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Engineering Careers Short-Circuiting
8BitWimp writes "Today's edition of the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article discussing the current plight of the U.S. engineering profession. One 29-year-old engineer recently caught in Nortel Network's layoffs said "I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career." The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player. What do other Slash-Dot readers think of this situation as related to their programming and engineering careers? Would you pursue the same career path again?"
Isn't seven years an awfully long time to spend in school to be an engineer? Even an MS can be accomplished in 5-6 years if your school has a fast track program.
I think careers in engineering fields require a degree of career management from the individual. They can no longer expect to be given success and wealth just because they have an engineering degree. They need to guide their career so they can grow into different positions as time goes on.
While this is no different than other disciplines, I guess it's a new idea for the technologically inclined.
You can look back on a lifetime of discomfort and wonder what exactly it was that you were thinking...
IMO, the surges in the industry attract a bunch of riff raff, which get purged when times get tough. Not to disparage the articl poster (or is it poseur :-) jest kidding); he may be a great engineer, just too much of the riff raff feeding from the new jobs trough. When it comes to staying employed, it's really about whom you know and your reputation. Anyway, during the slumps is when the real core of the industry gets to innovating the next wave...
cat
What I see disappearing are the median income jobs. It seems like things are becoming more and more polarized w/many many low pay jobs and a few very high paying jobs.
I don't think this is a good trend for our nation as a whole. In the long run it will hurt everyone.
I interview for a new job probably about once a month. The last one was for a single opening w/the USDA for slightly lower than average pay. It was to do development and database administration. There were over 100 applicants. They wanted a programmer that had been an accountant and got it. Being just a plain old programmer hasn't been helping me a lot lately.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Here's my little tale -
I got a BS in astrophysics. But, there's no money in that. So, I went into doing wireless infrastructure (just before telecommunications went to hell). Now, a little over two years later, my office is being closed down. If I want to stay with the company, I'd have to move.
My way of dealing with this is to move away from engineering (in the traditional sense). I'm partway through an MSEE, which I guess I'll finish. But, I'm really going into academia. I've taken a research position in neurobiology and will probably do a PhD in physics (or maybe an MD/PhD).
In the end, engineering's always going to be around. And it will generally be one of the more respectable professions. But, there is certainly a "burn-out" factor to it.
Personally, after having used up 2 years working very hard on something, only to get laid off.. it's kind of a slap in the face. At least if I had done something that I felt was worthwhile, I could justify it. Sure, I'm sitting on some cash now, but that isn't really worth it (in hindsight). The products we put out, in my mind, are meaningless, they were just a way of making money.
I guess engineering, if you are really into the stuff you're creating, is a good career. Otherwise, it can be a good way to pay the bills, but nothing more.
Just, find something that you enjoy doing and make sure that the end result of your work has value to you. I liked the work I did, but I have no feelings for the results of the work...
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Is it just me, or are there many different types of engineering?
Any of the big dot-com crap "engineering" is no longer viable, of course. None of that was.
If you all want to be a multi-faceted engineer (as most want to be) get a Mechanical Engineering or similar type degree. One of the widest paths available for engineers that gives you the ability to get a job in hundreds of different industries. Any "software engineer" is just a programmer type, not a real engineer.
Why are stories of this negligible intelligence appearing on slashdot ALL THE TIME now?
My gf's friend made 2000.00 on one paycheck (extra on comission alone) in addition to her normal salary. She sells furniture. My gf got a 1000.00 bonus on her paycheck for passing a test and finding flaws in the Doctors rule book. Also in addition to her normal pay. ---I deal with real "genius's" every day, and I get normal pay..... Man, I think I might become a Dental Asst, or salesperson.... stripping's becoming more and more of a draw... money money money
I guess most people hit a point in their lives when they're tired of picking up new skills. I've been a developer for 10 years so far and I would rather pick up new languages/skills than wind up managing people who are picking up new skills and doing things I can't. Maybe that will change for me someday, but I tried being a manager, and I got no sense of satisfaction or accomplishment goading other people into building things... I want to be the builder! Learning OOD/UML was FUN. Learning Java and VB.Net was FUN. It sure beat the hell out of having that niggling feeling at the back of my mind that sooner or later my superiors would figure out that I wasn't generating easily measured value and kick my ass to the curb. Also, I've gotten most of my jobs via networking with people I've done good work for in the past, and have not been out of work more than a month a year... And I've had to find 4 jobs this year! Maybe people are moving out of the profession because they aren't differentiating themselves to the point where the folks with jobs to fill think of them first.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
I agree that there are other jobs, but they are still in short supply. I am in the midwest and there are hundreds, if not thousands of applications for most IT jobs and if you lose the job you have here, you face the real prospect of having to leave the state to find work.
