A coming engineering shortage ? ---- Who agrees ? 86

[MJCronin]

A recent article says that there will be an acute shortage ... particularly in the electrical field !!!

http://www.csemag.com/single-articl...hortage/7b350ef419c231a9f82abc6c8bd8fac4.html

Who agrees ???

Who strongly disagrees ???

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[CWB1]

most engineers (not all) must face the fact that we have not

...opinion.

I beg to differ with CWB1 who stated this view [that licensure is distasteful] is common among engineers here stateside. His/her statement cites no sources hence I tend to question if it is based on fact.

Funny, you challenge me to support my post with facts while declaring your opinion to be fact with no support. FWIW, my post did NOT state that licensure is distasteful, merely unnecessary. What IS distasteful to many as a matter of ethics is protectionism which, while often associated with licensure is NOT the same thing.

The simple fact of the matter is that historically there has been almost no engineering labor organization in the US nor even much attempt at organizing. That alone would suggest your opinion of the need to organize hasnt ever been shared by many. In fact, neither union, NSPE membership, nor the number licensed have kept up with this profession's growth in recent years, suggesting fewer engineers than ever are interested in any of the three. In the broader US workforce, depending on the media/stats/polls you follow the US is either pretty staunchly against union protectionism or roughly 50-50 on supporting it - IOW we generally take a dim view of it stateside.

As for licensure, you keep riding the high horse of "policing our own" while simultaneously protecting ourselves (yourself) by stifling competition, justified by your arrogant assertion that most everyone other than a fellow PE is either incompetent or greedy. There's some serious irony in any engineer going down that path, nevermind you given your recent struggles. Regardless, our capitalist system and the legal profession do far more "policing" of engineers than licensing, state boards, and the various societies combined. As it should be for all, outside of protected positions both care little if someone is licensed or not. Good engineers are well-compensated, bad engineers are pushed toward other professions, and unscrupulous engineers either end up in jail or facing large fines. Like it or not but licensing, state boards, and society sanctions are all secondary, redundant, and thereby unnecessary means of policing this profession. While extra safeguards are usually good things, in this case I have seen far too many willing to make ethical exceptions to protect themselves at the expense of clients and public safety. JMO but there are no ethical exceptions to one's ethics.

 

[GregLocock]

How does it work in Australia? I've not done any overtime for more 15 years or more, and could retire tomorrow, aged 57, on about $80k per year.



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[Tunalover]

CWB1 you seem to say that engineers have not joined because they haven't wanted to. This is unproven. If an engineering graduate received even anecdotal evidence that joining an engineering organization would put him in a club that has his/her interests at heart he/she would certainly join if the cost was not too high. And as for my assertion that our ranks need policing, maybe you haven't been looking around much. For example, most people are doing "engineering" now don't even know how to prepare an engineering drawing properly. ASME spent many millions writing standards that are flat out ignored simply because management doesn't care about drawings (at least until something goes wrong when, lo and behold, they care deeply about drawings). Engineers (and designers and draftsmen), even if they were taught to care about drawings, can't prepare them properly because management is too cheap to buy the necessary standards. And because the engineers are not organized, they have no power in numbers, hence are in no position to require that these standards be provided. Everything that goes into a design is wholly contained in the drawing package. The drawing is the ultimate expression of any design but everywhere I look around I see junk drawings and people who just accepted the constant hassles brought on by poor drafting rather than simply preparing the drawings well in the first place. As for me, I simply broke down and spent my own money to buy the standards needed to do decent drawings. After I did, many people wanted to borrow them (but after a few were never returned I stopped lending them out).

And I won't even get into the times I've stumbled on a junior engineer performing a helical sweep in 3D CAD to model a screw thread!



ElectroMechanical Product Development
(Electronics Packaging)
UMD 1984
UCF 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

 

[TheTick]

...late to the party, but throwing this in...

Consider how many engineers are stuck in "I'm not an engineer, just a project-pusher"-type jobs, we don't have a shortage so much as a misallocation.

