PhilFAQS

I just came across this excellent tool for finding IT-related jobs in the US the other day.  While the news media and everybody and his dog are blatting on and on about unemployment and jobs losses, here’s one fellow who just decided to go out there and find out how bad things really are.

Turns out that there is still some light around the edges of the eclipse, I think.

Now I see many of my readers puzzling over two things about this post already, so let me take a stab at addressing them:

First, I hear people asking, whatever has this got to do with living in the Philippines?  Fair enough question.  I’ll answer it in a couple paragraphs if you can hold on to the bar at the back of the Jeepney for just a few more minutes

Second I hear people saying, “But Dave. I don’t know anything about IT or computers or the web so how is this going to help me?”

Let me propose this idea to you, straight from the shoulder.  We are in a mess.  It has so far affected the Philippines less than the US, but as I wrote a few days ago, Jobs For Americans Overseas in the Philippines | PhilFAQS I see plenty signs of it getting worse here rather than better, for a while anyway.

It may be that you are 30 or 40 or 50 years old and the job you have done for all these many years has gone away, or is teetering on the brink.  What to do, what to do?  Will President Obama and the glowing management of government give away to major Wall Street losers help you any time soon?  Frankly I doubt it.  Now that they are going to dump additional billions and billions down the same wall street rat hole, to follow the billions that produced mostly negative results, the possibility of success should be pretty apparent.  About the same chance as a snowball in Hell, in my view.

And don’t give me any politically oriented comments, please.  I only mentioned the president because he is the current captain of the ship.  The last guy’s cronies got us in this mess and if Obama’s opponent had won he would be just as lost as the current administration.  You can’t get the country whole again with give always to greedy crooks and incompetents who bought more bad investments with their last round of money they were trusted with.  Notice how the Madoff investigation is finding there are even more firms, just like his scam, waiting to crash and burn?

You, as a family man/woman and an actual American worker are screwed.  No government program currently being proposed is going to help individual families in any measurable ways.  You can’t dump money into a crooked bank and expect sustainable jobs for its employees … the foundations have sunk into the quicksand already.

Quite possibly, after the next trillion or so dollars is thrown down the sewer after the first trillion, we will reach the point where the government has no choice but to start up programs like the WPA and the CCC.  (Google them if you don’t know them).  They won’t come soon and they won’t be that good if they happen.

So now that I have ranted for a couple hundred words, what are you going to do, now, that your outdated job skills aren’t serving you well?

First, why have a job?  In today’s world I think the majority of jobs are outdated.  Most jobs cheat you as well (it’s a pretty well-know fact in senior business circles that the going rate of pay is about one third of what any employee actually earns for the company), so why work for one-third your true value?  My first line of defense would be to make myself independent and portable … Intro to a Portable Lifestyle | PhilFAQS … never again be in a position to worry over what my employer is going to do “to” me or what a government who seems to have no clue is planning to do “for me.

Second, If you really think you can’t set yourself up to be independent of employers, then pull up your socks!  There is nothing sadder and more lame than a grown man saying “I am in the position I am in because I don’t know how to do anything else”.  You learning should not have stopped with your last year of formal school.  You can learn new skills, right now, today, if you want to.  Notice how many people are up in arms about jobs being exported to countries other than the US?  Do you think the only reason for this job exodus is strictly to save money?  I think not.  Foreign students from undergrad to PhD level in science and engineering course outnumber US students by about 5 to 1, per capita.

Jobs flow to countries with technical skills, Period.  Economics is a factor, but do you think a company like Intel would invest in huge new facilities in Asia strictly because they could save a few bucks per hour on employees?  Of course not, they need top quality engineering talent.  It doesn’t really matter if they speak English with an accent, it matter how many good chips they can engineer out of every wafer.  Most Americans don’t want to hear this, but it’s true.  US students do not take the tough courses.  So what would that mean to you?

Well, how about becoming an engineer in a displace that is bound to grow like crazy … solar or other alternative energy technology.  You can’t become an engineer?  Well, can you wire up solar plants?  Can you plumb n solar powered pumps and water heaters?  There are job opportunism out there right now today from PhD engineers to wheel barrow pushers … they will be filled by people who have not given up on themselves and are willing to learn new things.  That’s your clue for the day.

Doesn’t matte if you are US based and want to stay there, US based and want to move to the Philippines, or a Filipino wanting to earn more at home or to migrate to the US.  Update your skills into something which is not only poised for growth but has to grow, and opportunities will open up.

Anyway, I thought the job listing I featured at the start was interesting.  And I wonder why someone doesn’t do this for the Philippines, right now, today?  many people have tried to run job listing services for profit, and I don’t see then doing all that well.  But this is a Google Docs spreadsheet application and you can set up a free site on Google Sites to host it.

Investment cost … absolutely zero.  technical skills, few.  Potential pay off to you or some other job seeker?  Huge.  So why isn’t someone doing it already?

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“There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.”
~ General Douglas MacArthur
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