My company has been through four rounds of layoffs since 2000. Somehow I have managed to make it through, but it has changed my perspective on the industry, that's for certain. Its amazing how things change so quickly. I was in college studying Comp Sci three years ago and no one could stop talking about how great the economy was and how we could all live like kings. Then I started to see the first round of jobs go overseas.
And now, three years later, I do think about leaving it from time to time. But I feel like I got into this business for the right reason: because I loved doing it. At the same time, I find it VERY hard to imagine spending a career worried about whether the next round of layoffs will include me. Its a tough thing to deal with and I have considered other professions. But everyone tells me its like this in every field. I just have to remind myself that the economy is cyclical and at some point we'll have crawled out of this hole.
m
Or go back and get an business degree and join the ranks of the management that made the bad decisions. I note that where I work, they're all still there. I guess somebody has to be around to sign the pink slips...
I used to be very picky, in hiring, choosing people that really wanted to work in the area we were in (games, etc.). You ought to be really sparked by games. Then I came to appreciate proffesionals that just know how to do their job. It's not my worry how they are motivated, if they can do their jobs.
But still, I think the internet boom had an incredibly bad effect of attracting people that were only in it for the money and the idea that they could pull it. I still suspect that you need to have logic geeks for good software engineering, smart-but-not-into-it really doesn't tend to be good enough in a field where we are still trying to figure out the best practices and everything is controversial. You have to care, because there is no way for an automoton to solve the harder problems.
There was a glut of new engineers, many not really interested in software engineering, though maybe they do want to do a good job. But no one knows what entails "just" doing a "good job" is in software engineering, so I think they are at a great disadvantage because they are not into really working out what works by experimentation and perfecting their practices.
One other thing: the half life of technology is an illusion. Logic is the tool. It's timeless. Software engineers are applied logicians, and it's the same logic forming a substrate underneath all technologies.
If build up a learning curve cost, you have to take a salary cut because you are asking your employer to help educate you, it's worth it for all involved, and if you understand logic then you can be sure that when you do learn, it will be with expertise.
However, I know in the real world people that hire don't always know that.
Frankly, I hope people that like software stick with it. But a lot of people who were so-so on it probably do need to vacate the industry.
-pyrrho
Programming is going through a normal transition from a craft to a more commoditized manufacturing process.
I think a great analogy is furniture making. 200 years ago, making furniture was a highly skilled craft in which artisans would need to know a lot of everything ranging from asthetics to mechanical engineering principals to make qualtiy furniture. Today, though, most furniture is assembled by unskilled labor from gluing together commodity components mass manufactured by large factories.
The same is happening with software. Today most software is made by simply gluing together components (active x controls, jpeg libraries, etc) made by a handful of large suppliers. Skilled software engineering still exists at places like Microsoft, Ximian, Apple, and many other linux mailinglists; but for the most part programmers are doing more "manufacturing" work than "engineering". Heck, many of them can't even figure out how to write sort(). I think the auto industry went through similar.
I think the industry ought to start making more of a distinction between software engineers (like the mechanical engineers who design chairs), and programmers (like the guys who glue together chairs).
I predict that just like physical manufacturing, "software manufacturing" will continue to become cheaper as commodity software components become more available. As this happens, I predict a shrinking size of "software engineering" (like automotive design) and an increasing size of "software manufacturing". I also predict unionization of software manufacturing; and a continued migration of these jobs to cheaper places just like other manufacturing jobs. I also predict 5 decades from now, most software components will come from no more than a dozen big software houses and some small shops in much the same way that auto components are made.
Should be an interesting decade.
Unfortunately, the barriers for small business are quite high in this country. People don't realize it. Big, giant behemoths are able to fend off the attacks of the State and other predators (such as other behemoth-sized businesses).
Despite this, I still plan to take the plunge. I'm scrimping and saving and developing business contacts. I'm hoping that in 24 months, I'll be able to open a business. I have some ideas, we'll see.
Of course, I could get laid off tommorrow, you never know, no matter what they tell you.
