Reversing the Loss of Science and Engineering Careers

walterbyrd writes "In response to the alleged shortages of qualified American engineers and technology professionals, numerous initiatives have been launched to boost interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers and to strengthen STEM education in the United States. Unfortunately, these programs have not proven successful, and many blame the laziness of modern students, the ineptitude of their teachers, poor parenting or, when there are no other excuses remaining, they may even jump to moral decay as a causative agent. However, the failure of STEM is because the very policies that created the shortages continue unabated. This is not a uniquely American problem. The best way to increase interest in STEM degrees is by making certain that STEM careers are actually viable."

Comments

Engineering shortage?

[hambone142]

I don't believe there is an engineering shortage in the U.S. If there were, engineer's wages would be increasing. They are not. I work for a very large computer company and wages have been pretty much stagnant for 10 years here. The real "problem" is there is a shortage of cheap engineers. Ones like those in India and China. US companies are hiring overseas like crazy and reducing employee count domestically.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[snotclot]

Why study engineering?

1) Hardest course loads through college (excepting perhaps hard sciences and premeds).

2) No girls in classes (5-14%, falls as engineering major gets harder (ie electrical))

3) No girls in companies you will end up working at

4) Facebook friends list is 80% men, most of friends are men. Great if you are networking, crappy if you are trying to network to find the perfect gf/wife. Other majors make balanced set of friends naturally through classes. Their networking, as a result, is exponentially easier.

5) You end up working at a multinational company that pays you less (much less) than finance, law, BUSINESS. Argh. Note that business, finance, and law types went through the OPPOSITE of #1-#4, meaning they end up knowing way more girls, earning more, and having had a better life.

6) Yet, you feel as if you contribute way more to society than money movers, patent leeching lawyers, and smoothtalking male/female bimbos/bimbettes.

You tell ME how f*** up engineering is.

You ask why I do it? Because I love analysis, creating, designing, and doing.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[Grishnakh]

Its not the late 90s anymore folks. You will have to make yourself stand out to be hired.

Or, you can just do what today's smart kids are doing, and avoid the field altogether.

It's actually a pretty good field if you're a people person, and really like schmoozing and sitting in meetings all day. You just have to struggle through all the hard engineering classes, get an MBA to go with it, then struggle your way through the first few years of work experience as an engineer while you develop your contacts and work your way into management, then work your way up the management ladder. The sky's the limit there; you can go all the way up to CEO if you're a really good schmoozer (though to be CEO of a really big company, you'll probably need a degree from a more prestigious university, but for the lesser companies this isn't necessary, any old MBA will do).

But if you're a technical person, are not that great at chit-chatting and bullshitting with people while playing golf, don't like sitting in meetings all day, and actually like doing technical work, engineering's not a very good field.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[siphonophore]

Geez, go work for a small company. I have about 1 hr of meetings per week and work with my hands (not just typing keys) daily.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[Grishnakh]

3) No girls in companies you will end up working at

This isn't true. It depends on the company of course, but in my experience, at the large companies (like Intel), there's tons of women.

However, 1) all the women in engineering are married, and most of those in arranged marriages (i.e., if you're a white male, you're not even eligible to date them even if they were single; big culture barrier). 2) the rest of the women are in HR, marketing, finance, etc. So you'll see them occasionally in the hallway, or in the company cafeteria, but you won't see them much in your work areas or even your wing of the building. Heck, they might all be in a separate building.

At the small companies, there might be a few women, but they'll be older and married, and working as the HR person or receptionist or the owner's wife (yes, this was a real position at my first company; I'm not sure what her official title was). That's if you're lucky, lots of small companies don't have any women at all.

4) Facebook friends list is 80% men, most of friends are men. Great if you are networking, crappy if you are trying to network to find the perfect gf/wife.

Exactly right. IME, if you're an engineering major, you better make some time in your busy college schedule to find a wife before you graduate. It's just like how people used to say women went to college to get their "MRS degree", except these days it's reversed as there's more girls in college these days than boys. Make sure you pick well and don't get stuck with a girlfriend you end up breaking up with after you've left college and entered the workforce, because suddenly your choices of available single women has dried up.

6) Yet, you feel as if you contribute way more to society than money movers, patent leeching lawyers, and smoothtalking male/female bimbos/bimbettes.

