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US Losing R&D Dominance To Asia?
bednarz writes "U.S. companies are locating more of their R&D operations overseas, and Asian countries are rapidly increasing investments in their own science and technology economies, the National Science Board said in a report released this week. The number of overseas researchers employed by U.S. multinationals nearly doubled from 138,000 in 2004 to 267,000 in 2009, for example. On the education front, the U.S. accounts for just 4% of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded globally, compared to China (34%), Japan (5%), and India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand (17% collectively). 'The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking; well above half of all such degrees are awarded in Asia,' NSB said in its report."
And most of that 4% in the US is Asian anyways. Just hope we can keep them here in the US after graduation instead of shipping them back to China because our fucked up immigration policy.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
This is simply the race to the bottom that corporate America is pursuing writ large. When we traded our democracy for a corporatocracy, this was the inevitable result.
...we're the leader in Human Studies diplomas. We're all set for the future.
I personally know people in industry who have been warning of this for the last 20 years. The "new economy" of that era promised to reduce costs by moving manufacturing overseas while keeping R&D in the USA. People who knew how R&D worked said that the manufacturing was, if nothing else, necessary to the local support (machinists, PWB fabs, etc.) that support R&D.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with Asia having well above half of the world's population.
China and India have had massive, massive pushes to educate engineers, medical workers, technology workers, etc. The shift is the pay off.
A couple decades ago my brother, an engineer with Dow Chemical related the project he was managing - an project would be begun in North America, passed to a team in Japan or Oceana, then passed to India, before passing along to Europe and back to North America - each location meeting its objectives as part of the project. That was two decades back. So you can see there are people capable of engineering, research, medical discoveries and such in abundance by now. No doubt someone in Thailand is waking up about now and will correct any spelling errors I have made in this post.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If it is indeed so, get rid of any means to facilitate it - offshoring being the primary offender. No different than stopping blood from a wound versus allowing someone to bleed to death.
This is one of the better cases for why we should train our own instead of everyone else. If there's any spare room after the least capable citizen has been trained, only then should the US consider friendly internationals - for which are not generally found in Asia.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Of course this has nothing to do with the anti science movement that took over when W was in office and is still a matter of fact for half the population.
Half the american public are against "intellectuals", against evolution, deny climate change and think that investing in science is against God or is far to great a burden on the economy and you're surprised at this?
The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking
Americans don't want to learn science and engineering, because it's hard. It takes years of extremely hard work.
I went through university with a business major. I saw the kind of work he did because he was asking me for tutoring help; the "hard" things he was learning were unbelievably trivial. I'd estimate his degree was a factor of 50 easier than mine; I could have taken all his classes, not studied for shit, and come out with straight A's, all with less effort than I was spending on a single difficult engineering class.
Of course, he now makes more than I do. So why on earth would anyone want to go through what I did, when you could go through the far, far easier thing HE did, and be more financially rewarded for it?
In the end American's lack of interest in science, technology, math, and engineering will sink the ship. You cannot compete in today's global world unless you (as a people) understand how that modern world works, and Americans don't wish to understand, because it's hard work. You reap what you sow. I've been saying this for the last 30 years, and now here we are, going down in flames to better educated countries. Surprise surprise. I used to give a shit, but then I learned there was nothing I could do to make people care, so I just gave up. No point in getting upset over it. I'm resigned to my country falling out of its former place as the world powerhouse of science and engineering. In the 50's, 60's, it was very much the USA, and everyone else a distant second. Now, that's reversing. So be it.
I have a relative who works as a researcher for a major drug company. She had to move laterally in the company after they announced they were moving all new drug discovery work to China.
As a senior Computer Science PhD student, this has me worried. I also know of a few recent American CS graduates that have gone to China to work as researchers for a particular American software company because that company's US research offices weren't hiring. I still know plenty of other graduates who had no difficulty finding research positions in the US, but it seems that a few major players are shifting their work to Asia. Hopefully the rest won't follow.
We need a new standard for what a company has to be like to call itself a U.S. company and be eligible for any the benefits of such title. Multinationals with little U.S. corporate responsibility need not apply. If corporations are people, then let them take a citizenship test.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Most American parents can't or can hardly afford to send their children to University anymore.
