Engineering Grad Looking for work -- Where are the Jobs???

Engineering Discussion Board 12-27-2002 ^ | FR Post Christmas 2002 | Various

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AskMen.com Message Boards     > Career, Power & Money         > New Engineering grad: Are there any jobs??
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j455b2 Registered User Posts: 158 (8/28/02 11:18:30 pm) Reply	New Engineering grad: Are there any jobs?? Hi I finished my electrical engineering studies in the month of may. Before the end of my studies and until now, I have been actively looking for a job. I havent had much success, just 2 interviews. Most of my fellow graduates are in the same situation. I live in Canada where the job market is supposedly better than in the US presently. But when I hear that companies like Nortel laid off 60 % of their workforce and are going to lay off 7000 more people, I start to wonder: Who the hell is gonna hire a recent graduate if so many experienced ppl are available?? I am not desperate yet but I cant say that my resume is rock solid. I had decent grades but my work experience related to the field is obviously lacking. I try to compensate with my course work etc... What is sad is that just 2 years ago, these same companies were literally hiring by the truckload! 45k CAN $ (which is a lot of money in a city with low cost of living like Montreal) for entry-level engineers. In 2 months I am going to start to apply all over the country and "exile" myself . Is that the only way to get a first job? Start off in some kind of small shop in Saskatchewan??
a lady now Registered User Posts: 408 (8/29/02 8:49:50 am) Reply	Re: New Engineering grad: Are there any jobs?? Electrical Engineers are in demand in the states. You should have no problem catching on if you come here. Look at Monster.com and you will see
energyaz Registered User Posts: 2289 (8/30/02 3:36:24 pm) Reply	Re: New Engineering grad: Are there any jobs?? Electrical Engineers are in demand in the states - Yes they are. So much so that most of them are being hired out of India or the middle east cause these guys will work for pennies. Why hire an American or Canuck and pay them $60k + when you can get one from a 3rd world country who will do back flips for $30k? Sad, sick and lame. I cant stand it -Energy who works onsite at Honeywell aerospace....and 80% of our engineers are foregin nationals. I am embarrased and worried that if we keep outsoursing our white collar workforce from India and Pakistan...our economy and future is shot Congrats on your graduation!! Good luck! I wish you the best! I would be soooooo happy if Honeywell started hiring Canadians over Indians.....not a racial thing, but lets keep the jobs avail to the people who are actually FROM this hemisphere!
Audio58 Registered User Posts: 1 (9/9/02 12:02:08 pm) Reply	Engineering positions Yes there are many engineeing positions availible in the US, but they all require 3-5 years experience. I worked for an RF semiconductor company for 13 years while attending school at night. I received my Electronic Engineering degree in 2000, and got a job as a design engineer, but was laid-off at the end of 2001. I have been unemployed now for almost 10 months.
GQ Chris Registered User Posts: 783 (9/9/02 6:42:12 pm) Reply	Dude, here's an idea to get hired.... Move to India, learn to like curry chicken and kabobs, and apply for Indian citizenship. Then apply for an American engineering position, you might get a better shot then. Its pathetic, and somebody's got to put a stop to all this outsourcing of labor.
ryanjb2 Registered User Posts: 1378 (9/9/02 8:26:30 pm) Reply	Re: Trying to emigrate to India? They'd laugh you right out of the embassy. Immigration only goes one way in this world.
lovetolearn Registered User Posts: 2073 (9/10/02 9:26:53 pm) Reply	err... ryan, GQ Chris was being facetious in his comment regarding emigrating to India. His reason, of course, is that there are so many INdians in computers and engineering right now, and that clearly bothers him.
ryanjb2 Registered User Posts: 1393 (9/11/02 1:32:26 pm) Reply	Re: I know, and I was utilizing his comment to insert a political commentary. I do this all the time, some find it annoying....
