That was the prevailing wisdom during the first great age of free trade, right up until July 1914. Then in August people changed their minds for some reason.
It's just that latent feeling of entitlement that programmers get due to a lack of sunlight.
It could be worse. Some people have a sense of entitlement just because they're United States citizens. Seems they actually believe that populist "We the People of the United States, in Order to... promote the general Welfare" nonsense, and think the government should act on their behalf! Thankfully, serious and thoughtful people like you and I realize that government does not derive its "just powers from the consent of the governed" (which could lead to gross distortions from citizen's self-interest) but from the zealous pursuit of the One True Form of Freedom, a libertarian paradise where citizens are free to live outdoors and go hungry.
As a 25 year chip/hardware engineer, the last 18 of which mostly as a hiring manager...
As someone who spent a short time 18 years ago as a real engineer, but since 1995 has been a hiring manager...
There. Fixed it for ya.
bleeding edge small and medium sized companies... never been easy to find engineers as I good as I wanted to find... don't recall it ever being worse than it is right now...I have people asking me left and right for IC and H/W people... in R&D taking the pick of the worlds best people is the life blood of US innovation... I can say absolutely that there are incredible opportunities available... no-one who can legally work in the US who have have what it takes to hold them down
That's the standard cut-and-paste used by every hiring manager, headhunter, etc. Given the remarkable uniformity of such remarks, I must conclude that it's taken from some newsletter you guys get or something. Please though, if you're going to shovel this bovine manure, couldn't you at least have the courtesy to pretend it's in your own words? It'd only take a few minutes.
Out of curiosity, do you think any actual practicing engineer would believe a word of what you wrote? And if they were dumb enough to believe some of it, would you be dumb enough to hire them?
It's the old normal too. In the 1840's the hot thing for a West Point grad to do was enter the Army Corps of Engineers, get a few years of experience, then resign his commission for a lucrative civilian engineering job. When asked why he was not interest in pursuing that path, recent graduate William Tecumseh Sherman replied that "engineers are either overworked or out of work".
What has changed is that, rather than accepting that it's an inherently boom and bust field, the parrots (oops, I mean pundits) and politicians echo the tech CEO line that we have a perpetual STEM shortage. Even if things are bad now they'll be a real STEM shortage in a year or two. Honest. That's obviously true, because according to the pundits and politicians it's always been true. Honest.
because that way you can guarantee your employability
Keep telling yourself that. Remember, everything is under your control (except when it's not).
Seriously, you're being very naive. I've had 30+ years in this business and the longest I was ever out of work was 6 months. The runner-up was 3 days. Yes, I'm good at what I do, I keep up (more because I love the work than because I'm so self-disciplined), and I have a good network. Those things certainly help. I've also been very lucky so far. I know other people at least as good as me who can't find a job these days to save their lives.
[rant] Most programmers think that in the beginning God created software, and saw that it was good, but needed hardware to actually do anything useful. So he took a GOTO statement from the programmer and created an EE from it. Still trying to figure out how to work the snake and the apple into this story.
Most programmers think that computers and peripherals are the be-all and end-all of EE. To the extent they've heard of antennas, or analog circuits or power systems or whatever, they think of them as just some kind of peripheral. You can amaze them with historical tales of how there was EE long before there were computers (though they may not believe you) and how there will be EE long after we realize that computers were a mistake - a technological dead end like oil lamps.
If you're not at a Maxim or Intel of the world, you're probably not doing chip design.
Never heard of ASIC's? I've spent years doing chip design, but not a day at a "chip company".
If you're not one of the few engineers working on then you're probably not doing system level design
Huh? I've done more system level work when I haven't been doing chip design. Maybe you under the misimpression that computers are the alpha and the omega of EE. They're not. Just a sideline that became popular. I do embedded systems, and to me computers are just another component, like a power supply or an RF power amp.
If you're strictly labeling yourself as an EE, then you're probably not doing robotics or anything else control/software heavy.
To repeat myself, huh? What should they call themselves, robot wizard engineers? I'll tell my EE buddies in robotics to change their job titles.
But, it could be claimed that those bottom 7% really are the bottom 7% and just aren't that great at it.
Right, in less than a year all the incompetent EE's got canned but all the competent ones are still employed. If that happens in other fields the world may be a better place. BTW, wanna buy a bridge?
I often wonder why the hell they rant about what a CEO earns at all. Usually they make that much because they did something pretty damn original that sets them apart. Take Larry Page for example.
Larry Page is not rich because he's a CEO, he's rich because he's a founder and major stock holder of Google. Brin isn't CEO, yet he's just as rich. Gates stepped down years ago, and I've heard he's not poor either.
