Bad news for US Engineers

Don't be drastic man, all of this shit is the way to deal with objective facts where subjectivity is not regarded. The new order that is to come doesn't imply in a lack of humanism, it is just a new way to accommodate the objective world. In my opinion while the freedom is preserved all humanism perspective has the assured condition to be developed.

NandoPG

'nandopg',
I am finding it a little bit hard to follow you last comments about 'objectivity' & 'subjectivity'...

But try to be 'objective' when the time comes and companies from your country will start moving offshore...Just imagine how your 'objective' statement above will change....

Dear Roli,
I am sorry for your lack of understanding about objective and subjective relationship.
As to my job, I don't regard myself as a tree with root in the feet. If for any reason I loose my job here, fine I move around.
The way I see the life, objective facts (be fired for example) has never been interfering with my happiness (subjective fact).

Regards,

NandoPG

Aside from all of the ramifications of who gets what sized slice of the pie, there is the situation of the size of the pie.

Electronics seems to be going the way of all industry, like for example the aircraft industry. There are fewer companies who have a larger portion of the market and the total number of aviation engineers required is smaller.

This same thing happened in the automotive industry much earlier.

HALT,PARE , STOP ,Un MOMENT s'il vous plait ................

That article UP there is for SOFTWARE.. .. Does any body know if the same is happening in harware also??? As far as i know most of the new tech PARKS in INDIA are dealing with software realated developemt.

I haven't heard about new foundrys or harware being develloped over there? Probably it will follow the same paradigm .. After all enviroment regulation had to be more relax in INDIA .But can we say it is already taking place ....?

yes, develope own skill base, which is better. Can this be done, though? Who will develope the skills? The manager or chief executives of the conpanies in US? I don't think so. Better skills can develope engineers, product developers, people who lay their hands on the actual work. However, those are the people whose jobs are being outsourced. Do you think a laid-off engineer will really develope better skills if he doesn't have the chance to try them in practice. On the other hand, do you think engineers in China & India will develope better skills - I think yes. And all that means is the knowledge base, the experience and technological advantage is shifting to Asia. US and EU will be experienced in sales and marketing perhaps.

Let's PARTY NOW .. we'll be gone TOMORROW.. I see people trying to SEE some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of complicated TECHNOCRATIC ANALISIS

The truth is THE HELL with HUMAN GREED... SILICON or NOT!

Change, the problem is change. The companies are on their ways, if engineers stay unchanged, no doubt there are less opportunities.

BIG PIEACE of WISDOM .. you SHARED so MUCH LIGHT MR ARMAI..
The same happened in the 70's with the car industry .. and also would you say that was the fault of the labor force ...? What is the stupid mistake of the engineers this time ?.. Not to accept that somebody is able to make the same work for less.. In the west we pay more for evrything
cloths,taxes,mortgages,food,health .. where is the logic inconsistance .??
The problem is not the engineers the problem is MANAGMENT .. People that think that they BY DEFAULT are entitled to EASY MONEY ..
JUST LIKE LAWYERS and DOCTORS... .
But YES .. Let's party NOW.. Tomorrow will be another day!

eltonjohn

I don't think that is anybody's fault. If I have to blame, should I blame the low cost of Asian Labor, or the US government? All I want to do now is accept the truth.
Of course another new year is coming, I'm going to have beer NOW

Several posts above asked about hardware jobs. It looks like the jobs involve CAD use (designing ICs) and computer programming. Both of these can have their daily results sent over the internet to whoever is monitoring the progress. IBM is to outsource 150,000 programming jobs over the next 10 years and Intel has done the same with 40 IC design jobs this year.

There is no one to blame over this. The consumer always buys the lowest price. I am reminded of the statement by Karl Marx that the capitalists would sell him the rope he used to hang them. The consumers are selecting the product that deprives them of their jobs. You cannot save a fool from their folly.

This reminds me of someone I once worked with. They bought fancy new cars frequently and even an ocean going boat. Now that they are 5-10 years from retirement they discover that they cannot afford to retire. They do not have enough savings.

eltonjohn said:

HALT,PARE , STOP ,Un MOMENT s'il vous plait ................

I haven't heard about new foundrys or harware being develloped over there? Probably it will follow the same paradigm .. After all enviroment regulation had to be more relax in INDIA .But can we say it is already taking place ....?

Click to expand...

The foundry work have already been moved offshore. In Taiwan, there are TSMC and UMC. The 3rd biggest is probably Charted Semi from Singapore. SMIC from China is catching up. There are only a few foundries left in US. LSI, IBM, ST Micro, and LSI and ST are shifting to TSMC/UMC anyway. Who else in US is going to survive? Probably none. Intel is not a foundry since it doesn't offer foundry service to fabless guys.

Hardware, especially IC design jobs, are being offshored in a much faster pace. Have you heard about the horrible story at Sun Micro? The engineers were given 2 choices -- 1) go to India andd train their successors within a given period of time and then receive the severance package after the Indian engineer picks up the design 2) leave the company immediately without a severance package. Lucent, Cisco all did similar things. Of course they didn't advertise a move like this.