Incidentally, one of my in-laws was recently laid off from an electrical engineering job, and she's now looking to go into computer science, maybe because she saw that I bounced back into a pretty good job after being laid off during the crash while she hasn't had any offers.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Yet there is: ETS, Polytechnique, McGill, Concordia, UdeM and the UQAM recruting like mad to get those students in! Not to mention all the universities around the Montreal area like Sherbrooke!
So we have the amusing spectacle of about 1000 engineering graduates every year fighting for about 200 jobs.
Most of these 'engineers' have never touched a component in their lives. They never had an interest in electronics until the universities came in with their brochures and their pretty pictures of happy multi-cultural models and hyped promises of huge salaries and prestige.
The reality is that most of these kids will come out of school and become 'component engineers', which is fancy talk for data entry clerk, ie scanning in data sheets and making summaries of the part for the database.
Another amusing spectacle: these kids can solve Z-transforms on their calculators, but have never seen a resistor or an FPGA, and usually enter hilariously wrong information in the system. Yet THEY are the engineers, and I with 15 years experience in electronics and a PCB designer, am ignored.
Most of these kids also become very quickly disillusioned with their jobs. They thought they'd be designing Space Shuttle computers like in the brochures, but in real-life, it's the buddies of the boss that get the fun stuff, everyone else lights up LEDs or whatnot, with that powerful bachelor's degree.
Friends, University is a cult. They will indoctrinate you, brainwash you, and when the job market falls to shit because there ARE TOO MANY ENGINEERS, they'll offer you a Masters or Doctorate, where they can rake in more money and you still can't get a job.
Think about it, at its peak, Nortel had about 10000 'engineers' fogging up mirrors there. Now with an average salary of 60000$, that's 600 MILLION a YEAR in PAYROLL alone.
How many routers do you have to sell just to break even with that kind of insane payroll?
The reality is that engineers should be used SPARINGLY in a company, yet now it's a MINIMUM to get a job.
The results are what we see now. Of course, people will still keep plugging away in school, waiting for the next bubble, and then they'll think to themselves, "wow look at me, mr. cult was wrong!". That lasts for two years, then the cycle starts again.
Universities MUST BE STOPPED. If you don't have a scope in high school, NO UNIVERSITY FOR YOU. It's the ONLY way to insure PROPER RESPECT for the _REAL ENGINEER_.
I'm sitting here scratching my head as I read these posts. I've worked in the Communications/Networking industry for the past 8-10 years. I have a BSEE. I went to school for a BSEE because I felt that EE was what I wanted to do. I enjoy what I do. While it's important to make a reasonable living, it's not about the pay. I worked for one company for about 3 years when I first graduated for college. They gave me a start and I'm grateful for that. When things started to look bad there, I left. I didn't wait for the news that the place was closing. I used my business sense and made a judgement call. The company was small. I tried to speak up about business issues. I was told that engineers didn't need to concern themselves with that. To me, that's the wrong answer. In any organization, everyone must be concerned about the business. You may not be responsible for much, but everyone has a responsibility for something. In addition, the hours and stress were getting out of hand. So I started looking. I found another position that seemed to be exciting. I accepted it. When I turned in notice, I was offered a significant deal (and I do mean significant) to stay. I didn't accept it. The issue wasn't the money it was enjoying what I do and having peace about it. I volunteer as a leader over youth (teens) in my area. I often hear from them questions like, so I take it you make good money? and... What kind of money does someone in this position make? They are all valid questions to a point, but it really concerns me if the reason for selecting a career is the money. I would have to say that possibily the reason for not selecting a career might be very poor pay. But, if your in any career because you wanted the money, I don't agree with that. I'm sorry to say it, but I don't a doctor to work on me who decided to be a doctor because of the pay and not because he cared about people. I don't want to walk in a building designed by a civil engineer who wanted a big salary and didn't really like to design/build things. I don't want to sit down and have a waitor/waitress serve dinner who took the job exclusively for the tips and doesn't care about customers.
For those who would brave the storm, have you thought about how you would stay valuable in this market? I would be interested to hear if anyone has tried to learn an Indian language in order to communicate with their intercontinental coworkers.
If this becomes a major resume item in the next five to ten years and/or an aspect of computer trade school programs, I would be interested in getting a head start in case the issue becomes reality for me. Now may be the time to buck the trend of securing your job and/or career by simply learning one language and a couple APIs per year, and get down to following the twists and turns of the business that funds the IT industry. You know. For those who are up to it.