Most large company CEO's run companies that were established and very profitable long before they worked there. They're executives, not owners (except to the extent they've gotten sweetheart stock options). As such they're part of the hired help. The reason they're paid so ridiculously much is because the owners (aka stockholders) are in a system where they don't exercise enough control, and/or have been bamboozled by the myth of the superstar CEO. Remember, all success is due to their efforts, and all failures are due to circumstances outside of their control.
To the extent that the stockholders can't exercise control, it's standing capitalism on its head. Either that or they're just suckers. US Fortune-500 CEO's make about 400x what the average employee does. In the UK its about 45x. In Canada and most of Europe it's 20x. In Japan it's 10x. Perhaps you've heard, but there are some successful companies in those countries. Do you think their CEO's are getting paid slave wages? Should we start a fund to help them out?
This reads like a press release from IEEE-USA. It doesn't sound like they have any clue why the employment numbers have changed, but they want to complain about visas.
Such a lack of critical analysis from the IEEE-USA. It's like saying that you don't know why your house is on fire, yet you still think it's a bad idea to throw gasoline on it.
Back in the '80s and '90s that was the official line.
And some people were dumb enough to believe it. I gather you weren't one of them. But the pundits repeated the party line because they're such wonderfully critical and insightful thinkers. Does "pundit" mean "parrot" in some other language, or only in English?
From what I've seen, engineering jobs eventually follow manufacturing overseas when a company decides to offshore manufacturing.
I was saying that 30 years ago. It's not that I have such amazing insight either. It's obvious to any real world engineer.
they'll run some "special visa" progarm when the problem gets too bad
Future tense? They've been doing it for over 20 years. They're called H-1B and L-1 visas. And now in the name of "immigration reform", and in the midst of a sudden decline in EE employment, and overall the worse job market since the Great Depression, our government is planning to increase the H-1B quota from 65,000 to 300,00/year. And of course the pundits will tell everyone it's because we have a perpetual STEM shortage. Of course we do. It's hard to find students who are bright enough for EE but dumb enough to believe it has any job prospects.
I price out a few PCB's at four shops, all ten minutes from me in one of the largest industrial parks in the US. It's nearly ten times more expensive to order them from next door
I've been in this business long enough to remember when a lot of electronics was US made. It seems like American manufacturers have stopped even trying to offer reasonable prices - just the opposite of what you might think would happen with cutthroat competition. It may make sense, because they know everybody is going to ship the work to China unless there is another very strong reason to do it in the US.
As a country we've slit our own throats with so-called free trade (meaning we eliminate our tariffs while China keeps theirs, offers government subsidies, manipulates their currency, poisons their own country and practically enslaves their workers). Of course we can't compete with Chinese labor prices, but the (tongue-in-cheek) free trade has guaranteed we can't compete on any manufacturing. Seems like things are going according to plan.
And many, like myself, have a foot in both worlds. I call myself an EE, and that's what my diplomas say, but I spend at least half my time programming. Writing primitives for embedded systems is a lot smoother if you do both sides yourself. Same with signal processing, where there are analog/digital and hardware/software tradeoffs. Best of all, when I choose to implement something in software, I don't have a programmer whining that I should have done it in hardware.
However, I doubt that if in the last year 40,000 EE's suddenly decided to start calling themselves programmers.
And that is a damn shame, because finding a decent analog savvy EE is damned hard these days. Alas, it is the dinosaurs, nearing retirement age, that can whip out a high slew rate clean HV amp system (for use in an AFM). And they are becoming as scarce as hen's teeth.
That's very true, but it doesn't mean the dinosaurs can get jobs. They don't fit many employer's prejudices. Maybe in SV, but there are lots of smaller tech centers in the US. Employers scream "shortage" but won't look beyond their prejudices.
Non native english speaker here, so cut me some slack on my awful grammar
Forget it - your English is pretty good, and a helluva lot better than my Portuguese. Besides, it's mostly Americans here, so we don't really care about that foreign English grammar (or don't really know it).
More to the point, why are you looking for Java developers instead of good programmers? When you say they don't understand "Hash Set / Hash Table / Dictionary", do you mean the Java specific aspect of it or the concept? The Java specific part any decent programmer can learn in short order. The concept though is something every CS grad should understand. And "Model-view-controller" is a buzzword. Do you mean they don't know the buzzword, or they don't understand the architecture?
trig doesn't even make sense until you learn about phasors
Star Trek weapons are the key to understanding trig?
