of signs, advertisements, and voice menues of large corporations in both English (larger letters) and Spanish (smaller letters). When you guys get older, the size of the letters will probably be reversed.