 

[ScottyUK]

Pamela,

Other than the outstanding use of grammar, it is difficult to believe those notes are from more than 80 years ago. Thanks for the link.

tunalover,

In the UK we have all manner of people purporting to be engineers. They range from those who who studied one of the engineering disciplines to degree or occasionally doctorate level, through to those who learned how to spell the word from Google. The profession needs some form of regulatory control, because there are too many people masquerading as engineers who are making a good living off work they are unable to do to a satisfactory standard. There are times when I understand why the skilled trades have a poor view of engineers, because I actually agree with them. Whether or not increased regulatory control would lead to better pay and conditions for the professional engineers I'm not sure, but it would make the industrial world a better, safer place by excluding the chancers and bluffers who are pretending to be engineers.

 

[cranky108]

So if the general unemployment rate is below 5%, what would make anyone think we have an excess of engineers?

If there is a shortage of workers, likely there is a shortage of engineers.

 

[moltenmetal]

cranky: because under-employment is a serious problem, and unemployment figures don't represent the number of people who have given up even looking for work.

These figures are for Ontario, Canada, where I live:

Unemployment among engineering graduates is about the same as that of the average graduate of all university programs combined, both 6 months and 2 years after graduation. It certainly isn't better, but it isn't much worse than the average.

Under-employment on the other hand, is completely rampant. While about 30% of engineering grads here in Ontario work as engineers, about 33% of those engineering grads work in jobs for which no university degree is required. That's a very serious under-employment problem which is missed entirely by just looking at the unemployment stats.

 

[ScottyUK]

moltenmetal,

How much of the spread of engineers into other fields of work is due to engineers generally being rather versatile and adaptable? Over here we hear stories of engineers being recruited by the big accountancy and auditing firms because they are analytical and methodical. It's not a field that has ever particularly caught my attention, although in hindsight accountancy is supposedly a female-dominated profession so if I were in my twenties again I might think differently!

I guess what I'm getting at is that a move into a non-engineering field of similar professional stature and remuneration isn't fundamentally a bad thing, although statistics could make it look that way.

 

[CWB1]

you seem to say that engineers have not joined because they haven't wanted to. This is unproven. If an engineering graduate received even anecdotal evidence that joining an engineering organization would put him in a club that has his/her interests at heart he/she would certainly join if the cost was not too high. And as for my assertion that our ranks need policing, maybe you haven't been looking around much. For example, most people are doing "engineering" now don't even know how to prepare an engineering drawing properly.

Nonsense, you're simply choosing to ignore facts in favor of making up your own. Union dues, NSPE membership, nor even the cost of getting licensed are overly expensive, pretty minor vs the ~$75k junior engineer's salary common in cheaper areas today. Most colleges today actively push students toward society memberships and taking the EIT. ~50% take the EIT bc of it and society participation is even higher yet we only have ~20% that pursue licensure and <5% that join NSPE. Neither ASME nor SAE have this issue with recruitment, I've been on several campuses that had thriving ASME and SAE chapters while the NSPE chapter struggled.

Regarding print generation, I am in the minority on this forum that wishes colleges would focus more on practical engineering skills such as drafting, GD&T, etc to give juniors a better start in their careers. However, I do not see the issue as incompetence is pretty quickly weeded out by simple capitalism. You either support the effort to make the company money or you hinder it and find yourself laid off. You're also proposing either a witch-hunt or an impossible testing circumstance. I'd wager ~90% of my colleagues haven't used at least half the PE exam content. I havent looked recently, but a few years ago they had biology on the ME exam, a subject which isnt part of most engineering schools' standard curriculum nor an ABET requirement! You're judging an engineer by his ability to generate prints or run a solid modeler. Unfortunately for that argument, most mechanical engineers dont generate production prints nor run a solid modeler but are in fact good in their specific roles.

If you want to consider policing the profession you may want to start with the many licensed engineers at small firms that choose not to conduct standard design reviews, even on safety critical designs. "But I dont have a partner," "I cant afford to pay another engineer to review my work," "but I rarely make mistakes,".....yea, its only the client's money and possibly their safety.