Seriously, you're being very EE-centric. Trig is directly applicable to many "mechanical" issues. My grandfather was a machinist with little formal education, and taught himself trig because it was useful in his work. Trig was the first area of math that interested me because it was directly applicable to practical problems. I was interested in photography and wanted to know what portion of the frame would be occupied by a given size object at a given distance with a certain focal length lens. Trig is even handy for carpentry, if you want moldings to fit nicely in a room that isn't terribly square.
'experienced' people that don't have the current skills required to do the demanded work, and many have the attitude that they do not have things to learn, or are not going to bother
My experience is that such an attitude amongst older EE's is rare. You can always trot out an anecdote or two to bolster the "old farts don't keep up" excuse, but that doesn't make it the norm. EE's who don't want to update their knowledge usually move into other areas like management or marketing, or get away from tech altogether. With the rare exception of those who hit it big on stock options, you're not going to get rich being an EE. Hence the field tends to retain die-hard techies who want to learn new things.
Don't really believe IEEE stats though. Two recent job postings only garnered three electrical candidates
Right. Why believe IEEE statistical analysis when we can rely on your anecdote.
Furthermore, what EE specialty was being looked for, what level of experience, and what part of the country? Without at least that minimal level of information your anecdote is even more meaningless than most anecdotes.
Thank you, Captain Kirk. I'd heard you did some re-programming for the Kobayashi Maru test, but wasn't aware that it involved a TI-83.
P.S. What the hell has happened to/.? The parent remark has been there over 3 hours and not one mention of this reference? And you dare call yourself nerds?!
Results are what matter, teaching kids any different is a disservice to them and the society they join.
Good point. We should never treat children differently than adults. If an adult doesn't work, or work well enough, they may get fired. Being unemployed for a long time may lead to losing your home and skipping a lot of meals. So in order to teach a six year old about real life, if he doesn't do his homework well enough you should stop feeding him and make him sleep outdoors. We are just way too lenient with kids these days.
Slashdot Mirror
It's truly a global market in most cases now
That was the prevailing wisdom during the first great age of free trade, right up until July 1914. Then in August people changed their minds for some reason.
Long-term, standard of living and cost of living will equalize worldwide.
And in the long run we're all dead.
I tend to favor free trade, since I think protecting a few workers at the expense of higher prices for everyone else amounts to a tax and subsidy.
That explains why in countries where almost everything is cheaper, like most of the third world, the standard of living is so high.
It's just that latent feeling of entitlement that programmers get due to a lack of sunlight.
It could be worse. Some people have a sense of entitlement just because they're United States citizens. Seems they actually believe that populist "We the People of the United States, in Order to ... promote the general Welfare" nonsense, and think the government should act on their behalf! Thankfully, serious and thoughtful people like you and I realize that government does not derive its "just powers from the consent of the governed" (which could lead to gross distortions from citizen's self-interest) but from the zealous pursuit of the One True Form of Freedom, a libertarian paradise where citizens are free to live outdoors and go hungry.
In a free country labor is by choice.
So is eating. What's your point?
As a 25 year chip/hardware engineer, the last 18 of which mostly as a hiring manager ...
As someone who spent a short time 18 years ago as a real engineer, but since 1995 has been a hiring manager ...
There. Fixed it for ya.
bleeding edge small and medium sized companies ... never been easy to find engineers as I good as I wanted to find ... don't recall it ever being worse than it is right now...I have people asking me left and right for IC and H/W people ... in R&D taking the pick of the worlds best people is the life blood of US innovation ... I can say absolutely that there are incredible opportunities available ... no-one who can legally work in the US who have have what it takes to hold them down
That's the standard cut-and-paste used by every hiring manager, headhunter, etc. Given the remarkable uniformity of such remarks, I must conclude that it's taken from some newsletter you guys get or something. Please though, if you're going to shovel this bovine manure, couldn't you at least have the courtesy to pretend it's in your own words? It'd only take a few minutes.
Out of curiosity, do you think any actual practicing engineer would believe a word of what you wrote? And if they were dumb enough to believe some of it, would you be dumb enough to hire them?
Boom and bust is the new normal.
It's the old normal too. In the 1840's the hot thing for a West Point grad to do was enter the Army Corps of Engineers, get a few years of experience, then resign his commission for a lucrative civilian engineering job. When asked why he was not interest in pursuing that path, recent graduate William Tecumseh Sherman replied that "engineers are either overworked or out of work".
