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Japan "Running Out of Engineers"
bfwebster writes "A story in the New York Times reports that Japan, a country that rebuilt itself as a technological power after World War II, now faces an increasing shortage of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering. Says the article: 'By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.' The article goes on to point out that the overall trend of waning interest in science and technology has been going on for 'almost two decades' and that the shortage is made worse by the traditional reluctance of Japanese companies to hire and use foreign workers. The US has had a similar trend for quite some time: 'Undergraduate engineering enrollment declined through most of the 1980s and 1990s, rose from 2000 through 2003, and declined slightly in recent years.'"
Let's face it. People are lazy and getting a bogus humanistic degree is much easier than an engineering one.
It's probably not really waning interest in engineering...
It's probably more like waning interest in working like a slave and being managed by incompetent managers with no little/no engineering background.
Or perhaps HR departments playing keyword roulette on resumes, requiring ~100% matches in skills vs requirements.
It's not about the shortage of engineers, it's about the shortage of cheap engineers. If Engineering is to survive as a profession, we should be demanding to be treated as such.
I've had many a friend doing engineering (in mechanical and civil) in school end up in an accountancy firm or bank because nowadays junior engineers get peanuts. Whereas these financial and professional services firms love people with an engineering degrees because they are normally better adept to deal with the quantitative issues, even though they man not have the exemptions from the chartering institutions if you come out with a degree in accounting for example.
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Graduate at or near top of high school. Go to a higher ranked university, take more hours, get ca ~0.5 GPA point less. Get treated like dirt by some politicos that had difficulty with trig in hs or were the bottom fish in a lower tier engineering school but managed to always get kicked upstairs instead of fired. Watch the admins take credit for that which they violently opposed, but you cleaned up after the major damage, thereby saving the company, again. Great career magnet, only for those who are hopelessly addicted to the thrill of the unknown and progress, or really are planning to get the MBA, too. Japanese kids are becoming more cognizant, as US and European kids did, are of the current engineering reward structure. Face it, marketing and PR are currently far better investments, with more and better slack time in college.
Plus degrees are expensive.
A shortage in degree holders does not imply a shortage in people able to contribute in scientific or engineering teams. I bet there are many autodidacts and amateurs around with no degree, but who have all or most of the knowledge necessary to undertake scientific or engineering work, or in many cases they may even possess more knowledge than the degree holders. Perhaps a shortage in degree holders will force lazy companies to start thinking of more effective ways of hiring talent. I think employers should stop taking pieces of paper seriously and start actually testing the real skills of wanna-be employees or associates. Prospective members of staff should be *tested* instead of being hired solely on them possessing stupid pieces of papers and answering stupid irrelevant questions during interviews. If you want to hire a programmer, have the candidate actually write down a program instead of asking for a piece of paper. If a candidate can program, there is no need for the paper (except if your clients demand degree-holding staff or if you need degree holders for marketing purposes). Some employers think degrees equip candidates with skills necessary to survive in a bureaucracy, but that's not true because school already provides such skills, like meeting deadlines etc, and in any way you can always get rid of unproductive employees easily (except if you are incorporated in a socialist or European country, where employment at will is seen as too radical).
I'm a PhD student in engineering at a pretty good university in the UK. I've recently been an undergraduate, taught undergraduates, and looked at engineering jobs.
If you take your engineering degree and go to work at an engineering company, they will offer you maybe £22,000 a year as a starting salary.
If you take the same qualification, and take a job as a programmer for a London financial institution, they offer more in the region of £40,000 a year (including bonuses) as a starting salary.
I'd like to get an engineering job when I finish my PhD - it sounds more interesting than programming for a bank. However, it is also my ambition to some day own a house (marriage, children, you know the drill). I know this will involve a mortgage of about a quarter of a million pounds, and with interest factored in, about half a million pounds.
To put it bluntly, I would like an interesting job, but that may be a luxury my family cannot afford, so I'm willing to compromise. And apparently the free market values my engineering degree more in non-engineering roles than in engineering roles.
Engineering is simply unattractive compared to other professions, the pay is too low, therefore the social status derived is too low. Employers are simply not paying enough for engineers to make it an attractive profession, therefore people do something more rewarding.
Deleted
What surprises me is that Japan has started to experience it only now. (I guess we can call it "national character"). It has been quite wealthy for a while, and wealth and love of education (which is the root of the problem here) does not go together very well...
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I did an engineering degree. When you start, your illusions get shattered when you find out that you are not valued like say, someone that did English, art or politics degrees. When you leave, who is in charge of engineers, more engineers? No, people that studied worthless English or art subjects who cream more money then you (unless you're a top-notch engineer).