 

[DavidKite]

Moltenmetal,

I was curious about the current placement rates at my alma mater. Here's the quote (source):

Our placement rate for undergraduates is 92 percent (meaning they are employed within their field of study, enlisted in the military, or enrolled in graduate school within six months of graduation).

Reading the most recent annual report, page 8 lists 206 mechanical engineering graduates with a median pay of $64k and placement rate of 93.33%. Michigan Tech is no ivy league (acceptance rate of 75%) and most graduates stay in the Midwest so take that FWIW. New grad huskies aren't under-employed unlike engineers in Ontario.

As Snarkysparky commented in another thread...

...I am living in a manufacturing area of the country and I am not willing to move. So there's that.
I love engineering and math, I recently got my MSEE with emphasis on signal processing and controls. But that appears to be about as useful as a lib arts degree around here.

Wherever Snarkysparky reside, there is obviously no shortage of MSEE signal processing/controls. We could lament why well paying jobs of yore do not exist or we could adapt/improve/move. I see the future having more lucrative jobs for competent engineers willing to take on difficult challenges (e.g. better battery capacity, more efficient casting process etc). There is more than enough to go around. We live in the best of times.

 

[Tunalover]

CWB1 you say that capitalism will quickly weed out incompetence. Either you work in a utopia or you just aren't paying attention to the corporate world. In my experience, if you're talented but not good at playing office politics (sucking up to the right people) you have little chance for advancement. I have seen racism, nepotism, and favoritism practiced across the spectrum to reward and promote incompetent people. I had a boss just last year who was a complete narcissist, crappy manager, and alcoholic who worked at this same company since college (over 40 years). But he had no senior people reporting to him who had the balls to speak up about his behavior to upper management until I decided to do so. By the time upper management fully listened to me and got wise to him I was headed out the door already. On my last day on my way out of the exit interview the VP HR shook my hand thanking me for exposing the guy. And on this same day this guy was removed from his management role into a dumping ground called "The Advanced Technology Group". Since I had already accepted a new position and entered my resignation, it was too late for to reconsider staying. The bottom line is that this guy with such a strong influence on young minds was allowed to continue in a supervisory role for decades because of his political prowess and "loyalty" alone. And because the people that reported to him all those years were afraid to speak up they suffered for it. This guy was totally incompetent (as manager AND engineer) yet in his own mind he was "hot stuff". People were afraid to stand up to him because they feared for their jobs. I'm just glad I was able to influence a positive change before moving on to a 15% higher salary and better benefits.

So, this guy was a prime example of someone who survived for decades based on his ability to curry favor and maintain positive perceptions with people so busy and so far up the ladder they couldn't easily see the destruction he sowed. BTW an EE coworker (I'm an ME) counted the number of pricey quick-turn prototype printed circuit boards this guy ordered on one project alone in 2016 : 24. He ruled that project with an iron fist but rarely had a clue about what to do next.


ElectroMechanical Product Development
(Electronics Packaging)
UMD 1984
UCF 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

 

[moltenmetal]

ScottyUK: we survey our 4th year students, and consistently, year after year, over 90% of the ones who intend to work rather than go on to grad school, indicate that they either definitely or probably will seek employment in engineering. Less than 10% in 4th year already know they'll be seeking employment in another field. The numbers of engineering graduates working as engineers from the census has a breakdown by age, and it appears from that data that about 50% of local eng grads end up working as engineers. That's a lot of disappointed people. The figures get worse as the engineering grads get older, such that the mean of all graduates is 30%. Though some of that is people leaving the profession either by choice or by losing their engineering job and never finding another one, a lot of it is the impact of immigration- immigrants tend to be older, i.e. not fresh grads, and a smaller fraction of them end up working as engineers than the fraction of those locally educated.

Engineering is a versatile educational base, and a lot of the students end up working for instance for the big accountancy/management consulting firms here too. The guy who writes our research and development tax credit applications is one such engineering grad. Not all the engineering grads who fail to gain access to the profession are substantially worse off, for sure- many of them have very satisfying careers. But the 70% of engineering grads who work outside the profession here, on average, earn 20% less than the 30% of engineering grads who do. If they're leaving the profession for greener pastures, it's not working for them.

