The Downside of Having More Engineers

[thefro526]

I haven't really had the time to read this thread extensively but it sounds like it's a very interesting discussion.

Just to comment on the original post, there's an extremely high demand for Engineers across the US and even the world. I have seen it in my own workplace where I was hired out of high school to work alongside Professional Engineers. They were in need of help so bad that they looked outside of traditional channels where they found me and saw if I would be up to the task.

It's really funny to work alongside engineers at such a young age because many of them are a lot older than I am - I've noticed that as a whole it seems like many of the Engineers I work with from outside companies are usually well into their 50's and 60's and they come from a different era of thinking and have skill sets that aren't taught today. Also, many of these engineers have the intent on retiring soon but they can't find suitable replacements. We're actually having this problem at my Job, where we're looking for a new supervisor for our engineering department and we're struggling to find someone who is qualified in terms of experience and education.

So the demand is still there, and I really don't foresee it going away anytime soon.

[MGoelz]

Great topic. I have actually thought about this.

The demand for engineers, in my opinion, is only going to grow, at least for awhile. One of the things I have noticed is that many companies want someone with engineering experience for something that isn't an engineering position. They need someone that understands those fundamental concepts including problem solving. I believe that problem solvers are more efficient, simply because they do not become burdened by small problems. Rather, they analyze, think of solutions, and fix or it, or at least avoid creating the same issue again.

I too have noticed that many engineering positions are filled by people that are much older than I. Last semester, I had the opportunity to have an internship at Rolls-Royce. I felt so young in comparison to everyone there. Many of the workers are coming close to retirement age. If we have a demand that isn't being filled now, imagine ten years from now. This semester, I'm interning at Allison Transmission. Both Allison and Rolls-Royce make valuable use of interns. They are able to introduce young high school and college students to a professional, mostly STEM environment, while giving them the access to hundreds of engineers to gain knowledge from. One of the biggest things that seems to always need done is data entry. It sounds like such a dull, menial task, but in all actuality, if one doesn't understand the data, how can appropriate databases, charts, and reports be generated? They can not. This supports the claim that engineers aren't just hired for their degree, but for the concepts they understand.

In addition, the U.S. is falling behind in educational rigor. Many times, the students that have the motivation, the talent, and the desire to go into STEM fields are discouraged by the people around them, or by a lack of exposure. That is the disease FIRST is trying to cure. I think that if FIRST accomplishes nothing else, it has accomplished exposure and helping young adults grasp concepts of problem solving that will ultimately be carried with them the rest of their lives, whether they are aware of it or not.

Outsourcing has been used because "everyone started doing it." Really, to me, it seems like they use it as a band-aid for problems. Outsource the jobs. There. Problem solved. Ok, so it solves short-term problems, but as has been mentioned, not the long ones. For the most part, the short-term has passed, which is why many companies are bringing business back. I also feel that with the internet, with our growing abilities and speeds of communicating, we are becoming a global community more than ever before. Companies want to be global. It's safe for them and their future. A global company is a larger company. A larger company needs more workers, which makes another increase in demand. Also, I feel the U.S. has had a technological slow-down as of recent. If only, we could all become dedicated to thinking outside of the boxes that have been drawn once more. We can do that. We have chosen not to though, because not a whole lot of people want to crawl out from under the security blanket in which they have been hiding. No offense to the older generation, but this is largely in part because as humans age, we become more fixed in our opinions and ideas. With this, coupled with the low number of people my age interested in revolutionizing the world once more, we have a very large demand indeed.

This is only my perspective though. I honestly believe that the issue of supply and demand is all perspectives. Raw data only has so much value.

As far as wages are concerned, I don't know about most people, but I want to be an engineer, because those are the things I enjoy doing. I would rather live in a small apartment my whole life, barely getting by, being an engineer, solving problems, than working at some outrageously high paying job, and being miserable beyond belief. It's all about personal values. Money is important to live in today's society, but fixing society's problems is even more important, and that's what engineers are for.

I think being an engineer is a mindset more than anything. All I can close this with is that I think FIRST is doing a great job of letting students into engineers' minds to learn to think like engineers, even if it is entirely unnecessary for the career path they have chosen. I know, if it were not for FIRST, I would not even know what engineering is, that it existed, or that it happens to be what I enjoy most.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by skimoose

Now if we could just get to a majority of politicians being engineers instead of lawyers we might get this country moving again.