That's what college loans are for: so that you can start your working life far enough in the hole that you could have bought a house with the money. It saves you from buying a house, freeing you to pay rent on top of the loans until you can finally buy a house later for your grandchildren to visit you.
Or at least that seems to be the theory. Me, I paid for all of mine so they can start out clear. That's more important to me than retiring to a place within golf cart distance of the clubhouse.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If that's the case, US citizens should be able to be given preference based on minority status - a statistical one - while the Asians would be stripped it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
We have to many people in college and a lot of the tech fled needs apprentices systems AS CS IS NOT IT. So colleges are being dumped down to fit in people who are not college material but can do good a apprentices system. Also lot's of jobs don't need college and alot of people don't belong there.
I say have more tech schools / apprentices systems and for IT you need to people at all levels but CS for all does not work CS is to long and to much high level for most IT jobs when a apprentices / tech school is a much better fit.
When I got my master's degree (EE) back in '85, there were about 130 advanced technical degrees given. Compare that to the 370 jurisprudence degrees handed out, and I think you can see where we were heading. Now lawyers are everywhere, and especially in politics where they can pass laws written to assure full employment for the members of their profession.
"Enemy"?
I happen to believe that there is no sense in paying the Chinese to build products that we are going to buy. Especially when we're just supporting the mistreatment of their workers.
On the other hand, there's every reason to have Chinese and Indians and Iranians and Nigerians, etc come to this country to learn. Because they raise the average.
My daughter coasted through high school, even though both of her parents are professional academics. She had little ambition and little direction. Her interaction with foreign students who actually place a very high value on their education has had a great effect on her. When she got to college, she saw how hard some people work as opposed to some of the kids she hung around with in high school. She saw students helping each other with study groups, tutoring, even sharing books. It took her a while but now she studies with a group of kids that includes Chinese and Korean and Eastern European students, and in Mathematics, when you hook up with smart people, it's a big help, as opposed to many American students who come in as big swinging dicks and think they've got an A coming as a birthright.
National borders are artificial. Cultural borders are not. There may not be a reason to see research and development as some grand competition, or the moral equivalent of war, but there is every reason to start spending a lot more money, public money, on R&D. Not because we have to "beat" the Chinese, but because we have to beat a whole lot of problems right here at home, and over-come the increasing anti-intellectualism of many Americans. Of course, I don't think that's going to be an applause line at the South Carolina Republican debate tonight.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Then it's time to get innovative and come up with stuff that will work regardless of who copies it. Innovation doesn't stop just because the rules of the game change or don't seem fair.
Just because math is hard doesn't mean we don't learn calculus because we got a few headaches trying to learn algebra.
And innovation doesn't have to stop with technology. We need innovations in law, business, finance, and culture as well.
In my recent (and extensive) experience with interviewing people who are recent graduates, I am finding a very large percentage of people with bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science who can't write even the most simple scripts in any language... people with "expert in TCP/IP networking" in their qualifications, or who have three years testing routers and switches listed as experience who don't know what NAT means or what a MAC address is... people who don't know how to list running processes on any platform. These are people who are graduates. They have their degree. And those degrees are worthless. We've had half a dozen positions open where I work for a long while, the bar just isn't set that high, but we're not finding qualified applicants.
It doesn't matter what nationality the school or the "graduate" is. Poorly-prepared graduates are a world-wide phenomenon. Sure, Asia is producing a large number of graduates, but the majority of them aren't going to be very useful. The U.S. is producing fewer engineering graduates, but they're just as useless.
Yes, the universities are to blame. I don't know what they're teaching but it has little to do with reality and doesn't prepare the students to be employable. But the students are also to blame. Surveys show that between 75 and 98% of students admit to cheating, and don't feel particularly bad about it; the universities also don't seem to think that cheating is anything to get worked up over either. No wonder nobody is learning anything.
