Worker Shortage Looms for Defense Sector

AP via yahoo ^ | Tuesday March 4, 2:24 pm ET | By Joelle Tessler

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

There are enough American brains. They used to work in engineering and technology. You’ll find them. They’re at the unemployment center.

[familyop]

"Previous military experience isn’t necessary to get a job in the defense industry. Though getting a clearance without it is time consuming (have to start at a less sensitive position then wait the months for the clearance to come through)."

I have military experience that included much demolition, booby traps, most of the small arms used by the Army and instructor training.

The recruiters told me that I'm a no-go for software development or operating systems (all) for contractors, because I don't already have a clearance. The essence is that I was an enlisted (not officer) soldier in a combat specialty (a "male," even). All of my acquaintances who work for nearby contractors were officers (mostly women) in the Air Force or Navy.

There are most likely some foreign companies that will hire me to write telemetry code or 3D objects with direct rendering and voice recognition, though, even from here.

[Myrddin]

The essence is that I was an enlisted (not officer) soldier in a combat specialty (a "male," even). All of my acquaintances who work for nearby contractors were officers (mostly women) in the Air Force or Navy.

Officers generally have a 4 year degree before starting military service. It is also common for them to require a clearance in the process of that service. Do you have a BA or BS in a field relevant to the job opening? Do you have a record of accomplishments relevant to the job opening? If you have the necessary experience, the contractor will start the clearance process and put you on non-cleared tasks until the clearance reaches "interim" status. When it goes "final", you will get assignments that actually deal with the classified material.

If you don't have at least a BA or BS in a relevant field, you're going to have a very hard time competing with a field of persons with degrees. In the 90s there was such a demand for anyone who could perform web oriented development that a degree didn't matter. That level of work has been mostly sent offshore. I conducted interviews on behalf of a customer in Denver in March 2000. Over 400 applicants were reviewed. Nearly all had a 4 year degree. Most had pretty "fluffy" resumes. Only 7 were found worthy of hire. One of those bilged the 2nd day. He was a lot better at interviewing than actually doing the work.

[Myrddin]

There are most likely some foreign companies that will hire me to write telemetry code or 3D objects with direct rendering and voice recognition, though, even from here.

Perhaps you should take some of those offers to build a resume and references. Your resume needs to show a track record of success on work relevant to the prospective employer.

[familyop]

"Do you have a BA or BS in a field relevant to the job opening?"

There is no BA or BS program that prepares students for software development or secure systems jobs. As I said before, there are other younger folks here. They will play the game with brainwashing from perverts in universities and buy the degrees. But as the rest of the forming team is doing, they'll negotiate contracts by the job and play with physical projects until then.

Are the un-indoctrinated not allowed to play with breadboards and greenhouses or to look at the stars? If not, we'll work for less than those who do.

My engineer instructors told us to get out of technology before they left. They had been put out to pasture to do consulting, which work was also going away. I switched to English to consider tech. writing. Our Department Chairman died from AIDS. The English instructors (including one State NOW President) screamed man-hating speeches at us. I dropped.

Maybe some extra work with Theo the Rat and his anti-American operating system (OpenBSD) wouldn't be such a bad activity after all. He's no more anti-American than many of those working in our labs.

[familyop]

"Perhaps you should take some of those offers to build a resume and references. Your resume needs to show a track record of success on work relevant to the prospective employer."

That's what we're doing, along with a couple of ongoing home projects for holes in the market.

On the lighter side, with a tangent toward hardware, have you seen the releases from Intel about processors running at between 1 and 10 watts (even and x86)? Solar powered wireless points, here we come, and not as much need for routing pex tubing in slabs away from built-in passive cooling closets (except for the RAIDFrame arrays). ...distributed processing, even, without needing to run workstations on server AFS partitions (as yet, to keep workstations from using too much power).

[familyop]

Granted, we’ll continue to run the AFS partitions and micro-ATX workstations for a while, until the new CPU prices come down and a better solution is found for the power consumption in NASs (drive arrays). But the news on 1 - 10 watt processors is good. One of those will knock another 100 watts or so out of the cold server closet.

[Myrddin]

There is no BA or BS program that prepares students for software development or secure systems jobs.

Most of the people on my project (under 50) have degrees in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering. A select few have degrees in physics and mathematics. Many of the over 30 people have master's and PhD degrees in mathematics or physics. There are ZERO persons on the project without a 4 year degree.

I have yet to see a "wet behind the ears" graduate that doesn't have a lot to learn about working properly within a software development team. It's not an unexpected condition. Persons with 4 year degrees tend to ramp up very quickly.

It's perfectly possible to complete a BA or BS degree without becoming "indoctrinated". That's part of the sifting process. If you can't get through it, you're not going to get to first base in seeking employment. My dad served as an XO of a ship or naval base over much of my lifetime. He grilled me so severely that I've never encountered anyone tougher in the real business world. It's part of the character building process.

Persevere. Endure. Get the 4 year degree in hand so that you're not tossed off the list of candidates in the first 30 seconds. My son returned from his service in Kuwait and Iraq (USMC) and earned his BS in Business Administration from University of Phoenix. He built a 60 person real estate business with that background. Still, he realized that a 4 year degree is barely enough to be competitive in his field. A MBA is what he will need to have any hope of reasonable upward mobility.

[Myrddin]

I'm putting together a proposal right now that includes solar power as an option for locations that have no utilities available. The hardware will be based on a PIC nanowatt series microcontroller. The Zigbee 2.4 GHz transceiver will be the major power consumer.

My most recent x86_64 motherboard has lots of passive heat sinks and tubing. It looks like a roller coaster. A reduced power CPU would be welcome...especially for embedded work where power and cooling are an issue.