PS. I'm Canadian, and I have work from American firms already. To some degree, getting Canadian work is a lesser version of getting Indian work: there may be timezone and communication barriers, but the work is cheaper. When you're from a country with a much smaller economy than the US, it 's often necessary to get American work. Canada's economy makes up for 3% of the world's. Not that much, for the second biggest mass of land in the world, eh? :-)
I'm a self-taught engineer and firmware programmer with no degree. I started out fixing minicomputers in the early 70's and I've never been unemployed longer than 2 months. I look forward to a comfortable retirement in my paid-off house with a full shop/lab in the garage. I'd do it all over again in a second, with the only regret being that I didn't get a degree.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I am a software engineer but I'd be ashamed to show my face at a mechanical or civil engineer convention - the buildings and machines they make don't blow up all the time, repeatedly, for no reason at all.
The responsibility placed on engineers (particularly civil engineers) is greater than that of many software engineers. Civil engineers are held liable for the failures of their designs. The civil engineer field book is a legal document. It must written in black pencil. Nothing may be erased. Corrections must be written with red pencil. A single stroke of red should be used to strike out an error. The point is that not only are civil engineers held accountable for their designs, but they are also required to keep consistant records of their work.
Now, contrast this to responsibility taken by certain firms whose software has failed to perform. I seem to remember for instance that the Navy had a brand-new, trick-out ship a few years ago that ended up being pretty useless for a while because of its software.
I don't know if NASA ever got any satisfaction from the subcontractor that wrote the system that screwed the Mars Polar Lander.
This is the only industry that I know of where we actually reward companies for putting out a faulty product (i.e. pay bug fixes). As Wally once said, "I'm going go write me a minivan."
-Jennifer
The reason H1-B like myself are working 80 hour weeks for below the average salaries is... H1-B status. When you have to get out of country in 10 days once you lost the job, you tend not to care all that much about hours and salary. Give us a Green Card and we'll be working just like anybody else.
So, say thanks to Labor Department and INS that take 3 years to take papers from one stack and put into another.
Amazing how the best intentions (we'll make it temporary, so if the times get tough we'll get them out in no time!) have led to the worst consequences.
What the tech industry seriously lacks is any certification that says "This person does quality work." MSCE just says that the person knows how to sell you Microsoft products, CCNA does the same for Cisco... there is no credible certification that says you know when to use a Cisco product, and when all that's really needed is a Linksys.
"Look for the union label" is supposed to convey an image of quality. Especially in freelance fields, being hiring a union member means that the person qualifies for membership, and only performs work that complies with the union standard. More expensive, yeah. But it serves as a great way to convince others that the work complies with standards. "Yeah, we use subcontractors, but everybody we hire is union."
Think about it, how many companies will want a Linux server set up, but then not be willing to pay you to patch it or and don't know how patch it themselves. A union standard could prevent such a situation, by refusing to set up servers for people who do not committ to also have them supported by a union member. Yeah, they could go the cheap way by having non-union techies set it up, but that may hinder the company when trying to impress other companies.
I agree completely.
:-)
I just wanted to add a little advice to those who are encouraged to pursue engineering degrees: you will be very much more employable with a B.S. if your degree is electrical or mechanical (vs. computer, industrial, aerospace, civil, general, or nuclear. I can't speak for chemical, it's pretty different.) You can study anything you want, you can still compete for the jobs you want (and get them!), just don't limit yourself unneccesarily.
Oh yeah, you need to study hard, too
Exactly. Not only that, but there's lots of software fields where hobbyist programmers simply aren't interested in writing free (or Free) software, and an intelligent company would spend their time pursuing those fields instead. I don't see a lot of open-source EDA programs for instance (Cadence, Mentor Graphics, etc.).
But if you make a product that tons of people would like and then give it an astronomical price, don't be surprised when someone writes a free version. In this guy's example, he complained about BugZilla. BugZilla was developed to help the development of Mozilla, a very large open-source project. What does this guy expect, all the thousands of developers (paid and unpaid) to go out and purchase ClearDDTS contracts for thousands of dollars per seat? Obviously this is a product with a large appeal but a ridiculous price tag, and it got superceded by a free replacement. Too bad. If some developers could make a similar product for free, Rational obviously was charging far too much.