On a degree, you find that you have to pay for very expensive text books (you never thought books could be that expensive), whilst courses like English get away with £5 ($10) or less cost books to study. All science degrees take up a load of time in study, whether at university or your own time.
Engineering / IT are uncool subjects because most lecturers teach in a style that it's just one long math test.
Students should be given grants to study sciences, and no grants for the other easy subjects that universities seem to push these days.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Dear Mister Manager with an MBA,
If the paper your degree was printed on is good for more than wiping your posterior, you took a basic course in microeconomics.
As such, you should know that increasing profits (in this case, wages) tend to have a stimulative effect on supply. Decreasing real wages -- which are what we are experiencing what with flat wages and an inflationary economy -- tend to have the opposite effect.
Please apply the education you spent tens of thousands of dollars, and recognize the truth: If you can't find enough engineers at the price you want to pay, it's most likely because the price you want to pay is too low.
Sincerely,
An engineer who recently took a microeconomics course in his MBA program.
PPS: On a related note, Americans DO want to do those jobs, just not at the wages you want to pay. Economics, yes? kthnxbye.
I've been in science for 15 years. On my present salary, I can barely afford the same standard of living as when I started science, even after a PhD and an exemplary career so far. If a "shortage" actually existed, then pay would increase concomitantly. Since pay hasn't increased, the shortage, by definition, does not exist. It boggles my mind to see obvious BS like this.
Just callin' it like I see it.
...views this as an attempt to lower the bar for foreign workers in an attempt to drive down salaries, because over here, we've heard this for a while.
When people throw out numbers like "already short half a million", the smell of bullshit tends to follow, along with greater foreign worker quotas and a larger number of students enrolling into the programs that "need employees".
Inevitably, 5-10 years out, you end up with a large number of poorly trained / poorly qualified students looking for jobs along with a number of foreigners who are willing to work for a lot less than a native.
Sure, it's easy to pay these people less, but quantity doesn't overcome a shortage of quality - especially in fields such as engineering.
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After all, the ultimate goal of any engineer is to render him or herself obsolete.
Exactly. MOD PARENT UP.
At the same time that technology is giving more than ever to humankind, respect from management for those who are knowledgeable about technology is lower than ever.
Part of the problem at Microsoft is that it is run by someone with little or no interest in technology, Steve Ballmer.
Releasing products that are unfinished because programmers have not had time to finish them seems to be normal top management policy at Microsoft. Microsoft Windows Vista is just the latest example. Microsoft employees say things like, "even a piece of junk will qualify". There's no joy in working at a place that doesn't allow you to do a good job.
Japanese corporations typically pay based on seniority, not based on job classification, at least within a given rank. As a result, at my company, if you're a new graduate with a degree in English literature and you get a job as entry level sales staff, you get the entry level salary, which is $2,200 a month. If you have a degree in computer science and get a job as an entry level programmer, you get the entry level salary, which is $2,200 a month. (Yeah, really, in a major Japanese metropolitan area. My fellow graduates from a US engineering institution think I'm flipping insane, and indeed in strictly dollars per hour terms I must be. Luckily I started with a few years of seniority baked in.)
You'll also regularly be expected to put in heroic hours (difference with America: we actually do get overtime pay) when something breaks, which is not typically required of sales staff, although approximately nobody on Slashdot would think our sales staff puts in slacker hours.
Given that you're not compensated extra for being an engineer, and engineering is a more difficult course of study in college (you actually have to, you know, work -- most majors treat college as a 4 year reprieve between murderously difficult high school and murderously difficult life), and that most of your training is going to be on the job anyhow, why bother studying engineering unless you have a particular passion for it?
I should note that I'm in charge of managing our new team of Indians because the suits here are as in thrall of the "Why pay a senior engineer $40k when we could pay him $20k?" logic that American suits are. Not to disparage my Indian coworkers at all -- like my Japanese coworkers, we get the usual mix of engineering supermen and people who could not be taught to make peanut butter sandwitches if they were issued a subordinate to butter the bread.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I don't know of any undergraduate course called "management". Managers have degrees, often in economy or accountancy, but also, in many cases, engineering as well. The problems caused by short-sided decisions do not come from one single profession in particular, but from a general system where managers make all the decisions without much supervision.
I believe the root of this problem comes from the current capitalist system where large corporations are never owned by a single person. If a company is owned by one individual, or a family, who depends on that company's profits for the foreseeable future, they care more for the long view. With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares. Since most companies today behave in the same way, no shareholder cares for anything more remote than the next quarter.
And, still worse, is that too often corporations own other corporations. All their respective managers have to do is take care of each other. Cronyism at its worst.
The title should read "Japan running out of Cheap Engineers". This is the same scenario in the United States where big corporations want to import "cheap engineers" from countries that have lower costs of living (such as India) because they do not want to pay.
