Physics Outsourcing- less for (applied) physicists?

[pjmarshall]

I heard somewhere that companies are more likely to outsource engineers than people with physics/math degrees (on the masters level obviously), since the latter is more 'versatile' and adapts easier- this is totally illogical in my mind. In an industry job, don't engineers and physicists have the same job tasks?

For someone doing something like computational fluid dynamics, engineers and physicists are very similar, so does it matter if a company replaces one with a foreign employee (dunno if computational fluid dynamic jobs are outsourced a lot, but i assume every job is)?

 

[Phyisab****]

Can you cite any references which indicate outsourcing of highly skilled engineering, physics, or math jobs?

 

[twofish-quant]

Can you cite any references which indicate outsourcing of highly skilled engineering, physics, or math jobs?

I have some personal stories here because my job got outsourced. There are some things that you can outsource easily and some things that you can't. I don't think that it is the case that companies are less likely to outsource physicists, but if you have a physics/math degree it's easier for you to jump ship and find something else.

You can't outsource plumbing, for example, and if you don't want to be outsourced, you have to figure out why they can't move your job. Then there is the "if you can't beat them join them" if you are in an industry that is being outsourced, then maybe its a good idea to figure out how to go with the flow.

 

[Phyisab****]

Can you explain what kind of jobs were outsourced?

I admittedly am young and have pretty narrow experiences. The jobs I have seen physicists do in industry involve performing experiments with expensive equipment which resides in the US, and working on simulations of the physics involved therein where it helps to be able to directly interface with the experimenters. Similarly for the engineers, who are working on taking ideas from the lab to production, and working on maintaining/improving production equipment which is in the United States. It's difficult for me to see any of these jobs being outsourced.

 

[twofish-quant]

Can you explain what kind of jobs were outsourced?

In my situation, they shut down my branch and moved all of the jobs to south Asia. Mostly computer programming.

The jobs I have seen physicists do in industry involve performing experiments with expensive equipment which resides in the US, and working on simulations of the physics involved therein where it helps to be able to directly interface with the experimenters. Similarly for the engineers, who are working on taking ideas from the lab to production, and working on maintaining/improving production equipment which is in the United States. It's difficult for me to see any of these jobs being outsourced.

Pretty much. However, one should be aware that just because it's a dumb idea doesn't mean that someone won't do it. In my situation, I think that outsourcing my position was a really stupid thing to do that basically killed my product. But I'm still not getting my job back.

Longer term what I'm more worried about is less outsource than something else. If you end up with the situation in which the consumers are in China and India, then it makes sense to move the production over there, and once you move production then the jobs that depend on that production will also move.

The other thing that worries me is that the jobs that tend to get outsourced are the low level "grunt work" jobs, and what people always say is that the US is going to outsource grunt work and keep the "innovative work" in the US. The problem with that is that today's grunt workers are tomorrows innovators, and I really don't see how you are going to train people to to the high level stuff if you ship the low level stuff overseas, and if you don't have basic "grunt work" then I don't see what people that are just graduating from college are supposed to do.

The other thing that worries me is immigration restrictions. The thing about liberal immigration policies is that you get the smart people into the US. If you make it harder to move people into the US, then the jobs will move overseas, and that may not be a good thing.