[Myrddin]

I've successfully run 5 - 8 watt PC104 CPU boards on my railcars. It takes very aggressive power management to keep the lead acid storage battery charged from intermittent input from the Timken bearing generator (20 watts max at 15 MPH). I use a PIC microcontroller to manage the charging cycle so the x86 is only alive when necessary.

[familyop]

Thinking Small: New Intel Architecture Champions Sub 1 Watt x86
http://www.dailytech.com/Thinking+Small+New+Intel+Architecture+Champions+Sub+1+Watt+x86/article10930.htm

...the “Atom” chip. And I’m sure that AMD will produce something competitive before long. We’ll also see fans disappearing from more of the fancy video cards (multi-CPU boards for direct rendering) pretty soon.

The young folks and I will probably run some tests to see how much power cheap SATA drives really use over a day. I’m guessing that they don’t use much when configured to land between use periods.

[familyop]

"I've successfully run 5 - 8 watt PC104 CPU boards on my railcars. It takes very aggressive power management to keep the lead acid storage battery charged from intermittent input from the Timken bearing generator (20 watts max at 15 MPH). I use a PIC microcontroller to manage the charging cycle so the x86 is only alive when necessary."

That's one strange mix of old and new technologies! :-) Are those tiny railcars or heavy ones? ...golf cart type lead acid batteries?

[Myrddin]

The rail cars carry 110,000 lbs of coal. Bearings are class F. One bearing is outfitted with a Timken bearing generator. The batteries are deep cycle marine or gel cell. It is actually a moving magnet, fixed coil alternator (12 poles) that generates up to 260 volts at 80 MPH. The "break even" speed is 10 MPH to generate enough to just power the PC104 and all sensors. The Smart Battery Charger includes a PIC microcontroller to read tachometer pulses off the bearing generator and start the PC104 when it is apparent that the car will be in motion long enough to matter. The PIC reads voltage/current off the generator and battery. That info is fed to the PC104 over a CAN bus. The PC104 sends that data back to the server over a 1xRTT (CDMA) cellular connection to the internet.

There is also a GPS in the box with the PC104 to set time and provide lat/lon information to track the car. I have other PIC controllers measuring bearing temperatures and accelerometers to record longitudinal, lateral and vertical motions. I calculate moving averages for temperature and vibration. That is also sent to the back end server.

The high bandwidth vibration signatures are handled with a Diamond Systems DMM32 to read 100,000 samples per second from the vertical accelerometers on left and right wheels on each axle. About 20 seconds of sample is taken, then subjected to a multi step Fourier analysis. The target frequencies are characteristic of the cone, cup, cage and rollers in the bearing. I pick off the fundamental plus 5 harmonics. That data reduction is sent to the server as well. The end product of the analysis is an early forecast of the kinds of defects occurring in the bearings. The approach can identify 55 specific kinds of defects.

An earlier design used 16 channels of the Diamond DMM32 to measure the bearing temperatures. That is terribly wasteful of the device that retails for $750. I'm accomplishing the same thing with a couple of $10 PIC18F6680 devices and transmitting the results to the PC104 over a CAN bus instead of very expensive low loss analog wiring. The next gen for the high bandwidth analysis will use a stereo audio A to D device driving a dedicated DSP chip to do the bearing analysis. That will replace the $750 card with less than $50 in electronics and do the same job.

[Straight Vermonter]

While U.S. universities are awarding two-and-a-half times more engineering, math and computer science degrees than they did 40 years ago, defense companies must compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Verizon for the best and the brightest.

How many of these students are actually American?

[familyop]

Thank you. That is really neat! I’ve only played with little controllers in routers so far...very common. But we’ve spent a little time at picking through boards for lower-energy weather monitoring and environmental controls and will eventually choose one to get started with.

[familyop]

It appears that you might also have some background in manufacturing engineering or machining. I hope to find the time and space to show the young folks here a hands-on thing or two (history of theory, indexing gears, turning, grinding, finishes, metallurgy and the like).

[Myrddin]

There are two families of microcontrollers that are commonly used and would represent a nice capability on your resume. The PIC controllers from Microchip and the 8051 family from Intel. The 8051 family has spawned multiple "work alike" implementations. Atmel is one of the more flexible examples.

A nice entry level PIC package would be a PICDEM2Plus board with the ICD2 programmer. The MPLAB IDE and assembler is offered for free. A student version of the C18 C compiler is also available for free on the website. For about $200 you have a great development platform to get your feet wet. You'll need a Windows PC to host the MPLAB IDE and USB based ICD2 programmer.

If you grab the recommended kit and a copy of "An Embedded Systems Primer" by David Simon, you'll have everything you need to learn from the ground up. Simon focuses on using the PIC18F452 in his book. His attention to detail is superb.

[Myrddin]

My interest in the mechanical aspects of the rail cars is driven by the need for domain knowledge to build the monitoring systems. I do have a passion for metallurgy and finishes, but it is strongly biased toward products from Ruger, S&W and Thompson. My great grandfather was an extremely gifted metallurgist. He leveraged what he learned working in the mines in Wales when he emigrated to the U.S. Much of his life was dedicated to the railroad industry and mining after he arrived here in 1863.

[familyop]

Thank you for the information about controllers. Searches for recommendations specifications are tougher than they were a few years ago with sales pitches dominating the search engines.

[familyop]

"I do have a passion for metallurgy and finishes, but it is strongly biased toward products from Ruger, S&W and Thompson."

LOL! I've fired a lot of small arms on ranges (up to 20-hour rotations on some) but never worked on them. With me, it was making various little tools at work (including hardening, annealing,...), setting feeds and speeds for various alloys, hardness testing, and the like.