GQ Chris Registered User Posts: 810 (9/13/02 10:07:53 am) Reply	Re:What really sucks is Talented American Engineers become.. S.O.L. when it comes to finding full time technical work, that actually pays them what they're worth. Really blows away the traditional theory that if you want a good paying job, you've got to work hard in school and get a degree. Nowadays, there's no stability at all, its just a fight for survival, and very limited opportunity. Now more than ever, companies are focusing on cutting down expenses(ie. employees) and maximizing profits.
j455b2 Registered User Posts: 171 (11/3/02 10:36:02 pm) Reply	its me again I'm the original poster. After working as an electronics tech for the last three months at 9$ an hour (well its not really a tech job, more like electronics assembler but anyway) I decided to enroll in the army. They supposedly offer a 40 000$ (canadian) enrolment indemnity to engineering graduates but I guess its not for all candidates. Anyway I'm not going for the money but Its been 6 months I graduated and I am far from obtaining an engineering position It looks like the only place I'll get that is in the army... I just read an article in an employment paper today stating that electrical, computer engineering and computer science are the most unpopular degrees with employers these days... Even the job placement guy from my college said in the article that electrical engineering graduates are the worst hit.
C4S Registered User Posts: 105 (11/7/02 12:22:02 am) Reply	It comes and goes It's all a cycle. Hopefully in a few years everyone will need engineers again. It all depends on who's working on what and how ambitious you are. For instance, when I start working in the space industry, I'll be able to give you guys lots of jobs! CS
GQ Chris Registered User Posts: 1074 (11/7/02 11:18:23 am) Reply	re: jobs I'm still considering changing majors, I'm about halfway through to getting my Bachelor's and my current major is in Business with a focus on Computer Information Systems, I am thinking about changing it to Management. I mean what's the use of taking C++ and Jave programming classes, when upon graduation these jobs will be too few and far between. I don't know what to think now, I read in the paper that the economy has been making improvements, and then the next morning I'll read that the economy is going to take more time to make a full recovery.
wsux Registered User Posts: 1 (11/19/02 11:06:04 pm) Reply	Labor Mobility and Declining Wages Hi guys, I was going through your posts and I must admit that they make interesting reading. I am from India and I think I can offer some new perspective on the issue of labor mobility. First of all, I think trade in labor is just an extension of the so called process of globalization. Declining wages are nothing more than a manifestation of the simple law of demand and supply. The only way qualified people from foreign countries can be prevented from taking up jobs is by erecting artificial barriers on the movement of labor. But this is never, and I repeat, never going to happen in the US considering the clout that businesses command and the rewards they reap by hiring cheap labor. Second, without prejudice, I do believe that engineers from India who take up jobs in the US are superbly qualified. I am an engineer from the university ranked first in India and third in Asia - the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Students are admitted to the IIT's on the basis of entrance examinations. Can you guess the number of candidates who appear for approximately 2,500 seats? The figure is over 4,00,000. That's right - 4,00,000 candidates for 2,500 seats. Which selection process in the US is so competitive? But securing admission to one of the six Indian Institutes of Technology is comparatively easier - getting into one of the top Business Schools is even more difficult. My Business school - the Xavier Labor Relations Institute is ranked fourth in India. In the year I got into in, over a hundred thousand candidates appeared for 65 seats in their Business