AMEN. Someone had to say it. Personally, I believe (and Im not the only one, of those I know who actively work in the electronics industry), that engineering and manufacturing, here in the US overall, particularly electrical engineering, is on a downward trend, which seems to be accelerating.
The statement that there is a shortage of good engineers is one of those clever agenda driven half truths industry spokesmen put forth...the fact is that there are shortages of some engineers in some highly skilled specialty areas in some geographical areas of the country, but thats always been the case. Thats why consultants have traditionally made a good living satisfying those short term emrgency needs of clients.
The reason that those jobs are going unfilled now, is IMO, due to the fact that in many cases, the companies do NOT want to pay highly skilled SENIOR engineers to come in and solve their problems for them, even if on a consulting basis. There are managers out there who refuse to pay for engineering talent what they pay to have their BMW's serviced at the dealership. Some of that is not only penny wise / pound foolish management practice, it also reflects IMO an underlying cultural and age group bias at work, some younger Gen-X managers simply dislike Boomer engineers...perhaps Boomers in general. Thats a subject for another thread, however!
There are Senior engineers out there, particularly guys in their forties and fifties, who are underemployed, or in many cases unemployed as engineers....I'm talking about guys who never made the transition to management. These are guys that companies are unwilling to invest any training time in, even guys with solid credentials and good education backgrounds.
Please, nobody tell me the solution is that we all become "managers"...most of us learned in management theory years ago, that a management heavy organization is a bloated, inefficient organization...that was proven and dealt with in the lean, mean managenment purges in the early nineties. Wealth is largely created by worker bees AND managers in an efficient pyramid organization, with help from bankers, money managers and a whole host of people in the overall societal infrastructure, but today that system is out of kilter IMO..
Its also foolish to assume that in the long run, engineering research and product development is going to be done on a different continent from where the product is manufactured, as far as I know, TQM and six sigma quality requires a cooperative team effort across all the engineering and management disciplines, and is made more efficient by proximity and shared language.
And as always, the market verifies the true story for the so called shortages of engineers; wages for contract hardware design engineers are at the same basic levels they were back in about the early to mid nineties...this is the market speaking. This is a market, incidently, distorted by the influences of H1b and L1 workers...a government sanctioned market interference and corporate handout if there ever was one.
Meanwhile, the cost of doing business here in the US is going UP UP UP, not only taxes, but liability, workman's comp, disability, and health insurance, auto insurance, energy costs, regulatory costs, legal costs...in short all of the infrastructure costs we see here in the US. Maybe this is one reason companies are moving high tech development not only over to India and China, but to IRELAND, yes, that third world hellhole (/s).
Meanwhile, the parts and materials market also tells a story, as while the costs of semiconductors may be holding steady, the costs of all other electronic raw materials, particularly any products which use metal / copper, are up significantly in the last year. Ive seen increases of between six and twenty percent in some materials ...this is the prices quoted in the new 2006 catalogs...a couple months old, and the prices actually quoted TODAY by the distributor. Something is definately going on here. Is all this increased demand due to activities HERE in the US...or is it elsewhere?
Ive spoken to a few guys who tell me they are being forced to go to ASIA for production out of necessity to cut costs to the bone to stay competitive. What if ALL American companies did this...its a complex nonlinear equation baby, forget your simple linear x/y economic curves that only go UP with offshoring.
At a recent social gathering, I ran into a former collegue who is currently laid off, he is a super sharp EE guy who survived through his third (and probably final) merger / buyout / layoff (in the past eight years). He will be leaving engineering. His wife, a doctor, had to quit her practice here in PA due to the liability nightmare...another issue I grant you...but related in my mind to the problems faced by business in this country in general.
What does it all mean...frankly IMO we are in a vicious self perpetuating cycle, which will see as a long term overall byproduct the GROWTH in government and government programs. Its already starting...just look around.
Hows that for some "doom and gloom"?
China ramping up for war, maybe?
spot on fella!