"Cool. The arrogant US techies meeting their just desert."
I understand the sentiment, but the reality doesn't quite support it. I've worked in the "arrogant" sector for twenty years. Last week 1/2 of the people I work with were laid off. (A total of 1000 were laid off.) Analysts were not satisfied and predicted/demanded that another 7000 people (20% of the company)be laid off (Sun Micro).
While most hi-tech engineering salaries hover around 100,000/year, one does well to remember a number of things: 1) CEO, marketing, and sales compensation (for the same sector) are one to two levels of _magnitude_ higher than that and those jobs will NOT be lost to India or anywhere else. 2) The skill set required for the job is pretty daunting and the technology is a constantly moving target: what you learned in college will last you about five years. 3) Benefits are slim and getting slimmer 4) Cost of living in the bay area is not to be belived. Middle class expectations: house, 2 cars, good education pretty much eats up two incomes. 5) The stress and burnout rate are pretty unbelievable too.
I'm not saying a software engineer has it harder than a housecleaner; I'm just saying it's not as rosy as it sounds. Put it this way, my earnings/prospects/benefits/"lifestyle" are roughly analogous to those of my father's who was a unionized billing clerk for the Teamsters. I am of course comparing two distinct historical/economic periods, but since I was the great white professional hope of an immigrant family, think what it means that I was not able to do better than my father, who retired on a full pension and social security and saw the value of his modest house in LA increase by 1000%.
In the twenty years I spent in the hi-tech industry, I have met with some arrogant oafisheness, but this did not come from engineering; the greater part came from sales/marketing/upper management. And like I said, those people will not lose their jobs. Engineers, given their supposedly rosy future, naively believed in it, were fiercely loyal to their employers and were super-exploited as a result. 80 hour weeks were and are very common. It's true that this encouraged a libertarian politics, that hi-tech workers felt superior to "unions," and believed that their education and the ever expanding tech sector would be the crest of the wave that would float them above everyone else's troubles. They will now realize that they were nothing more than a privileged layer of the working class and now, privileged no more. It will be interesting to see what their disillusion leads to. These are intelligent, highly skilled people, some of whom can hack anything they please:)
Joanna