Management program (I have heard that they have increased the number of admissions to 140 since). The typical selection rate for most good business schools in India is no more than 0.07%. That's right - 7 in 10,000. Compare that with 15% for Wharton (Source: bwnt.businessweek.com/ft_...hools=520) It is guys who have gone through such gruelling elimination processes who finally end up in the US. It is not surprising that about 50% of the IT businesses in the silicon valley is owned by Indians (per Clinton's own admission!). Just one more (a trifle unrelated) statistic about the selectivity of examinations in India. One of the most sought after jobs in India is that for the Indian Civil Service for which over 3,00,000 candidates appear for fewer than 350 seats in the unreserved category. I joined this service in 1995 and my rank at the end of the selection process (comprising a set of preliminary exams, the main examination comprising two non overlapping subjects at the masters level, exams on general knowledge, essays and personal interviews totalling a whopping 2,200 marks) was 313 (yup, just made it). To say that selection processes in India are tough would be an understatement. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I have this nagging feeling that I am giving an impression of beating my own drum. Sorry abt that folks, but some facts were necessary to put matters in perspective.. Oh and just a quick word on Indians working for measly salaries. I don't think that's true. I don't think any Indian engineer will come all the way to the US to work for $9.00 an hour. That no company will sponsor an alien (god bless whoever devised that wonderfully expressive term) for that salary is a related issue. As about me, I have been nominated by the govt of India to serve at the IMF on the condition that I get a Ph D in Econ. So at present I am slogging at a US univ pursuing my Ph D in Econ. Don't worry guys, I won't be usurping any of your jobs.
gxeric Registered User Posts: 861 (11/20/02 10:10:47 am) Reply	re They have colleges in India!?
mike1117 Registered User Posts: 194 (11/20/02 11:08:13 am) Reply	college You better hope they do. Otherwise it'll be high school students taking "your" jobs.
Go Blue 99 Registered User Posts: 119 (12/9/02 9:17:08 am) Reply	- Hell yeah there are colleges in india...they have engineering and business schools that are on par with top schools in the US.
Marcus137 Registered User Posts: 1 (12/9/02 4:27:31 pm) Reply	Labor Mobility and Declining Wages Well! I guess that it's time to give ourselves up, boys! Looks like the Indians have won! But seriously, just because a vanishingly small percentage of a population can endure extraordinary academic torture doesn't mean that they're any better when it comes to the nuts and bolts of genuine human creativity. In fact, most times you wind up worse for the torments through a loss of human objectivity. An example - I have a wonderfully fast and capable PC which could probably eat most anybody's lunch when it comes down to raw cataloging, computational, and retrieval power. And, there are millions like it out there, all around the world. But not one of them WILL EVER be able to replace the cross-colossal innovation machine present between any healthy person's ears. The point - America didn't become the place it is now through the hard, manufactured world of sheer academic expression and test scores. Rather, it has always been driven by a culture which values the full spectrum of human expression, and innovates through a healthy balance of academic experience and genuine creative leisure. This is true excellence. Our history testifies to its power. Where we abandon this right balance to cultures which do not embrace any such values, we will see ourselves losing our very souls to a cold, hard, unnatural existence of intellectual and academic slavery. But take heart all, it will come back around. Somewhere, someone will get just enough grant money to "explore" this issue, and bring our culture back to its roots. Why, they'll even discover that it's good for business! Till then, keep hoeing your row and have recourse to God. Pax.

