Endzone2 Wrote:Quote:And that's precisely the rationale that was used when Motorola took their chip-making off-shore. But, by freeing up those resources, other companies innovated, and as I said, few jobs were lost in Phoenix. I know this b/c one of my old housemates works at one of those facilities.
By freeing up those resources.... You mean freeing up the peons that operated the machines on the line that produced the chips? Instead of paying them $15/hour at Motorola, they could get the job done in Mexico for 50cents/hour? I trying to follow you here, but I guess I'm having a hard time. How was reliving hundreds of line workers at Motorola going to help other companies innovate? Was there no longer a demand for those IC's? They why did Motorola send the jobs to Mexico?
You can check me on the details, but I believe Motorola sent most of their IC work to the Philipines and perhaps other parts of Asia.
However, they didn't lay off the lineworkers in Phx, those facilities were bought out or taken over by Motorola spin-offs.
Thus Motorola was free to pursue their business strategy, while these other companies now had resources to do new things.
This isn't trying to pretend that something came from nothing. Motorola probably would have had to invest $1-2B to refurb these fab lines ($2B was the price paid by Intel for a large facility in Chandler, AZ) whereas they got by w/ less off-shore. Then they sold the US fab lines, and made a profit.
Ultimately it's a risk for both Motorola and the new companies...but business is always a risk. Nevertheless, it can work out that
everybody wins. It's not a zero-sum game.
Quote:I'm off to Mississippi in a few hours to try and get a job there.
I know something about the defense jobs in MS. I'd suggest that you be careful. The agencies that are supposed to be investing heavily there are not the best run. Future defense cuts will probably target this work.
There are a couple of good companies there, in fact 2 years ago I won a PhII STTR for one of them (thank me later RebelKev) but their business is still tentative.
You might look into Phx or Tucson. Both are in pretty good shape econimically and they have jobs up your alley.