All of this is why I don't think that it's a big deal that the US produces only 4% of engineering degrees; 4% of "nothing useful" is no worse than "35% of nothing useful". If those degrees actually meant something, or correlated in any meaningful way to success (both for the individual and for the employer), I'd be more concerned. My real worry is that Westerners aren't even interested in engineering any more; they all want to be in sales and marketing and other nontechnical fields (or "soft" majors like political science or humanities, followed by whining about how nobody will pay six figure salaries for their chosen field). I'm not sure why this is,,, given how little tech work someone with a tech degree seems to actually be required to do, it can't be because of academic workload. Mind you, the profound anti-intellectualism that is still the rule in Western society may have something to do with it.
-sigh- Kids these days.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
They shouldn't be here in the first place if they're taking slots that belong to our own citizens.
I'm not from the US, so I don't really know, but I always understood that a "slot" at a university in the US is reserved for the person that pays. If the citizens can't pay it, than the universities will just fill these slots by foreigners who can, no?
No sense in not training our own versus helping the enemy.
In light of what I said above, you might want to consider Ferengi aquisition rule N 177: "Know your enemies ... but do business with them always."
Universities, as far back as I can remember, have been thrilled to take on best qualified entrants, no matter where they come from. They do pay for the honor, however, often as much as three times the tuition of an in-state resident. If you don't like it, bother your public university Trustees about limiting availibility or raising the Out of State/Out of Country tuition rates to your satisfaction.
That said, the US has benefited tremendously from foreign-born university graduates, who have started companies who employ american citizens and enrich investors.
Perhaps there'd be less xenophobia if American youth didn't feel being "cool" and "fitting in with the crowd" was more important than cracking a book open on the weekend. How often in a Monday class have I heard people in the back row parroting what was said on some show, or in some film, or how the 49ers did, rather than how they think they have the material for the class well covered.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That would make some sense if "our own" actually wanted to be trained for technical careers. Very few of them do; you can see this by walking into any American university's engineering classes.
Of course, we can debate the causes for this (is it the jobs are unpopular because kids aren't interested in "hard" subjects? or is it that the jobs don't pay enough relative to the time and effort required and age discrimination is too common, so smart kids are avoiding these careers because the American companies have made them bad jobs, and they're going into finance and law positions instead?), but whether the cause is from the bottom or the top, or a combination of the two, it is what it is: Americans aren't interested in technical careers, while Asians are. The Asians aren't taking away anyone's jobs.
What is the point of cracking open a science textbook when you are going to be competing with people in Asia who can produce the same level of genius for pennies on the dollar?
I don't care what you can learn here in America, someone in China can learn the same thing and apply that knowledge for far lower wages than you.
These people are willing to live in cages. Literally. Look.
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong-citizens-living-cages-literally/
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Try moving to China to get a job. I dare you. Good luck with that. Then come back and tell me how artificial those borders are.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Admiration is nice, but sadly it doesn't usually pay the bills. While I'd definitely be flattered if someone copied one of my designs and it got mega popular, if I don't get money from it, it doesn't really help me. I still have to eat.
If your own citizens are inept, uneducated and incapable of doing the work required, companies have to fill the skilled positions somehow
Then you train said people to correct for such deficiencies - should they really exist. Invoking the words global, competition and skilled are just code words for expressing contempt towards US citizens.
Having a "made in the US" label on every employee might sound cool to America in times of high unemployment but it would kill businesses or force them overseas. And that means losing even more jobs, not to mention both corporate and income revenue for the government.
Yet you underestimate the power of the US Government and its ability to make an overseas move unprofitably painful. Or if they wish to prevent an overseas arm from trying to make a transplant.
Do you really love this country, or do you have some wish to have the US bow before the world?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Why would we want dirty manufacturing and industry in the US??
Better that we have lawyers and doctors and movie directors and investment bankers and graphics artists and social workers and compliance officers and other good clean people like that.
What makes you think that the world wants to buy the services of our lawyers? Or the doctors? Are you expecting the lawyers to sue the world to support the movie directors, even when the movies are made overseas (to save costs, if nothing else)?
American investment bankers are not in great demand either lately. The world seems to value Japanese graphics artists more than American ones. The Government is cutting back on the social workers -- we need to save money. The rest of the world doesn't seem to want American compliance officers, either.