What has changed is that, rather than accepting that it's an inherently boom and bust field, the parrots (oops, I mean pundits) and politicians echo the tech CEO line that we have a perpetual STEM shortage. Even if things are bad now they'll be a real STEM shortage in a year or two. Honest. That's obviously true, because according to the pundits and politicians it's always been true. Honest.
because that way you can guarantee your employability
Keep telling yourself that. Remember, everything is under your control (except when it's not).
Seriously, you're being very naive. I've had 30+ years in this business and the longest I was ever out of work was 6 months. The runner-up was 3 days. Yes, I'm good at what I do, I keep up (more because I love the work than because I'm so self-disciplined), and I have a good network. Those things certainly help. I've also been very lucky so far. I know other people at least as good as me who can't find a job these days to save their lives.
[rant] Most programmers think that in the beginning God created software, and saw that it was good, but needed hardware to actually do anything useful. So he took a GOTO statement from the programmer and created an EE from it. Still trying to figure out how to work the snake and the apple into this story.
Most programmers think that computers and peripherals are the be-all and end-all of EE. To the extent they've heard of antennas, or analog circuits or power systems or whatever, they think of them as just some kind of peripheral. You can amaze them with historical tales of how there was EE long before there were computers (though they may not believe you) and how there will be EE long after we realize that computers were a mistake - a technological dead end like oil lamps.
If you're not at a Maxim or Intel of the world, you're probably not doing chip design.
Never heard of ASIC's? I've spent years doing chip design, but not a day at a "chip company".
If you're not one of the few engineers working on then you're probably not doing system level design
Huh? I've done more system level work when I haven't been doing chip design. Maybe you under the misimpression that computers are the alpha and the omega of EE. They're not. Just a sideline that became popular. I do embedded systems, and to me computers are just another component, like a power supply or an RF power amp.
If you're strictly labeling yourself as an EE, then you're probably not doing robotics or anything else control/software heavy.
To repeat myself, huh? What should they call themselves, robot wizard engineers? I'll tell my EE buddies in robotics to change their job titles.
But, it could be claimed that those bottom 7% really are the bottom 7% and just aren't that great at it.
Right, in less than a year all the incompetent EE's got canned but all the competent ones are still employed. If that happens in other fields the world may be a better place. BTW, wanna buy a bridge?
You really can't compare CEO pay to the pay of workers and professionals.
Why? A CEO is just a manager hired to handle affairs on behalf of the owners. Hence he's part of the hired help. It's called capitalism.
I often wonder why the hell they rant about what a CEO earns at all. Usually they make that much because they did something pretty damn original that sets them apart. Take Larry Page for example.
Larry Page is not rich because he's a CEO, he's rich because he's a founder and major stock holder of Google. Brin isn't CEO, yet he's just as rich. Gates stepped down years ago, and I've heard he's not poor either.
Most large company CEO's run companies that were established and very profitable long before they worked there. They're executives, not owners (except to the extent they've gotten sweetheart stock options). As such they're part of the hired help. The reason they're paid so ridiculously much is because the owners (aka stockholders) are in a system where they don't exercise enough control, and/or have been bamboozled by the myth of the superstar CEO. Remember, all success is due to their efforts, and all failures are due to circumstances outside of their control.
To the extent that the stockholders can't exercise control, it's standing capitalism on its head. Either that or they're just suckers. US Fortune-500 CEO's make about 400x what the average employee does. In the UK its about 45x. In Canada and most of Europe it's 20x. In Japan it's 10x. Perhaps you've heard, but there are some successful companies in those countries. Do you think their CEO's are getting paid slave wages? Should we start a fund to help them out?
This reads like a press release from IEEE-USA. It doesn't sound like they have any clue why the employment numbers have changed, but they want to complain about visas.
Such a lack of critical analysis from the IEEE-USA. It's like saying that you don't know why your house is on fire, yet you still think it's a bad idea to throw gasoline on it.
Back in the '80s and '90s that was the official line.
And some people were dumb enough to believe it. I gather you weren't one of them. But the pundits repeated the party line because they're such wonderfully critical and insightful thinkers. Does "pundit" mean "parrot" in some other language, or only in English?
From what I've seen, engineering jobs eventually follow manufacturing overseas when a company decides to offshore manufacturing.
I was saying that 30 years ago. It's not that I have such amazing insight either. It's obvious to any real world engineer.
they'll run some "special visa" progarm when the problem gets too bad
Future tense? They've been doing it for over 20 years. They're called H-1B and L-1 visas. And now in the name of "immigration reform", and in the midst of a sudden decline in EE employment, and overall the worse job market since the Great Depression, our government is planning to increase the H-1B quota from 65,000 to 300,00/year. And of course the pundits will tell everyone it's because we have a perpetual STEM shortage. Of course we do. It's hard to find students who are bright enough for EE but dumb enough to believe it has any job prospects.