As everyone else seems to be hinting around is the fact that it is CHEAPER and EASIER to get a non engineering degree and the payoff is about the same. So why expend extra energy to get into a field that is less lucrative? Essentially, "corporate world" is turning engineering into a field littered with hobbyists (for lack of a better phrase). Engineering is perhaps the most noble of all professions, its a shame that the rewards are not greater.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
It is no longer attractive to take a technical education. I think there are many factors involved - first of all, it isn't 'cool', engineers, scientists etc are seen as geeks, and who wants be a social misfit? Up until the sixties at least, scientists and engineers were seen as almost demi-gods who were fearlessly exploring worlds unfathomable by normal human beings - just think of the many scientists that are almost cult-figures: they are mostly from the beginning of the 20th century.
Secondly, there is a clear, anti-intellectual trend in many Western societies. Most people have never understood that scientists are not there to find The Answer; that the most important thing in science is the question. So, they have become disillusioned and don't feel they get what they want from scientific research.
And of course, the money. You study hard - sometimes even extremely hard - for many years, you borrow money to survive and to pay for your education, and then you find that you don't actually earn much afterwards. In many countries an academic earns less than the average tradesman, whose education was 3 - 5 years of salaried apprenticeship; as an academic, you will normally be in debt when you are newly educated, whereas a newly educated welder, builder or whatever is likely to have no debt.
All in all, the only reason why anybody would choose an academic career is because they feel a deep calling.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seriously: when being a scientist or an engineer will mean high salary and social status (in other words: when girls will want to fellate scientists and engineers), is when more young men and women will take up that career choice.
Simple as that.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
That isn't the case; I'm doing a 'humanistic degree' right now - Bachelor of Arts majoring in Religious Studies and Philophy (going to become a teacher in the area of history/social studies etc).
Before going to the university I attempted for 2 years to get into the IT sector; I just gave up in the end and got myself a job as a department manager. It is the industry itself which treats engineers (and other qualified people) like shit, then turn around pissing and moaning because there aren't enough people with the said qualification.
Sorry, but when you have engineers (and others) who have gone through the mincer and spat out the other side - many of them bitter, they tell kids what their experience within the engineering area is like, most kids end up saying, "fuck that for a joke" and look for a job elsewhere. That is the cold hard reality of the situation.
When you have wankers have recruiters, wankers as bosses, and the pay is just one big giant wank - one can't help by feel one is just one big giant bitch for the system to have its way with.
Would I ever go back to IT? no way. Many engineers who get out of the field never want to go back - unless they trip over an idea in their garage and they can be their own boss.
I totally agree with parent!
It's just that industry wants more cheap engineers, not more engineers.
Pure supply-and-demand: If there would be a huge, terrible lack of engineers, the wages of engineers would be skyrocketing. They don't.
Excellent post. So many people miss the effect of societies respect for a profession - it's huge. One of the reasons that UK schools find it hard to get good teachers... our society has respected them less and less over the past several decades.
Excellent post. You put in to words what has been in my own and most of my friends' (who also happen to be software engineers) minds.
Although in retrospective I don't think I would have chosen a different subject - Computer Science can be exciting and extremely fulfilling, but right now, for most of us, it just isn't. Raising the salary might help, but it's really the point you made about being part of a "glorified assembly line" that struck home. Sometimes it seems like it's all about cost efficiency (never mind the quality) and appearing well on some visio chart drawn by a guy who doesn't have a clue about technology, and is being paid three times what you make.
It is up to us to change these conditions. Can they be changed?
Degrees are not expensive in France, but there is the exact same shortage here.
When the word shortage is used, the price at which the shortage exists
should be specified. I'm correct when I say there's a shortage of gasoline
at $1/gallon. But I can find plenty of gas around here at $3.80/gallon.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Hmm - USA, Japan, both very rich countries for several generations now. Is this possibly a natural behavior for countries in their twilight, where many of the citizens have lost their "hunger", and focus more on superficial , shiny things, like the NBA and Paris Hilton?
When you eke out a living, you won't pay attention to Ms. Lohan and her ilk, but probably focus your efforts on working hard to advance your career to get bread on the table, and since science/engineering jobs often pay well with some hard work.....
My grandparents came over on a boat from Eastern Europe, after growing up in a bombed out basement in WW I - my Dad was an engineer, and I'm a surgeon. Many immigrants families have similar tales.
..........FULL STOP.
Oh, I didn't say that the only "golden age" was the 1800. I'm more like saying that each domain has its own "golden age", somewhere near the beginning of it. Then it becomes mostly salary work.