But not all of those are unions. The AMA and ABA are, like you said, professional organizations. Doctors get laid off (ask my friend's father), lawyers get laid off (ask ex-lawyers from many tech law firms). The MLBPA and NHLPA, of course, are essentially unions -- they all go on strike every once and a while to get more pay, better benefits. (Thus, please don't call them "professional" organizations -- there's something about tha bastardliness of going on strike for more millions of dollars that doesn't sound "professional.") But doctors and lawyers cannot go on strike. No one negotiates for their higher pay or better benefits.
So, which is it? The union or the professional organization?
Your claim that there is no unemployment problem, only a problem of potential employees choosing not to accept a low-enough wage to become employed. This might possibly be true in a pure market setting, but we are not dealing with such a pure situation. There are a multitude of additional factors on both sides of the potential employment agreement.
Let me mention but a couple of these factors.
A potential employer considers far more than the cost of the potential employee when making a hiring decision. Does the employer have more work than the current staff can complete? Would the additional work that more staff would complete increase revenues, in other words pay for themselves. There are plenty of companies where the answers to these questions are no, and thus there is no opportunity at any price.
Potential employers when considering a candidate also pass judgement on whether that potential employee will be a happy contributing member of the company. Frequently an extremely qualified candidate willing to take a major pay cut will loose out to the less qualified candidate. The issue here is that it is assumed that the more experienced candidate is far too qualified to truly be content with the position, thus even though they may indicate they are willing to take on that position at the offered (extremely low) pay rate, the potential employer will choose the less qualified candidate on the assumption that that individual will be happier and thus a better contributor.
The are plenty of other considerations that come into play in a potential hiring situation. These, though, illustrate that a great engineer with excellent credentials willing to work for very low pay may still be unable to secure a job.
Maybe for computer/electrical engineering, but not for more traditional engineering (such as civil). My dad is a civil engineer, and he is at the height of his career at age 55. This is because he's become an expert at what he does, there is a shortage of civil engineers, and civil engineer does not really change much.
I'm a comp eng in my mid 20's. I recognize the fact that I might not be able to do this forever and am planning for it. And I'm even lucky to have a job. But hey, experience is a plus. I think the same principle holds, become an expert and you are worth more. But its harder in this field as its constantly changing. Ah well.
My cousins in India are telling me to move there for work. I can't imagine it, that would be moving backwards (I'm a total American). As long as I have a job I can laugh at the thought.
After getting quite a bit of well deserved criticism, including one guy who offered ITAA a $1000 bounty to find his unemployed programmer buddy a job, they released an update scaling back their optimistic outlook. They still spin the industry as an under-staffed career option among other rosy interpretations. The problem is, these reports are relied on by all sorts of people who have a very real effect on my career opportunities:
I really feel for my fellow Electrical and Computer Engineers.
One of my professors in college advised me, some 5+ years ago, to go into power systems engineering. Although I was very reluctant to do something that was thought of as "low-tech" by fellow engineers, I took his advice. Since Graduation (almost 3 years ago) I am now one of the fortunate souls that is actually GOING somewhere.
Almost 60% of the engineers in the Power Industry (Utilities mainly) are going to retire in the next 5-7 years - maybe sooner if there are "early-out" packages given.
The good news is that the Power Utility Industry is not "low-tech." As a matter of fact our industry is going through a very "high-tech" growth period and my co-workers and myself are always having to attend seminars on new devices and systems.
I frequently email my professor a big "THANKS" because without his advice, I might be struggling too!
JB
I sure agree with that - it bothers me no end that a guy who can install windows 98 on a laptop and a guy who can design a 28 state Kalman filter algorithm for an embedded navigation system are considered by some to both be engineers in the same sense, complete bullshit - my eldest son could do a Windows install when he was 15 years old - back on topic, Engineering has been a wonderful career for me, I have never been unemployed since graduating in 1986 and have at times done consulting on the side as well - AND it just keeps getting better - my pay continues to rise (over $100K / year in Florida - NOT including benefits) and the work is interesting and challenging. I do have an observation relative to the topic, at my place of employment it seems there are about 30 very good engineers who end up doing all the real "engineering" and about 500 more engineers who come in everyday so they can collect a paycheck at the end of the week - it could be that there are some "diamonds" in that group of 500 that just haven't gotten a lucky break yet but all in all you could fire 300 of that bunch any day of the week and no less work would get done.