who would hire an independent trader?

[limitdown]

Quote from prt_systems:

for most projects - except those mandated and protected by government regulation.

hmmmm,

under these conservative times, even those are being outsourced, and hence the security facets of those too.

excellent comments, I appreciate your perspective...

so, have you succumed to becoming a Prop Trader with one of the firms or fell for the snake oil of the other firms?

have you chosen trading as your next career?

 

[Choad]

Quote from prt_systems:

Engineering can be a quite interesting profession. Of course, it can also be a very risky profession on which to bet your welfare or the welfare of your family. There are some areas - like national defense - where you might actually get to retire as an engineer. However in most industrys you will be on a never ending treadmill of obsolescense, retraining, and obsolescense. In most companies you are expected to retrain yourself, on your own time. So, if you have a demanding project that is requiring 60-70 hours per week of your time to bring in on time and on budget, you somehow have to find another 10 hours or so per week to keep current and learn new techniques outside of your day to day job - just to keep your existing position.

An interesting job yes, but perhaps, not the best choice in todays extreme outsourcing and cost cutting environments.

Yes. Very true. I tend to forget that my stable engineering situation is because I do work in the defense industry (Gov DOD). Yep, same job for 20 years. Most engineers I know change jobs, or at least contracting companies, about every 3-5 years.

Still, I'll never be sorry I did it. The stable job and life has allowed me to grow a nice trading account, in addition to a very nice 401 and IRA, stress free.

Good luck to all.

 

[prt_systems]

Quote from limitdown:

hmmmm,

under these conservative times, even those are being outsourced, and hence the security facets of those too.

excellent comments, I appreciate your perspective...

so, have you succumed to becoming a Prop Trader with one of the firms or fell for the snake oil of the other firms?

have you chosen trading as your next career?

Yes. Everyone is jumping on the presumed low cost bandwagon .... however they tend to be unaware of the real costs of running and integrating projects with foreign based companies. That said, the costs in most cases are so low that many businesses - including government agencies via consulting firms - are compelled to move because their competitors or contemporaries are adopting these strategies.

Me ? No, I run my own firm, using my own capital: I trade and work out the strategies and have a couple of other people on board - a small profitable operation. My software company did not wish to move to India and I simply sold its interests recently after deciding that the margins had become too low and the market too saturated to continue in the US based consulting arena.

I am still involved in a couple of startups using technology that I own and retained after the sale and where i direct the engineering. These are not focused however on corporate consulting or outsourcing gigs which are really no longer profitable unless the work is done overseas or with visa workers. Basically they now depend upon economies of scale that are only open to very large entities - hence a mature industry in most all of the common technologies - some very specialized areas are still viable with respect to margins.