Engineers in the Workplace
Posted on December 12, 2005 Comments (3)
The engineers are feeling gloomy by Aliza Earnshaw:
“There’s no money in it, there’s nothing but layoffs, and it’s all being outsourced to India,” said one engineer.
“There’s no respect,” comparable to that accorded lawyers or physicians, said another. “Someone with a bachelor’s or master’s in electrical engineering or software, he’s just a flunky.”
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:
…
with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.
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).
Hourly Rates for Engineers in the USA | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Field | 1997 | 2000 | 2004 | |
Aerospace | 30.44 | 33.34 | 41.15 | |
Chemical | 30.65 | 36.39 | 37.97 | |
Electrical | 29.24 | 33.94 | 37.32.15 | |
Petroleum | 35.44 | 36.75 | 43.26 | |
Other | 29.00 | 33.52 | 36.59 |
Some additional data from IEEE, Employment Data Paints a Disturbing Picture:
…
Between 2003 and the first quarter of this year, unemployment fell along with total employment, which declined from 363,000 in 2003 to 335,000 in March of 2005, almost 8 percent. The only way the number of unemployed engineers and the number of employed engineers can both fall at the same time is if a large number of engineers are simply leaving the profession.
While the situation is difficult there are positive and negative trends. We will continue to post on this topic.
Related posts:
- Companies Not Countries
- Relative Engineering Economic Positions
- Leverage Universities to Transform State Economy
3 Responses to “Engineers in the Workplace”
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February 15th, 2006 @ 12:43 pm
[…] Engineers in the Workplace […]
December 6th, 2006 @ 7:28 pm
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June 26th, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
I must say I am a bit skeptical but I am hardly an expert in forecasting automobile engineering jobs so maybe it is a good prediction, Study forecasts 300,000 more automotive engineering jobs worldwide by 2015…