[El Gato]

I mean what's the use of taking C++ and Jave programming classes, when upon graduation these jobs will be too few and far between.

Two points: 1. That's this year, in a year or two, those jobs may again go begging. Better to have some real skills, managers are a dime a dozen. Not good ones of course, but an undergrad business degree gets you a job as a trainee manager at Wally World. 2. Programing languages can be thought of as tools. No matter what your field, at some point it will involve software and computers. I'm an EE (M.S.), and in a nearly 30 year career, it's only been the last 3 years that the software I wrote was part of the product, prior to that it was a design/analysis tool. Mostly I do simulations, and until about 5 or 6 years ago, they were exclusively in FORTRAN. Then I took C++, and since then I've done more C/C++ programing than FORTRAN. The FORTRAN is still usefull though (I took that course in 1969 :) ). At my current job, I'm oftern the only one that even "Read" FORTRAN, and their alot of legacy code that needs to be converted to something else, or modified for new applications, and guess who they come to help with or even do the job?

[2banana]

- Yes they are. So much so that most of them are being hired out of India or the middle east cause these guys will work for pennies. Why hire an American or Canuck and pay them $60k + when you can get one from a 3rd world country who will do back flips for $30k?

F*cking crybaby. Wah! I won't even look for a job because I know I can't find one for the money I want because of all the competition. What a loser. Get the f*ck out of bed and start acting like a man.( end rant )

Also, the average Special Forces NCO in Afghanistan (the guy doing all the fighting) makes about $36,000/year. Now go drink your latte.

[USMMA_83]

I have followed threads on outsourcing, etc., and have never commented on them. I will now attempt to explain my position on wages, and standard of living here in the US.

First off, I do not believe that a JAVA programmer should be making 100K a year. Any software program is an extension of logic and organizational skills. True, that in the early years, when supply was scarce, the programmers could command 100K, but now every Indian from the fifth grade onwards knows JAVA and C++. The demand for programming skills is there, but the supply is more than meets the demand. It is simple. The wages will decline, that is logical too. The question is does the American programmer want to work at a reduced wage due to increase in supply?

Next, in an Global economy, there is an equilibrium that is reached between the participants - that's one of the laws of economics as defined within the "Wealth of Nations."

Now as to the standard of living here in the US. My impression is that many of our families are living beyond their means. That is good for our banking systems, and service providers. In many families both the parents are working to project their status and material goods - all commendable by our standards, but at the same time look at what is happening with the Indians. Upon graduation from University, the child lives with the parent. He or she goes to work for a firm specializing in software outsourcing. The Indian is working for 30 -50% less than the American counterpart. The Indian's lifestyle in an extended family is such that the wage is more than adequate to meet his or her's needs. There is an economy of scale in effect in India. This is not possible here in the US. No college graduate will be a part of an extended family - therefore the need for higher wages than the (global) norm, etc.

Final point: you cannot mess with supply and demand unless you also manufacture a phony economy. Lower wages for programmers and engineers is the norm and will be until there is equilibrium between the co-joined economies.

[Incorrigible]

wsux is right on the money.  I've interviewed and hired many Indian database admins and programmers.  I do look for the IIT in their resume (had HR verify it once) and that tells me they are very smart.  However, the system of elimination there makes some very cunning and that's not always what you're looking for in an employee.

He's right, we can put up artificial barriers but I'd rather have these smart guys working for me than for the Russians, Japanese or the Chinese even.

As for Marcus137, he forgets that America is a land of immigrants.  European business operations are very clannish.  When Europeans moved to the US, they couldn't rely on a clan and had to learn to trust strangers and that's why the rule of law in the US is so important.  India is even more clannish but likewise, when Indians move to the US, they have to reach out to strangers as well as rely on a network of friends and associates.  In fact, new immigrants from India in America are much more likely to interact with native born Americans than the other Asian immigrants I've encountered.

Innovation is as much a state of mind as it is a process.  US students are very short sighted if they do not do the hard work upfront.  Take the Calculus and electromagnetic fields classes.

You may never use Calculus in your daily work, but trust me, you'll apply it everyday.

EECS, Marquette University, 1987
MBA, Pace University, 1992

[A. Pole]

Engineering Grad Looking for work -- Where are the Jobs???

In India?

[Incorrigible]

FYI

[Stavka2]

The only reason this is happening is because crooked American politicians are allowing crooked American corporations to abuse the high tech visas and import labor that is already here, so they can use and abuse them and then toss them out as soon as they get green cards and bring in fresh meat.

[AppyPappy]

The boom is over. Time to come back to reality. You won't get a job for $100k where you can bring your dog to work and decorate your office like a Moroccan whorehouse. It's over. Take your $30k and be happy to get it.

[Stavka2]

How about this, lets start importing Gurkas and Spetsnaz who will work for $20,000 and put all those over priced US NCOs out of work...sound fair? Maybe you can get the analogy.

[Stavka2]

So you agree with Mexicans replacing Americans at factories and with manufacturing moving out of the US? There's no difference here.

[Keith in Iowa]

F*cking crybaby. Wah! I won't even look for a job because I know I can't find one for the money I want because of all the competition. What a loser. Get the f*ck out of bed and start acting like a man.( end rant )

Profanity is the feeble mindeds way of expressing themselves with force...(end rant)I could go on about your attitude, but I'm not going to go there. I would get banned. Go to the nearest 7-11 and get yourself a six pack of clue because you have none.