I personally witnessed 2 large semi companies laying off hundreds of people because their positions were replaced by Indian engineers. Intel, AMD, TI have found design centers in India long time ago. The next Celeron processor will come out of Intel's India design center.

There will probably be very few IC design jobs left in US after 5 years. Too bad. Many good hardware engineers will be forced to do something else. Some of my close friends who have been in the industry for over 25 years were forced to change careers. They became mortgage lenders, plumber, teacher ... It is sad to see things like that.

Why do you earn more than most people in your country?
Because you have better experince/knowadge/education/chance than a fast-food chain's waiter.
If you do not have the edge ,you will not be paid more than the average (42K/year in US) .
Since the India/China engineers are catching up ,
the edge between you and them is getting away, outsourcing is reasonable .
Global market is also meaning global competetion .

papertiger said:

...Since the India/China engineers are catching up ,
the edge between you and them is getting away, outsourcing is reasonable ...
Global market is also meaning global competetion .

Click to expand...

It's not about catching up. I am very sure that some of the engineers in India/China are very capable, but not all of them. One department at my company has been outsourcing some design work for the past year. It turned into a disaster. The people they hired claimed to have some experience. But it turned out all they know was name of tools. Everyday the engineers in US were bombarded with thousands of questions from their teamates in India. One guy told me that he ended up spending the whole morning just answering questions about the basics. Of course the productivity of that department has not been very high in the past year. I assume it might eventually get better once they finish "training" the engineers in India. When that time comes around, there will be very few US engineers left in that whole department. Take a look at Lucent. That was what happened and is happening there.
So what is the edge? Cheap labor!
Good IC designers in China/India probably make about $50k/yr. But living cost in those countries is much lower. Maybe it's time for US engineers to move abroad.

I don't think SO ... my friend . Indian/chinese ,engineers are not making more than $5,000 a year .Otherwise that will defeat the purpose . of the whole JOB export logic.. !

this is a growing concern with all, just look at the heat of the debate. we are scared and rightly so! in my parents age, companies respected their employees, gave them excellent benifits for them and all family members and great retirement pacakges. then, in my older siblings age (people now that are 35 - 45 years of age) see that jumping from company to company is how to get a raise/promotion. so there is no company loyalty like my parents age (people that are 50 - 65). companies realize that their middle aged employees have no loyalty, so why should company respect them??? they probably think, f#ck them, i'll outsource their sorry ass.

now, as a new hire (people 25 - 35) i see the labour market changing. i see that any job that *can* be outsourced will be. $$ runs the north american economy. if they can save money in long run, companies will. everyone knows that China/India's best resource is its people. companies know this. my career strategy will be to do what i love first, then second to stay in a market that is not likely to be outsourced.

such markets are:
government related, teaching, niche markets (like power generation), any industry that has small production numbers, field service, new wave R&D.

i would definately stay away from a career move that would put me into software development, IC design, or designing something that is NOT new. i would like to move to upper managment as fast as possible (but get solid design experience first).

i wish everyone good luck in their careers, be it in india or america. what we must do as employees is be adaptable, and do our best to make wise choices in career moves.

I can also see a time when american government realizes their economy is slowly declining because of outsourcing. they will put large terrifs against importing of outsourced material to stop this. and decide to trade with priority countries first (they already do this with NAFTA). i hope government steps in to stop the downfall. but i wonder what other affects this will have?

Mr.Cool

Don't think so...

I was contracted as a contractor for Philips Electronics and they also outsource projects to India etc... I have seen how these projects failed due to lack of knowledge and cultural differences... They say YES YES YES
But the work is not done in time... nor does it meet specifications of it is to complex to grasp or badly documented...

Its much cheaper in the long run to do it home... believe me.. I have seen work that was send to India been redone in half the time OK more cost but it was working atleast....

Many cultural difficulties are the problem...

All the best for the New Year to all people..

Well ,Well .... I used to be an INTEL engineer in the SUPERPROCESSOR DIVISION ,with the OLD i860 and i960 ,i750and others not well known . I loved INTEL till the day they wanted me TO WORK in a MILITARY project .. I WAS NOT PUT ON THIS EARTH to make WEAPONERY ...So they made me RESIGN .!.
I'M the DESERTER of the Boris Vian SONG!
I went away .. and did may own thing , I see that in my STATE .. the only people HIRING in high TECH .. are companies doing warfare related activities .I think very strongly .. That one day the US ony will PRODUCE weapons .. They will relay on other NATIONS for REST .. What will be the their CURRENCY ... you tell me !

I do not agree with Guestsy,
they will learn the technolgy and do their job perfectly Just like koreans!!!
this will happen soon.
also I think no country in the world can produce only weapon!
The US DoD pays money for researches and weapons from TAX they get from the us citizens; jobless peoples can not support the DoD!
But I think new technologies like MEMS,Optics or something like them which are young now, can grow up the industries in US. I mean that the technology changes over years, thus the companies and engineers must change if they want to be in market.

Here is an article from the business section of the US division of Yahoo !

https://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/031231/nf200312313414_db028_1.html

It shows that US labor costs are lowering and other country costs are rising. It also shows the pitfalls of some outsourcing. I think that equilibrium will be reached.