Posted on December 12, 2005  Comments (3)

The engineers are feeling gloomy by Aliza Earnshaw:

It is true some jobs are being moved overseas. But the unemployment rate for engineers is still very low (under 3%). Also the pay for engineering graduates is very high.

The status (respect) accorded to engineers may well indicate a long term trend in the United States to value those who work with money (salesmen, managers, finance…) over those who work on things (engineers, skilled workers, software…). I think this is a significant problem that does require that management improvement. In my view companies that realize that engineers, other knowledge workers, should be the focus of their management (not playing games with quarterly earnings) will outperform those that try to manage companies through financial measures alone.

In a post on our Curious Cat Management Articles blog, Google: Ten Golden Rules, we quoted a Business Week article, Googling for Gold:

Maybe the suits shouldn’t complain too loudly. They may get others to look at why Google is doing so well and decide it is due to placing more respect on engineers and less on suits (not that suits don’t deserve respect but I question the current balance of respect in most companies). I believe the success of Google will eventually get more “suits” to realize they need to do everything they can to allow the engineers in their companies to innovate. At this time, it is easy for most to see this concept for software engineers but similar potential exists for many engineers.

Here is some data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (which has some great data but the web site could be much better).

Some additional data from IEEE, Employment Data Paints a Disturbing Picture:

While the situation is difficult there are positive and negative trends. We will continue to post on this topic.

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• Companies Not Countries
• Relative Engineering Economic Positions
• Leverage Universities to Transform State Economy