However, the rest of the world does pay for American coal. We have the largest proven coal reserves on the planet, and if we don't manufacture finished goods to ship overseas to pay for our imports we'll just have to export coal. Well, that and cut our standard of living back to the level that we can afford as a country whose primary enterprise is digging holes in the ground.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If the production (now), design (mostly now), and basic R&D (very soon) are all done in some part of Asia, how long before the shareholders realize that they can temporarily bump the stock price even more by paying some Asians 10% of the compensation that the American executive team is getting?
Then why was literacy so long the domain of Monks? Who were not known for their richness...
Even back then an education was of limited wealth. A person needs a baker each and every day but how often do you need a letter written when you are a lumberjack or a small farmer?
Star Trek never touched upon the problem of what all those billions of people making up the rest of humanity were doing. It had some episodes with miners in them but they made no sense if you wondered why people would mine for stuff in a world with replicator technology. Count the number of episodes where they still desperately need a part despite a working replicator sitting in every cabin.
The simple fact is that the western economy post WW2 survived on the factory worker and the harvester (miners etc) when those jobs disappeared entire regions grew depressed and never really recovered. Meanwhile modern media kept showing "Friends" with people with jobs that never require them to simply be in from 9/5 doing just average not very interesting work. The entire economy (if you believe the media) runs on odd jobs paying enough to afford gigantic flats in the heart of New York and more time off then a Greek working for the state.
Walmart is celebrated by these people as offering very cheap goods without anybody wondering that if nobody local gets payed to make these goods and if the people selling them don't get payed much either... then who can afford these goods in the long run?
Go ahead, go to a store and try to buy western made goods... oh, they still exist, somewhat... e-reader. Name one made in the west. Tablets? MADE in the west? Where is the factory with the production line paying dozens if not of hundreds of people funding an entire large city producing iPads?
It isn't just about engineers who make iPads, it is about engineers who make brake pads. Just as most scientist end up working in a production facility doing the same tests over and over, most engineers do not make ground breaking tecnology, but keeping that development on break pads going with all the production know how, that can keep an entire town in business. Jobs for the average person, a reason for the highly educated to come back to their home town.
Remember a little game called SimCity? Fun game right? Do you remember how it was very easy to create slum areas by accident because there weren't enough jobs near by?
Okay... now enlarge SimCity to SimWorld and remove all the factory from that little corner of the world called the west and put all the work and housing the "Asia"... what happens? Do the endless living areas with only shops become an affluent area or ,,, do they become Detroit? Manchester? De Bijlmer (pure living area now being torn down in Amsterdam Holland, do you think bad planning are a US problem only?)
Douglas Adam spoke of three arks, what were the A and C arks again? And what ark are we keeping here? Think about it, we outsourced production (c ark) and now the research is following (a ark)... that makes us the B ark... better start collecting those leaves.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Baloney. The US is still the world's largest manufacturing nation.
China assembles iPhones, athletic shoes and similar consumer knick-knacks. The US makes airliners, CPUs, pharmaceuticals, heavy mining and earth-movers and food.
http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/
Yes engineering has advantages when located close to manufacturing sites. That is not the same as R&D.
The US R&D spend rate is still very high. Even though it isn't as high as it should be it is still only barely exceeded by all of Asia combined as a percentage of the world, i.e. 31% vs 32%.
From: http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/finance/news/asian-countries-collectively-top-us-r-d-spend.html
The total science spend of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam rose steadily between 1999 and 2009 to reach 32 per cent of the global share of spending on science, compared with 31 per cent in the US. Per capital the US spends 10x Asia.
The US needs to up it's game, certainly. But dig into the stats and the picture is not at all what it is painted to be in sensationalized news articles.
Next time you use a USB device, google up who invented it.
Ok, right after I finish bitching about the stupidity of the connector design. What idiot thought it'd be a good idea to have a connector that can only go in one way, but that is symmetrical?
I just hope the guys who invented the electrical and software parts of the spec aren't the same as the moron who invented the mechanical part.
This is simply the race to the bottom that corporate America is pursuing writ large. When we traded our democracy for a corporatocracy, this was the inevitable result.