Totally disagree. This one completely depends on luck, and maybe a little on your own choices. If you go to a big multinational (since the pay is generally better), chances are very good that whatever project you're working on will be shitcanned because it was a crappy copy of a competitor's product, or it wasn't well planned, or they screwed up execution and "missed the market window", or there was a competing project within the company that got chosen instead, etc. Even if it does get out the door, how well it succeeds in the market is anyone's guess; it might be the next iPhone or Facebook, or it might be the next OS/2, or it might be the next Pontiac Aztek. If you end up working on some revolutionary product that becomes a giant hit and changes the world, count yourself lucky. It's quite likely you'll waste your entire career doing nothing of real note, and nothing you worked on will be remembered by anyone.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[Sir_Sri]

Other than the richest 0.1% of the population who is seeing wage increases these days? It's called the wage productivity gap and basically, everyone who isn't running companies is getting screwed, it's not just engineers. The wealthiest 1%, 0.1% and 0.01% are getting wage increases sure (though more the top 0.1% than 1%, but anyway)

http://currydemocrats.org/in_perspective/american_pie.html from 2007 and obviously slightly biased but it has a couple of good figures on it. Pay since about 1988 has been significantly decoupling from productivity, and where has it been going? Right, not to the people at the bottom.

Therein lies the crux of all of the problem for people who aren't in the upper class in the US (and to a lesser extent everywhere else). If you worked more productively you would get more money, but not so much anymore, since someone else will work for less.

Engineering, and CS are still good programmes (yes, english spelling) to be in, since you still get more money than other fields generally. The other sciences are sort of a crap shoot, if you can't get a PhD, or can't get a technician job they're really bad to have done, but otherwise they can work out ok. The problem is that a construction worker with no education past highschool will make as much as a degree in biology or physics will during say, a post doc, and the scientists will have needed 10 years to get to that point, where the construction worker starts out close to that.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[Corporate T00l]

Your #1-4 do certainly match my experience. Your point #5 though doesn't seem to be borne out by the facts.

The notion that engineering majors make less than finance and business majors isn't borne out by the statistics. Law is an unfair comparison since that's an additional 3 years of expensive professional degree tuition, although their new-graduate employment numbers aren't doing that great.

Let's compare stats. Here we have have an undergraduate business program, hyped as being in the top 20 undergraduate business programs (pay close attention to the mean base salary and % employment numbers):

http://dyson.cornell.edu/undergrad/careers.php#placement

Here we have an undergraduate engineering program, also hyped as being highly ranked, at the same university, for the same year:

Computer Science: http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=78827

Electrical Engineering: http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=78828

Now, the business degree majors do have their data updated for 2011, the engineers are only at 2010, but take a look at the 8 year trend reports to satisfy yourself that the numbers are relatively stable:

http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/postgrad_reports.cfm

Undergrad CS majors are making 28% more than the undergrad business majors. Electrical engineers are not doing as well as the CS majors, but still better than the business majors.

The majority of business majors end up in just as boring and dead-end jobs as the majority of other majors. You can't look at the high-flying business and finance guys on Wall Street and think that those guys are "typical" for business majors any more than you can look at Bill Gates, Gordon Moore, or any of a whole range of tech company CEOs and execs, and think that they are typical engineers.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[CodingHero]

Your posts of:

Or, you can just do what today's smart kids are doing, and avoid the field altogether.

and

Way to miss the point. You're never going to get, working as an engineer at a small company, the kind of pay that you'd get as a middle manager at a large corporation. Plus, your career is over when you're 40; managers don't have to worry about that.

Of course, the downside is that you do little of value and you sit in meetings all day when you're a manager, but so what? Bring your laptop/smartphone and play games and claim you're answering emails, and then enjoy the cash after work is over (while the engineers you supervise are still hard at work into the evening hours to meet the unrealistic deadlines you set).

make me feel like you are an engineer who has somehow become embittered with the profession. I'm sure you have a reason you feel the way you do but I work as an engineer at a small company with around 20 other engineers and none of any age are nearly this cynical about it. As previous posts have mentioned, engineering classes are hard, there's no girls, and you probably will never get the respect you deserve from the rest of society, but we do it because we love it. To be successful as an engineer requires that you enjoy what you're doing. Once you stop enjoying it, then it's time to move on. Keep in mind here that "successful" does not necessarily equal "high pay" or "upper management" position; many would define it as having a job where they don't actually feel like they are going to work.