So for most mechanical stuff, yeah, the time where it was "exciting" was in the 1800's. For aerospace it was in the 20'th century. For computing stuff, it lasted more or less into the 90's.
So yes, some new thing will eventually come along, and for a while it will be all exciting to be in it. Then it will become just peon work too.
Basically I'm not saying that progress has stopped, or anything. I'm saying that the motivation to go to university in that domain looks a bit like a gauss curve, sorta. The "excitement" factor of it is high in the beginning, when there's so much to do, and it looks like you too could make your own contraption or just do things better. Then that excitement dies down, most (but obviously not all) stuff in that domain has been discovered, the industry has consolidated into a few dominant players, salaries went down, and what's left is whole teams doing tweaks to already refined designs. And to the guy looking at the question, "do I pick X as a major?" it already looks a lot less exciting than in the early years. He might choose it because the salaries are still good, but not because he actually thinks any more that he'll be the next big inventor of that domain.
Take, say, airplane building. In the beginning it looked so much like everyone's game, that we even had kids building a glider in the barn without telling their father. The feeling was there that you too can make your own flying contraption, and maybe even get it better than the ones that tried before you. There's a certain "excitement" factor in being at such a beginning. Then roll forward a century or so, and you have only a handful of big players who pushed everyone else out, and you're reduced to tweaking turbine blades in a CAD program and testing them in a wind tunnel. There's about as much excitement in it as in accountancy. And unsurprisingly a lot less kids dream of having that as their future job. (Just as well, because pay and number of jobs went down too in that domain.)
Or to better explain what I'm trying to say, that last point in my original message, well, was merely about why less people rush to enroll in a mature domain. I'm not saying that progress stopped. I'm just saying that eventually it just becomes less "exciting" a job. The same people who 100 years ago might have thought "OMG, if I only could work in aeronautics, it would be sooo cool and exciting" now look at it as, meh, just another possible desk job.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why is it that I'm not even considered because I don't have a grade
You just answered your own question.
If you truly can "out-develop any graduate you've met", prove it. Go get the little slip of paper that gives them the career advantage over you.
You may even learn something at Uni that you didn't realize you should need to know.
The US used to have a number of really good places to work in engineering. We all knew where they were - Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, HP Labs, DEC R&D, IBM Almaden, RCA Sarnoff Labs, Lockheed's Skunk Works. At one time or another, I've visited most of those places, and been impressed with the people. All are gone, or a shadow of what they once were.
What do we have today? Google? Google is an advertising agency. All the classic good places were part of manufacturing companies, where engineering turned into working hardware. I know of little places doing good stuff, but the little places come and go; you don't have a career there.
Is something similar happening in Japan? As manufacturing moves to China, in time, the engineering follows. The outsourcing organization is hollowed out, and eventually replaced by a China-based company. Japanese companies have been outsourcing electronics manufacturing to China for about a decade; not as enthusiastically as US companies, but outsourcing nonetheless.
Yes, there are good engineering places where people have full careers in the US. I visited one recently, a well-known visual effects movie studio. Some of their staff have been around for 15-30 years, and everybody is very good at what they do and proud of it. Their CEO is big on keeping the core team together, because they know they have an organization that can deliver good work on tough jobs on schedule. The place is advanced technically but felt very retro, in a good way, as an organization. Few such places are left.
That's why few people want to become good engineers.
I agree with everything else you've said except this. I don't think the language is any more or less abstract than English. I can say whatever I want in either language. Whether or not that person has the background to understand what I'm saying is another story. The problem isn't linguistic, it's cultural.
The problem is that classrooms are overwhelmingly teacher-centric. The Confucian idea of a school is that you have the teacher in front disseminating all the knowledge, and the students in their seats receiving the knowledge. This is great for rote memorization of kanji but horribly inefficient for anything requiring creativity. A bad teacher will teach someone how to play baseball by sitting him down in a chair and telling him about gravity and the musculature of the human arm and the sweet spot of a baseball bat and the measurements of the playing field and the position of the players. A good teacher will throw him a ball and say, "Catch. Now throw it back. Here's a bat, try to hit the ball as I throw it." Baseball is learned by doing. The same goes for foreign languages such as English-- you learn by speaking to others, by writing new sentences, by practicing it repeatedly until you can do it easily. But English is taught here in middle school and high school by some goofball reciting grammar points from a textbook, and forcing students to memorize vocabulary lists and conjugation tables. And Japan wonders why its students can't do well on TOEIC and nobody can speak English. Programming and creative engineering work exactly the same way. They simply can't be grasped by listening to some guy jabbering in front of a group of people. Coding can only be mastered by doing. For some reason the test-obsessed Japanese haven't wrapped their heads around that concept.
Sorry, I'm a bit bitter. Years of trying to change the education system here will do that to you.