You are mistaken. It is Consumer America, not Corporate America, that is responsible for the race to the bottom. Corporations do not care where things are made or who makes them. All things being equal they would have things made locally by locals. There are coordination and transportation costs when you move manufacturing or development to some distant place. These additional costs would have to be offset somehow.
Corporations primarily care about sales, costs are secondary to sales. Cost cutting is only desirable if it (1) generates new sales or (2) preserves existing sales but increases the profit margin. Now consider who controls the sales, it is the consumer.
Consumers are responsible for the current situation because the consumer preference is for the lowest priced product or service, the consumer does not care where manufacturing or development takes place. **If** consumers did care where manufacturing or engineering took place and **if** this preference was reflected in buying decisions then corporations would not engage in off-shoring since it would hurt sales.
In other words the U.S. experienced a lot of off-shoring because consumers rewarded those companies that off-shored with sales. **If** consumers had punished those companies but buying domestically manufactured/engineered products from competitors then off-shoring would have been a failed experiment and not have become a major trend. It was all in the hands of the consumer, it still is.
While much manufacturing has moved off-shore the web has made it easier than ever to find domestically manufactured products. If consumers start showing a preference for such goods then off-shoring can be reversed. The power is in the hands of those making the buying decisions, the consumer, not the corporation.
If your own citizens are inept, uneducated and incapable of doing the work required, companies have to fill the skilled positions somehow. When I last posted anything on education on Slashdot, I was greeted to calls of "you can quit school at 15 and do anything". Well, apparently "anything" doesn't include anything that actually makes money, makes new products or makes new industries, and if there's a strong feeling amongst even the geeks in the US that being uneducated is cool and acceptable, then I can't say I can blame manufacturers for going to the geeks that think being educated is cool instead.
Up to here, I'm with you. It is a problem to a point that some people don't want to be educated. The bigger area of concern is that in the US, if you are a scientist you make no money compared to a manager of some type. We have way to many Business graduates, and this has nothing to do with the desire to learn. It's the choice people are making because if you are a Science major.
1. Extremely difficult to find a job
2. Jobs are very low pay. The best paying science jobs are as teachers, not scientists. And no, unfortunately I'm not talking about College Professors, I'm taking required education.
3. Constant threats of job loss because it's cheaper to send things overseas.
The same exact problem that exists with Manufacturing also exists with Science. The difference is mainly that it does not cost you $100,000US to work on an assembly line. It will cost you that much to get a Masters in Math or a Doctorates in Psychology.
We are also in a global economy now. A global village. There is no enemy but ourselves.
Great rhetoric when you are stock holder or executive shipping jobs overseas to increase profits. In reality, the economy of a country must have space for all ranks, not just the upper class.
The consequence here is that global business cannot run on nationalism or pride, it needs talent. And it ain't finding that talent here. Blaming Asia for having better universities is idiotic and blaming businesses for preferring the results of the better-trained is futile.
Sorry, I call poppycock! It is not about not finding talent in the US. It's about not looking in the US because it's much cheaper to pay Asian rates for everything.
As to the "Global" comment, if we are truly global and it's not about money: Why are US companies not paying the same rates to Asians as they would have to in the US, or for that matter more money because the talent pool is better? They don't, and they wont as long as there is a massive economic advantage for shipping jobs overseas.
The people making money put out lots of BS justifying what they do. Politicians receive piles of cash from rich lobbyists to tell you the same crap. It's really to bad people are not smart enough to figure it out.
Having a "made in the US" label on every employee might sound cool to America in times of high unemployment but it would kill businesses or force them overseas. And that means losing even more jobs, not to mention both corporate and income revenue for the government.
*golf clap* more propaganda from the wealthy, I'm impressed that you buy in to it. As I said before, and economy must support all classes and not the wealthy. Want working proof of how Capitalism works? Q: Was Detroit poor when Ford hired Detroit workers at high wages? Answer: Hell no, it was booming and everyone and their mother wanted to be there. Q: Did Detroit start to go bankrupt after they decided to move everything possible to China and Mexico to increase profits? A: That pretty much sums up the collapse of the big 3 and Detroit.