Re:Engineering shortage?

[rwa2]

Why study engineering?
1) Hardest course loads through college (excepting perhaps hard sciences and premeds).

Yep, I enjoyed the challenge. Actually took quite a few extra honors options that I didn't technically need to, and enrolled in a bunch of pretty difficult electives for the heck of it. Yes, I also failed / withdrew / incompleted some of them... over a few rough semesters I managed to collect one of every possible grade... but really, where else can you explore your limits? I didn't get into a hard school just to try to skirt by with the bare minimum easy classes and avoid all the challenging courses and professors. Besides, no one has ever asked for a transcript (maybe if I went the academic route grades would be important)

2) No girls in classes (5-14%, falls as engineering major gets harder (ie electrical))

Wish this would increase... but at least the girls that are there can be super nerdy++, which is a turn-on for some of us . Besides, this is a plus if you already have a gf from HS like I did. Can be tricky, since you can't really count on girls and relationships to mature until after college. I suppose I lucked out (esp. since my gf/wife ended up financing my last semester of college).

But yeah, unless you get lucky with project teams, chances of finding love on the engineering quad are slim. However, a lot of our professional engineering societies were pretty much run almost exclusively by women... even the Society of Women Engineers wasn't sexist about letting guys join in if you get really desperate. Also, there are usually plenty of girls in classes / clubs like ballroom dancing who dig science / engineering types (particularly the foreign girls)... because face it, you don't really want to be talking to your gf about problem sets all the time.

3) No girls in companies you will end up working at

Given how much trouble people get into for shitting where they eat, this is probably a plus.

4) Facebook friends list is 80% men, most of friends are men. Great if you are networking, crappy if you are trying to network to find the perfect gf/wife. Other majors make balanced set of friends naturally through classes. Their networking, as a result, is exponentially easier.

Get a gf/wife in education, then their social sphere is the exact opposite, and you have achieved balance. Plus then your SO can have all her hot teacher friends over and you can impress them with your... whatever. (Teacher friends are easily impressed, or at least do a great job being super friendly about it even if they aren't.) Also you get to constantly play hookup master with all of your respective friends. (not recommended with friends you want to keep, but entertaining nonetheless)

5) You end up working at a multinational company that pays you less (much less) than finance, law, BUSINESS. Argh. Note that business, finance, and law types went through the OPPOSITE of #1-#4, meaning they end up knowing way more girls, earning more, and having had a better life.

Yeah, but those people are sleazy looking. Also you feel better when you find out they're all indirect overhead and the first on the chopping block when it's time to tighten belts.

6) Yet, you feel as if you contribute way more to society than money movers, patent leeching lawyers, and smoothtalking male/female bimbos/bimbettes.

Heh, yeah, people who make money out of money are in it just as long as other people buy into their bluff. But when it hits the fan, the resourceful ones with the ability will still be... working. Woo. At least it's something that will always have value, and not just evaporate.

You tell ME how f*** up engineering is.
You ask why I do it? Because I love analysis, creating, designing, and doing.

And some people's life goal is to be able to go shopping on som

Re:Engineering shortage?

[reason]

I think the parent comment's point in saying "your career is over when you're 40" is that at 40, you have reached the top of your career ladder unless you move into management (in a large corporation).

I'm in science role, and at 38, have reached this point myself. I am in a large corporation, and have started the shift into management, though it isn't something I'm particularly good at or particularly enjoy. In the context of a large organisation, a 45 year old who has avoided management roles is likely to be perceived in some quarters as a failure, and may be first in line for redundancy when the next downturn hits.

Supply and demand

[jpobst]

It's simple supply and demand.

Anyone who is smart enough to do STEM is also smart enough to get an MBA for a lot less work, and have 10x the earnings potential.

When CEO's making tens of millions say they can't find engineers, they really mean they can't find engineers for what they want to pay them. If you start paying engineers like executives, management, or sales, you'll have plenty of people stepping up.

Mod parent up.