This could only be a benefit to all of us.

If we take the assumption (which might not be valid) that politicians are a subset of the population and that if the population has more STEM-aware people, then we'd end up with more STEM-aware politicians.

But I fear that people who understand the logic used in STEM professions are far too smart to get involved in politics.

(In all seriousnes though: Politician is one of the very best jobs you can get. You're guaranteed to get rich, live a life of utmost luxury, and have all of everything you could ever want, assuming you don't get caught.)

[MikeE]

Originally Posted by gwilliam

The rest of the world is supplying many of the engineers who do work for US companies, either through outsourcing (work done for American companies in other countries, both manufacturing and engineering), H1B visas (issued to foreign-educated engineers with "special skills" supposedly unavailable in the US, usually because the offered salary is far below US market salaries) and all the students who come to American graduate schools from other countries.

(My emphasis added)
I really can't let the scare quotes and accusation of the highlighted statement go without comment.

In my professional life I'm a Research Engineering Manager at a moderately large high tech company, and over the past several years I have been involved in hiring for ~40 mostly PhD-level positions. Almost all of these hires have been non-US born engineers and computer scientists. For recent graduates we usually have to use the H1B visa. We do require special skills and pay a premium for them, but there are simply very few qualified US candidates out there.

The data supports my anecdotal evidence. Over the past two decades, approximately two thirds of all engineering PhDs awarded by US graduate schools were earned by foreign-born students (Table 11, Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2007). A larger percentage of US PhDs stay in academia, add in PhDs earned in European graduate schools so my experience of >80% foreign-born candidates is as expected.

[purduephotog]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I think one needs to ask the question..."If the US has 200,000 engineering jobs that are unfilled, how are the current engineers keeping up with the demand?" (snip)

Even simpler than that- they're hiring unqualified people.

Let's talk about a hypothetical situation where the CEO says "We have X number of contracts we expect to win and will need a total of 50 FTE to do the work".

That filters down to the department level, where they say "OH NO!" and start opening reqs for new hires.

The HR department, not always clueless, starts pulling in resumes. Since most engineers may not have the best people skills, they're added to the interviewing boards.

Problem is... if this happens everywhere, and there's a shortage, and your company is NOT willing to pay more than anyone else, you don't get first tier. You get 5th. Suddenly you've got folks being hired- that are still smart- but maybe don't have the qualifications you'd expect them to have, or have gaps... so your OJT increases exponentially.

Unfortunately you've also got YOUR job to do, so that OJT starts eating out of your project time... which means delegating... which means - MORE engineers needed.

Rinse and Repeat.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by thefro526

It's really funny to work alongside engineers at such a young age because many of them are a lot older than I am - I've noticed that as a whole it seems like many of the Engineers I work with from outside companies are usually well into their 50's and 60's and they come from a different era of thinking and have skill sets that aren't taught today. Also, many of these engineers have the intent on retiring soon but they can't find suitable replacements.

This is especially true of high power RF engineers. It is rare to find a transmitter guy under 45. No one in school these days wants to work with a 35,000 volt, 3 amp power supply or a 50kW rf generator.

[ayeckley]

Originally Posted by MikeE

Over the past two decades, approximately two thirds of all engineering PhDs awarded by US graduate schools were earned by foreign-born students (Table 11, Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2007). A larger percentage of US PhDs stay in academia, add in PhDs earned in European graduate schools so my experience of >80% foreign-born candidates is as expected.

I suspect that the vast majority of U.S. born engineers who do not have a PhD (I fall into that category) have performed their (our) own cost/benefit analysis and concluded that pursuing and obtaining a PhD isn't in their (our) own economic self-interest. I believe that analysis often yields a different answer for foreign-born engineering students, for a variety of reasons. The outcome of the analysis will also vary naturally over time. I don't believe that statistics such as those above (which are consistent with my own observations as well) are symptomatic of a problem with the US STEM educational system, or indicative that US students aren't still interested in science or technology.

Why do I feel that way? The PhD is a prerequisite for very few career objectives for engineering practitioners, and in many cases it negatively impacts one's own marketability. It's a long-term investment and the anticipated rewards don't materialize for everyone. As long as US students continue to have the choice and ability to pursue such degrees, I'll not be losing any sleep over the ratio of "those who do" to "those who don't" or the ratio of "those from here" to "those from there".