Before you start spewing garbage about how the Unions did it, here's one more question for you. Q: Outside of Lee Iacocca working for a dollar a year, can you show me 1 White Collar person at any of the big 3 that gave back or refused their hu
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The Asians aren't taking away anyone's jobs.
No American wants to compete with 3rd world wages. Other countries protect their workers, not the USA.
No, absolutely not. Not until all American graduates in STEM actually receive good faith treatment by US employers, instead of having their resumes ignored. I'm a 2002, top quartile graduate of a top 20 school, in EE/CS. Sent out thousands of customized cover letters and resumes, only to receive, at best, a dozen responses over the years, and many of the phone interviews/inquiries weren't even in good faith (ie: it was obvious that at least a few were only intended to disqualify me). H-1B and guest workers have destroyed the industry, destroyed the job prospects of people in the industry, and destroyed lives like mine.
Bullshit. There is plenty of talent that is here, and is already trained. Firms like Microsoft don't even bother looking at their resumes (Microsoft looks at fewer than 1% of resume submissions) before going overseas to find cheap guest workers. There's 15 million people in the USA with undergraduate STEM degrees, but only 5M STEM jobs. No shortage of STEM talent at all, but there is a huge shortage of honesty amongst those who claim a 'shortage' of STEM workers, or a shortage of students studying STEM.
The ways that the US are being criticized are not constructive. They imply that the job is done when the US is finished off.
Absolute bullshit.
The same companies often won't even consider the domestic graduates though. Because of a belief that these grads cost more, are harder to retain, and have greater demands for promotions and exciting opportunities.
I've seen it with my own eyes. And the situation has literally ruined my life.
I could not help but notice how many posts from seeker.dice.com forums, and elsewhere, are of the same nature. Below are just a few recent examples:
(btw: dice did a relaunch of their message boards yesterday, so I am not sure if the links will work. But I promise you, these are all from 100% real posts).
“Recently I graduated from the Network Engineering program at Trios College in Ontario, Canada in September of 2008.”
“It's a shame that I spent $18,000 on this college program that should have guaranteed me instant employment in a very high demanding industry, yet I can't even find even a basic entry level position to start a new career.”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=11819&start=0&tstart=0
“I will graduate in 3 weeks with a AS degree in networking. and a MCP certified, I have been have trouble finding any kind of IT jobs.”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=11290&tstart=0
“The problem I'm having is that no matter how many jobs I apply for, and no matter how well-written my applications are, I can't seem to get further than the first interview. For some reason it seems a lot of employers will completely overlook my degree in computer engineering . . .”
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/09/29/1926216.shtml
“Being educated, with a 4 year bachelor's degree in engineering (non IT), I want to start a career in IT. I have been a learner all the time, educated myself on various computer subjects. I tried applying for various entry level positions, got two calls but failed to even get to the interview.”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/forum.jspa?forumID=5
I graduated from the Universty of Missouri in May of this year, with Bachelor's Degrees in CS and IT (took me 5 years). . . And now here I am, 4 months/200 or so apps in. I'm trying to find a job in the Chicago area, or here in St. Louis as a backup. I've had one phone interview . . It's like I'm not even being considered, and I have no idea why.
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=10251&tstart=0
“Not been able to find anything in the IT/ICT field since my graduation from Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (BS) in 2002.”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?messageID=71731
“I let my now ex-wife talk me into going to UoP for my BS in IT (circa 2002/2004). What a waste. $20k of debt and the degree is virtually worthless. Dumbest thing I've ever done!”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=9209&tstart=0
“B.S. Electrical Engineering, M.S. EE, and M.S. Applied Math(currently attending),last two form US University. GPA 3.55.
