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Electrical Engineering Employment Declines Nearly 10%, But Developers Up 12%
dcblogs writes The number of people working as electrical engineers declined by 29,000 last year, continuing a long-standing trend, according to government data. But the number of software developers, the largest IT occupational category, increased by nearly 12%,or a gain of 132,000 jobs. There were 1.235 million people working as software developers last year, and 271,000 electrical engineers, according U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Let's be honest about this. Electrical engineering can now be outsourced fully, as companies do not see the value in EE or more importantly that the skills are transferable to other areas such as programming. Furthermore, ageism is rampant in most of the technical field now, as HR types will want to hire someone their own age.
However, while this might be true for the work roles people are performing, the article at the end shows that EEs have lower unemployment than CSs.
This is my experience: When interviewing EEs and CS degreed employees, I'll chose the EE over CS 9 out of 10 times for a software job. In general they have a stronger grasp of the big picture, hardware, software & firmware. In fact I've been downright disappointed with the level of CS expertise by CS grads lately. It is as if the universities are training them for javascript, web site production, and IT support as apposed to a deep understanding of the CS field.
What we can say about this article is: there are more software than hardware jobs, but EEs are dual purpose, and overall have lower unemployment.
I'm an electrical engineer myself and the BLS statistics for this profession are misleading. The government categorizes electrical engineers into several sub-categories: electronic engineers, electrical engineers, fabrication engineers (silicon folks) and there is another for power engineers (the guys who work for the power company). I'd be hesitant to take this headline seriously without looking into it further.
People in the plant design business have been suffering from offshoring and increasingly-automated data-centric design software.
Expensive, sophisticated, software run over the internet by people earning 1/10 to 1/3 "western" hourly rates means that as older, more experienced workers retire, they are not replaced (or at least not on a 1:1 basis).
Most of the problems with offshoring are miscommunication, time zones and cultural.
Tasks that were formerly performed by younger people entering the field are now done by the software (eg., cable routing, single-line diagrams). Offshoring and automation are great for cost reduction but this does not bode well for people looking to enter the discipline.
You will know almost nothing important about the field when you leave college. If you manage to work for about five-ten years actually doing engineering -- as opposed to being mired in meetings, committees, half-finished projects, retreats, and seminars -- you'll probably pick up enough to actually feel like you own that degree. Related, you run into an engineer who has real chops right out of college, and you'll realize that what you have is no more than a ghostly, incomplete outline of the real tasks you face.
When you leave college, prepare to do a *lot* more bookwork, ask a lot of questions, figure out the ebb and flow of things like (for an EE) parts availability and longevity and market cycle, FCC and UL certifications, how to actually work with mechanical engineers, manage all manner of varied computer toolchains -- pcb layout, device programming, cpu programming, source code repositories, BOM managment, project planning tools, and so on... and math. You're going to have to get very, very comfortable with at least a moderate level of math. Any cribbing and cramming done in college will have to be replaced with a concerted effort to actually wrap your head around the subject.
And then we get into the many, many specialized areas that will affect just what you need to learn. RF? Microwave (not the same as RF, trust me on this)? uP system design? Signal processing? Embedded systems? Automotive, aircraft, military, space systems? Batteries? High power systems like transmission lines? Neural designs? Medical, with its myriad sub-sub specialties, some of which are more art than science? Networking? Household? Process control? AI? Robotics? Toys and Games? Probability? Test instruments? Antenna systems (it's like RF but with with a dose of magic and a dose of art and a dose of luck and the constant interference / interaction of everything with what you're trying to accomplish)? CNC? Will you need to learn about hardening? Sonar? Radar? Beam weaponry? EMP? I guarantee you'll learn quite a bit about ESD, probably first hand if you work in a dry region...
Oh, and the reality of commercial drives and deadlines, those usually come as quite the nasty shock, too. You haven't lived until the words "ship it!" send a nasty shiver down your spine because you know more testing / characterization / documentation / special casing / something else is called for.
As my boss at Can-American Electronics back in the day told a prospective hire when he announced he had a PhD: "Well, I won't hold that against you."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
One of the key parts of the story point out one of the realities of engineering; many engineers work in jobs that are outside of their degree field:P>
Electrical engineers have likely moved into other fields, such as software engineering, or to other engineering areas such as aerospace, or to Wall Street, among other occupations.
While it goes on to say some are no longer employed; with a 2% unemployment rate chances are if you are an EE, looking for an EE job, you have a job.
One of the challenges firms looking to hire engineers, at least a few years back, was competing with non-engineering firms for workers. I remember engineering companies complaining about Wall Street hiring engineers (and scientists) and how horrible that was; well pay salaries like on the Street and you can get all the engineers you want. Shortages of employees is usually from an unwillingness to pay what it takes to get the employees you want rather than a true shortage. That's not always the case but withe employees having had a buyer's market over the last fews years it's usually a safe bet that it is the case.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
15-20 years ago there were plenty of manufacturing jobs for EE's. It was a great way to learn how things were really put together, and in many cases it was the foundation of a good design engineering career. Places like HP/Agilent did a lot of their test an measurement RF/microwave career paths this way. A few years of keeping a production line that making RF/microwave widgets was a great way to learn the ropes and see how to (or not) make a good manufacturable design. Virtually all of that type of work is now offshored to Malaysia, China, and similar.
Much of the design work has been eaten up by better ADC's and DAC with gobs of FPGA's doing what used to be an art form. So now the minimum level of skill needed to work as a decently paid EE doing actual EE work is very very high.
Large numbers lost their jobs as the manufacturing went elsewhere and the engineers scurried to other jobs like programming, IT, etc to be able to feed themselves. There is a vacuum now between the EE graduates and the companies who need to hire more EE's. Companies want 5 years experience minimum to make sure you aren't a buffoon (and because they often simply have no entry level work to do), but there are very few entry level jobs to get that experience. So lots of fresh graduates find other work outside their EE degree. So lots of graduates, lots of job openings, and no good way to span the apprenticeship gap.
If I was hiring programmers, I would be very inclined to hire real engineers (of any stripe) than degreed "computer scientists"
If you had a clue you might know that Computer Information System, Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs vary greatly from one university to another. CIS at one university may be in the business school and the program oriented towards internal corporate applications, while at another university CIS may be part of the engineering school and be what many would expect a CE program to be. Similarly some CS programs are what many would expect a CE program to be, while some CE programs are pretty much mediocre CS programs.
The degree title is fairly useless info. You have to look at what the classes are in that program, if its a recent grad. If not a recent grad you have to ask them what they took. My ancient CS degree is pretty much what you see in a good solid CE program today. The modern CS degree offered by my old university is quite different. To be fair they greatly expanded the engineering department since I left and now offer separate CS and CE degrees.
I'll give HR the benefit of the doubt and say HR is trying to use a degree as a proxy for the ability to see a project through to completion.