Outsourcing engineering

For a long time, globalization effected manufacturing, but not engineering. Manufacturing went to various countries, moving on, once a new country offered even lower prices, but engineering or software was a safe haven.

Things have changed. Year by year, various emerging countries educate many engineers and software developers. Many of them emigrate on a working visa, accepting pretty much any salary in exchange. Employers happily hire them and layoff more expensive workers, often claiming AI to be the reason, but the headcount uncovers the truth. Some companies open new business units right in India, Vietnam, or the Philippines to benefit from the low salaries.

As a result, engineering and specifically software salaries shrink for the first time ever. What used to be a safe and well paying job no longer is.

This hardly comes as a surprise. Outsourcing has silently grown since a long time in other technical professions. Between 2020 and 2025, my total taxable income from employed work increased by 2.4%. Inflation caused a heavy net cut. My employer just proudly delivered the best quarter and the best year since a few years now and thanked all employees for their dedication. To continue the momentum in profit growth, they announced zero raises this year and regretted to have yet another layoff despite having expressed otherwise last year. It is not a particularly bad company; there is no reason to be mad. That is common in the industry now.

Younger engineers see the difficulties and often ask for advice. So here is my answer:

Check related technical fields that cannot be outsourced. Over time, many craftsmen have become interdisciplinary technicians because embedded computers and networks are increasingly ubiquitous. Industry controls need to be programmed, and the role of industrial electricians includes a lot of networking and software now. Wealthy people tend to have large homes full of complicated technology that loves to break, needing electricians with abilities previously only asked for in industrial environments. The same is valid for the yachting industry, on and off shore: Boats have network backbones with attached sensors and actors now, distributed systems, and stuff breaks all the time. The complexity of CNC systems created a wide variety of jobs apart from operating them in production. In a few professions, certified surveyors need to be on-site. All these jobs are not pure desktop jobs, demand interdisciplinary knowledge and analytical thinking: An engineering mind.

At the same time, keep your eyes open. This world offers everything in excess, except for the safety that it persists. The previous generation often worked multiple decades in a job, growing with the company. That model went extinct. Now staying with a company for long, often called loyal for no reason, is penalized. When the company wins, its investors win and nobody else. Even though companies like to present themselves as family, a job by nature is purely transactional: Time and effort against money. If extra time and effort are not rewarded, still doing it lowers the value of your work.

At a young age, the corporate environment is easier to withstand, but it gets increasingly toxic and that is not just my point of view. It has never been as worthwhile as today to take life in our own hands and, besides working for income, also work on independence, be it for surviving the time between a layoff and a new job or for reaching permanent independence. The term financial independence sounds mysterious, but it actually means working part time self-employed in asset management. At its core, finance is much like engineering, except numbers do not have physical units.