“I came to US in 1998 , and I have been looking for the job 10 years,as you can see! Live in South New Jersey, where you cannot get a job without connection, even it is $9. Third shifts,$7-$9 they want to hire you, don't ask many questions but for everything else, it is a rocket science to get hired!!”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=8949&tstart=0
“He's a pretty sharp kid, just graduated from a small liberal-arts school that has a computing program. He just got a job in Chicago, $12/hr, no benefits . . . ”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=8649&tstart=0
“I have been looking for a full time job for about a year since I graduated from my college with a B.E. in computer engineering.”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=8302&tstart=0
“I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) back in January 2005. After I graduated, I was unable to find a job . . . so in order to pay bills and student loans, I had to get a temp job doing customer service, making $12 an hour”
http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=6562&tstart=0
“I have bachelors degree in computer science. I have 10yrs of experience in softwar
That's because Jesus doesn't approve of STEM. Jesus loves lawyers, or he wouldn't have created so many of them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hmm, sounds like I come from a similar background to you... have you tried simply maintaining a resume / profile at monster.com ? Sorry to sound like a shill, but I pretty much got every job from employers and recruiters looking for me, rather than the other way around.
Even with a degree from an Ivy-League school, if the employer doesn't first have the position open (and not just because it's a formality when they're already trying to hire someone specific, which is the case with most official job postings), then your chances are pretty slim that they're going to create a position for you just because you have an awesome resume.
Also, especially for engineers, you have that safe-haven in the military-industrial complex if you can land and maintain a position with a (job) security clearance. Sure, the standards and work ethic are often lower, but no H-1Bs there, go figure :-P
In over twenty years working in prototype development, I saved for being laid off instead of retirement. Anytime there was a hiccup in the economy, the first thing that management would cut from was R&D and product development. The mentality of a business focused management -- as opposed to a product focused management -- was since they were already manufacturing product, they could delay the release of new product for a while. As any idiot with half a brain can figure out, when you stop or delay developing new products or improvements to existing products, your company can quickly fall behind the competition and become irrelevant.
As a testament to that, most of the companies I used to work for no longer exist. One was bought out by their primary competitor. Another still struggles to exist.
Hand-in-hand with this was the fact that the moment they put someone with an MBA in the role of CEO, the company was doomed. Because these people had no concept of what it took to develop and manufacture product, they would start making cuts indiscriminately in order to increase the profit margin -- not profit -- of the company. They would cut a few thousand workers from the payroll in order to "save" $3 million and then pay the CEO a bonus of $5 million for saving the $3 million by putting a few thousand people out of work. Immediately after, the CEO would pull on his golden parachute and jump the company, leaving it to fail.
Anyone in doubt of a business-focused CEO vs. a product-focused CEO need only look at the most perfect textbook example company: Apple Inc. After they ousted the product-focused Jobs from being CEO, they stuck business-focused men at the helm. Apple all but failed until product-focused Jobs retook command of the company. The first thing Jobs did when he returned was immediately put a stop to the financial dealings and focused the company on producing product again. The rest is history.
Business people do not value their creative staff. I remember listening to a vice president complaining about the salary that a particular engineer was being paid, saying the guy brought in no business, didn't sell anything, didn't spend any time on the phone talking to customers and just sat quietly in a corner all day doing nothing. The VP felt that any engineer being paid more than $60K per year was being overpaid. The engineer in question was the very man who designed and developed the technology behind the product the company sold. The very reason the company existed! The VP made life very unpleasant for the engineer and eventually the engineer gave up and quit. Over a short period of time, most of the people who worked with him left as well. The VP reported to the Board of Directors that he had managed to save nearly $1 million in 'administrative costs' (the salaries of the people no longer there) and successfully campaigned this into a six-figure salary increase. What this VP actually did, without realizing it, was effectively scuttle the company. After I left the company, I learned from others it was well over a year before the CEO and board members of the company discovered what had happened. By then it was too late. Lack of improvements and enhancements to their product made them irrelevant in the market. Their competitors, on the other hand, suddenly exhibited a surge in improvements and enhancements to their products, as well as the introduction of new products.
This was not an isolated case! One of the best examples of management not understanding or appreciating the true assets in the company was the case of Motorola vs. Intel. The Motorola PowerPC processor was the first mass produced CPU chip to break the 1 GHz barrier. The PPC was making inroads against Intel's Pentium line of processors and was rapidly moving ahead as the microprocessor of choice for new computers. Intel's line, on the other hand, had reached its theoretical maximum speed and was not moving ahead. Then, just as it seemed the PPC was about to truly gain momentum, things ca
Whew! This water sure is cold!