[nickpsecurity]

I went to college with a guy who did industrial, embedded stuff you see in factories. One of his projects he told me about was a robot that cut the glass windows or something like that at a Volvo plant. Anyway, he wrote the software for sensors, control, etc. Integrated it into GUI tools or backends. I said something kind of like you said to him.

He replied that he'd have better job security than any of us in IT doing stuff like PHP or Java. He said the reason is he had to be on-site to do his work. Impossible to out-source. When I pointed out in-sourcing (H1-B, etc), he said they preferred people with both strong command of English (avoid costly misunderstandings) and experience (avoid costly mistakes). The experience often comes from working locally in colleges or companies.

So, I definitely encourage people to explore coding in C and C++ for local, embedded systems at the least. There's other jobs that don't require local or embedded where those languages are used. They're not outsourcing-proof w/ consistently good pay, though. ;)

[kevin_thibedeau]

The problem is skill transfer. What does he do when Volvo shuts down his factory? Even if there are other potential employers nearby, they are unlikely to be hiring because they already have their guy.

[nickpsecurity]

You kidding? His company builds the equipment for one deployment. Then they do that for another. Then another. He might get sent in for maintenance or they might send someone else. He isn't doing day-to-day admin at the factor or something.