I price out a few PCB's at four shops, all ten minutes from me in one of the largest industrial parks in the US. It's nearly ten times more expensive to order them from next door
I've been in this business long enough to remember when a lot of electronics was US made. It seems like American manufacturers have stopped even trying to offer reasonable prices - just the opposite of what you might think would happen with cutthroat competition. It may make sense, because they know everybody is going to ship the work to China unless there is another very strong reason to do it in the US.
As a country we've slit our own throats with so-called free trade (meaning we eliminate our tariffs while China keeps theirs, offers government subsidies, manipulates their currency, poisons their own country and practically enslaves their workers). Of course we can't compete with Chinese labor prices, but the (tongue-in-cheek) free trade has guaranteed we can't compete on any manufacturing. Seems like things are going according to plan.
And many, like myself, have a foot in both worlds. I call myself an EE, and that's what my diplomas say, but I spend at least half my time programming. Writing primitives for embedded systems is a lot smoother if you do both sides yourself. Same with signal processing, where there are analog/digital and hardware/software tradeoffs. Best of all, when I choose to implement something in software, I don't have a programmer whining that I should have done it in hardware.
However, I doubt that if in the last year 40,000 EE's suddenly decided to start calling themselves programmers.
And that is a damn shame, because finding a decent analog savvy EE is damned hard these days. Alas, it is the dinosaurs, nearing retirement age, that can whip out a high slew rate clean HV amp system (for use in an AFM). And they are becoming as scarce as hen's teeth.
That's very true, but it doesn't mean the dinosaurs can get jobs. They don't fit many employer's prejudices. Maybe in SV, but there are lots of smaller tech centers in the US. Employers scream "shortage" but won't look beyond their prejudices.
Non native english speaker here, so cut me some slack on my awful grammar
Forget it - your English is pretty good, and a helluva lot better than my Portuguese. Besides, it's mostly Americans here, so we don't really care about that foreign English grammar (or don't really know it).
More to the point, why are you looking for Java developers instead of good programmers? When you say they don't understand "Hash Set / Hash Table / Dictionary", do you mean the Java specific aspect of it or the concept? The Java specific part any decent programmer can learn in short order. The concept though is something every CS grad should understand. And "Model-view-controller" is a buzzword. Do you mean they don't know the buzzword, or they don't understand the architecture?
trig doesn't even make sense until you learn about phasors
Star Trek weapons are the key to understanding trig?
Seriously, you're being very EE-centric. Trig is directly applicable to many "mechanical" issues. My grandfather was a machinist with little formal education, and taught himself trig because it was useful in his work. Trig was the first area of math that interested me because it was directly applicable to practical problems. I was interested in photography and wanted to know what portion of the frame would be occupied by a given size object at a given distance with a certain focal length lens. Trig is even handy for carpentry, if you want moldings to fit nicely in a room that isn't terribly square.
'experienced' people that don't have the current skills required to do the demanded work, and many have the attitude that they do not have things to learn, or are not going to bother
My experience is that such an attitude amongst older EE's is rare. You can always trot out an anecdote or two to bolster the "old farts don't keep up" excuse, but that doesn't make it the norm. EE's who don't want to update their knowledge usually move into other areas like management or marketing, or get away from tech altogether. With the rare exception of those who hit it big on stock options, you're not going to get rich being an EE. Hence the field tends to retain die-hard techies who want to learn new things.
Don't really believe IEEE stats though. Two recent job postings only garnered three electrical candidates
Right. Why believe IEEE statistical analysis when we can rely on your anecdote.
Furthermore, what EE specialty was being looked for, what level of experience, and what part of the country? Without at least that minimal level of information your anecdote is even more meaningless than most anecdotes.
Thank you, Captain Kirk. I'd heard you did some re-programming for the Kobayashi Maru test, but wasn't aware that it involved a TI-83.
P.S. What the hell has happened to /.? The parent remark has been there over 3 hours and not one mention of this reference? And you dare call yourself nerds?!
Results are what matter, teaching kids any different is a disservice to them and the society they join.
Good point. We should never treat children differently than adults. If an adult doesn't work, or work well enough, they may get fired. Being unemployed for a long time may lead to losing your home and skipping a lot of meals. So in order to teach a six year old about real life, if he doesn't do his homework well enough you should stop feeding him and make him sleep outdoors. We are just way too lenient with kids these days.
Gotta love the educational-industrial complex. What business wants to let customers buy less.