[khasim]

If there really was a shortage then wages would rise.
Rising wages mean more people try to get into that field.
We're still hearing about the "shortage" but wages aren't going up.

Instead, there are a lot of companies lobbying Congress for changes in the H-1B visa program to get more cheap engineers from overseas.

It's about profits. Not a shortage of engineers.

Supply and demand

[MetricT]

I can't find someone who'll sell me a Corvette for $10. That must mean there's a Corvette shortage...

The MBA's, pols, and lobbyists that run our society can't seem to understand that supply and demand applies to other people as well. If the reward for several years of grad school were equal to the risk and cost, you'd see more people in STEM. That's why they went into finance, because that's where the money was.

When the scientists and engineers make more money than the MBA's running the company, I'll imaging you won't have any problem finding them. (And I have both a MBA from a top 25 school and 12 years in high-performance computer. Guess who makes more around here...)

When you say something is unimportant, and yet treat it as unimportant, people are smart enough to see through that.

other industries are protected by the govt

[stanjo74]

Most jobs in a service economy are protected in some way by the government, with the exception of engineering jobs. Anything in medical, law, finance, accounting, etc. is protected from fierce international competition by local and federal rules and regulations.

So, unless one's heart is really into it, why would anyone consider a career in engineering and science?

Re:Some Niche Engineering Jobs Needed

[the eric conspiracy]

In my youth companies would hire a talented engineer out of school and have him work with an experienced designer in the field to develop skills in a technical specialty such as this, and hang on to him for dear life once the skills were developed. Now the idea is that these specialists are just spring up to meet need and can be let go the instance such needs are fulfilled.

Well what happens is the skills don't get developed that way, and nobody is interested in going $100,000 in debt to get what amounts to be a temporary job.

Passion

[ocratato]

Most of these solutions seem to be getting the cart before the horse.

Back in the early '70s, in Australia at least, you could get a university education almost for free. The result was that students studied what they had a passion for without worrying too much about what career they would end up with. The lucky ones got the careers they wanted, others with a real passion started businesses, and the rest ended up as teachers where they taught with that same passion.

Now a universtiy education is so expensive that it must be carefully tailored to where the good paying jobs already are. The passion has been lost, and along with it the good teachers and the innovative engineers - like those that started Sun, HP, etc.

Society has to put the investment back into education if it wants to get the rewards. Give the kids that education and they will go out and dream up new businesses that we cannot even begin to imagine.

Re:Some Niche Engineering Jobs Needed

[russotto]

I work for a major semi-conductor company in Silicon Valley (California USA), and we have been desperately looking for talented micro-controller firmware software developers and/or hardware engineers that are proficient with wired data-link protocols (UART, SPI, I2C, 1-wire, ISO7816-3, etc.) for nearly a year, and offering a 6 figure salary.

So find someone with a clue and maybe some experience in related areas (e.g. kernel or device driver development), and hire them. I've done microcontroller firmware and had to bit-bang both SPI and I2C, and neither one is rocket science; I learned on the job from the data sheets. Stop looking for the purple squirrel -- the candidate who has exactly the experience you need on the tools you use -- and start hiring people who have the basic skills. This is still difficult, but it's a lot less difficult than looking for the niche candidate who probably already has a job with your competition.

(I'm on the wrong coast and am currently employed doing something else, sorry)

Re:Some Niche Engineering Jobs Needed

[leftover]

ad454 I believe you but think you are missing something. You, as the technical person, are not seeing any candidates because the generation who cut that technology with their own teeth are too old to get past HR.

My experience spans the development of those protocols; there is a veritable museum's worth of 7816 prototypes in my basement; there are ARM, PIC and MSP430 projects-in-process in front of me right now and I would very much like a job as you describe. You would never even see my resume because I am sixty-something. Anyone who is not sixty-something would not have my experience. Anyone trained in 'software' now would have started with GUI toolkits and unlimited memory. Hardware people are using UML design leading to implementation in astonishingly capable programmable logic devices.

Many of the posts above hit the nail on the head: the MBA managers deliberately under-value the contribution of engineering to their own wealth. They pretend that they somehow create wealth by having meetings. The same people use some of that money to buy politicians at all levels. They also write business textbooks to further solidify their dogma.

Meh. I'll get off your lawn now.