Several years ago, I formed a Board of Directors for my career. They treated me like a business entity and almost overnight my life changed (for the better). This gives me an objective measuring stick for what I'm worth and a great bargaining device. I can certainly see why people in the entertainment business have agents.

If you truly are a "productive" employee, you're in great demand.

Eric

When I wrote "a well dried up" I meant it more in that the easy gains from outsourcing that were once there aren't there any more. Considering India, the wages for tech workers is almost equal to the global/US wage rate, and with higher turnover vs. US and lower productivity vs. US, the costs are now about at an equilibrium.

There are definitely plenty of educated, smart, and creative people to be found in foreign countries (and I'm more specifically thinking developing countries), but there are few places in the US let alone the world that can compare to the mecca of the Bay area (Silicon Valley) and the runner up Boston area. (Arguably) 70% of the top schools in the world are in those two areas, and they're surrounded by a similar corporate and local infrastructure to match. Places like India and China could develop similar hot spots, but they have to make that a goal, and even then, it would take decades to even enter the playing field.

End note: that Bangladesh shipbreaker story rather interesting.

My point with the 50 to 100K thing is that when you reach the 100K level, it can become harder to find opportunities as quickly if things fall through at your company. So the real challenge for us is to be in a state of perpetual readiness without stressing out about it.

My one addition to the "don't fear outsourcing" is that outsourcing is basically a dried up well now. Foreign countries don't have the level and quality of education that we have in the US. All the good people have been grabbed up (and many have moved to the US), and what's left are people who are either uneducated or memorization bots who can't be creative. They simply don't have the infrastructure nor the culture that breeds the quality of information/intellectual workers/thinkers that we have in the US.

On top of that, we only benefit as the job market improves (and provides more competition). As entry level labor costs come down, more companies will be willing to do more with that labor, and more opportunities will open up for economic gain. Where economic gain is stimulated, all levels benefit as higher paid positions are required for managing and working with the non-entry level parts of a job. The people at the top are the nimble and creative ones.

I completely agree with the points in this post, but it is a lot easier to do so once you have a job. When you are looking, the advice to be nimble and creative is hard to act on and hard to translate into specific details that will get you a job.