[BigBobber]

I am a civil engineer with 25 years experience. There is going to be an extreme shortage of engineers in my field in the next 5-10 years. In my company, which employs hundreds of engineers (civil, mechanical, and electrical), almost all the engineers are in the age range 45-55. That's right 45-55. They offered early retirement during the downsizing days to cut off the upper end of the age group. Then they had a hiring freeze so no younger engineers came in.

In my company, the realization of the poor engineer demographics is approaching panic stage. It takes 5-10 years to train an engineer to take over for a veteran one. If they want to get enough engineers to run the infrastructure of this country, there is going to have to be heavy hiring over the next decade. I don't think my company is unique and this will be a widespread problem in the U.S.

MBA's cannot keep this country running. You have to have the engineering knowhow. When I talk to civil engineering professors thay say the enrollments are way down. I don't know how we will be able to meet the future demand unless things change quickly.

I would never recommend anyone major in programming in college. Get an education in one of the engineering fields or sciences and take programming as a minor. Pick a field that interests you. Not the latest or hotest one that seems to be hiring at the moment.

[Question_Assumptions]

One of the problems is that a lot of "kids" got $60K+ jobs right out of college and they expect that kind of salary, not realizing how unusually high those salaries where when compared to other fields and the quality of work they were doing. But I would say that H1Bs are no bargain for those who get laid off. My previous employer had a few. Those lucky enough to have gotten their green cards or who have a working spouse are OK. Those who are single and are still on H1Bs have 10 days to figure something else out (and no one wants to sponsor an H1B right now) or leave the country.

[USMMA_83]

If they are able read, write and communicate in English, why not? The 36K wage attracts a certain individual from our population. Those are the people we want in our armed forces. If we needed individuals who fit a 20K profile, we would make them a part of our armed forces too. I think it is you who do not get it.

[AppyPappy]

So you agree with Mexicans replacing Americans at factories and with manufacturing moving out of the US?

I agree with legal immigrants getting jobs that Americans WON'T do. My wife worked in a cotton mill. 80% of applicants failed the drug test KNOWING they were going to take it. The only workers they could get were immigrants. It's not the employer's fault that Americans won't work.

[Stavka2]

Problem is, that the talent is there, they import these guys. They have work visas, which if they loose their jobs, they have 2 days to find a sponser or they are gone. So in other words, they have a captive work force that will do anything to stick around, so they don't have to compete with the local work force. This is a form of unionization, except from the corporate side, this is not a free market or an open market and is as wrong as labor side unions.

[USMMA_83]

100% correct. My impression is that most programmers are in it for the quick money. Most MBA think they will be commanding salaries of 200K and will be directors or VPs without any real knowledge. Wanna take a guess where your firm will hire the civil engineers from? Take a wild guess? Every kid on our block who is college age is wanting to major in Business. They all think they will be working on Wall Street making millions. Dumb Asses!

[lewislynn]

The point - America didn't become the place it is now through the hard, manufactured world of sheer academic expression and test scores.

Nor did we get here by using labor on foreign soil at the expense of Americans...

But that's OK. What comes around goes around. When the Chinese come for India's jobs (in avery short time), who do you think they'll come crying to?...

Unless we find starving life on another planet, globalization for cheap labor is a Ponzi scheme.

[Stavka2]

Read #17. This is not free or open or fair business practice. A friend of mine works for such a company in Silicon Valley, he's Korean, and a legal citizen and he is planning on leaving because the abuse the company shells out on workers, but these guys on visas can't leave. So they work 80 hour work weeks for 30K, not because the market dictates the cost of labor but because they are used as indentured servants, legalized slaves. From what he said, most of these guys are all but burnt out and don't have any life or see their families but have no choice...it's called white collar sweat shops. Welcome to the new reality.