My daughter went a bit ballistic when she saw the cover of the February Wired magazine, with a picture of an Indian beauty over the tagline "Tech jobs are fleeing to India faster than ever. You got a problem with that?" "Yes, I have a problem," she exclaimed, "They should get some of the best jobs, but not all of them!" I offered my usual observations about how the acceptance of globalization means taking the risks along with the benefits. I echoed the Indian engineers in Daniel Pink's article who had talked about the inevitability of change.

Then CMP's Rob Keenan interviewed Brecis Communications CEO George Alexy about the truncating of Brecis' engineering staff, with all design verification and software development moving to India. Somehow, this seemed extreme, in a different category from the optical and routing OEMs that had announced at last year's Supercomm that manufacturing, prototyping and bug revision would move to China or India, but core architectural and product definition groups would remain in the United States.

But what was different? Is there a magic percentage of engineering staff that one reaches, where lesser numbers represent good global presence, while greater numbers represent a transferred company preserving a U.S. corporate shell? Does the distinction come in engineering tasks, where back-end and revision tasks are OK for Asia, while product definition, design and simulation must remain in the United States? And was I bringing nationalist assumptions into the way I thought about this problem?

If I had been in Alexy's shoes, I might have done precisely what he did. To survive, companies must keep costs to a minimum. The network processor and communication aggregator processor industry has been particularly victimized of late. Internet Machines has become a PCI Express bridging company; Bay Microsystems has shifted focus to defense and intelligence contracts.

Eric Mantion, a network processor analyst at In-Stat, cautioned executives to heed Carly Fiorina's observation that "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." That may apply to top executives as much as to top engineers. The Fiorinas and Alexys of the world might wake up to find their own jobs moved to Bangalore or Mumbai.

Loring Wirbel is Communications editorial director for EE Times and its network publications.