In Ontario, and in Canada in general, the data are very clear indeed: we have a massive under-employment problem in the engineering profession. It is worse for immigrants, but it's really terrible for our own grads too. With 33% of our grads working in jobs not requiring a university degree of any kind, anyone who thinks engineering doesn't have an under-employment problem is kidding themselves big time.

As to the Michigan stats- I can't validate the source data so can't say much. All I can say is that "placement rate" data collected by our own universities is notoriously unreliable, because they are absolutely NOT unbiased in this data collection- they use it for recruitment purposes. The school's statement that 93% of their grads are placed "in their field of study" is very likely to be a distortion of reality. When you look at the survey done by the Council of Ontario Universities, they ask a very nebulous question- something about whether the education they received was "relevant" to the work they were doing or something like that- a question akin to "did you learn anything at all useful in those four years you spent at school?" Very difficult for most people to say no to that, even if they're working well outside the profession they were trained for. Very difficult to imagine that between two locales that share a border, i.e. Michigan and Ontario, that one cohort of engineers was nearly fully placed on graduation in engineering, and the other was placed at a rate of around 50%. The 50% figure doesn't depend on an ambiguous survey- it is data collected from the long form census, where people must select which National Occupation Code (NOC) they fall into.

 

[lacajun]

In the UK we have all manner of people purporting to be engineers. They range from those who who studied one of the engineering disciplines to degree or occasionally doctorate level, through to those who learned how to spell the word from Google. The profession needs some form of regulatory control, because there are too many people masquerading as engineers who are making a good living off work they are unable to do to a satisfactory standard.

We have the same behaviors in the USA. It harms the profession by allowing them to call themselves engineers and garner the work by not charging what a Model Law Engineer will charge. When they mess up, and they do, it gives engineering a bad reputation. The things I have seen...just defy logic to me but corporations wield a lot of power over and influence with legislators in each state.

CWB1 you say that capitalism will quickly weed out incompetence. Either you work in a utopia or you just aren't paying attention to the corporate world. In my experience, if you're talented but not good at playing office politics (sucking up to the right people) you have little chance for advancement. I have seen racism, nepotism, and favoritism practiced across the spectrum to reward and promote incompetent people.

I watched the same behaviors in my career. I ran into it so often I became numb to it and braced for the problems they caused. You can see the problems coming a mile away. I've studied organizations and people within them to learn the forces working against me. When I saw the overlapping political circles, what was going on and the real culprit was pretty obvious. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. It takes a little bit of observation and thought.


Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter
Dinner program:

http://nspe-co.org/events.php

 

[Tunalover]

I'm with you lacajun. Recently I received an email with a job opportunity for a "Mechanical Engineer" to work at a big company in Florida. Although the job title had the word "Engineer", on reading the job description no four-year engineering degree was required (in fact, no degree was required). The job was clearly for a Checker/Senior Designer. Although I thought the role of "Checker" was long ago culled from the engineering office by bean counting management, this place apparently still has use for them. I tried to explain to the recruiter (who didn't know the difference between a "designer" and "engineer" as those terms are used in the USA) that this company was probably turning away many well-qualified candidates who see the word "engineer" in the title and move on without reading the job description because they associate the word "engineer" with a BS (or BE) or higher in engineering or physics. But, being a recruiter, he wasn't concerned. To him, whoever wrote that job description is an indisputable authority knowing much more than I.

Also, in my recent job hunt I found that even seasoned "technical" recruiters have never looked at the college course lineup required by engineers of any kind and go on year after year harboring false notions. For example, I've been fighting the wide belief that an "electronics packaging engineers" designs the packaging e.g. clear plastic and cardboard of electronics for shipment to end-users and retail stores. Many job descriptions were for low-paying jobs for "engineers" with a two-year degree in mechanical engineering (there isn't one in the USA). Some jobs called for a "BA" in mechanical engineering (there isn't one). Those job descriptions are all for non-STEM degree CAD jockeys, designers, and draftsmen but the employer was luring them in with the prestige of the "engineer" title.

Lastly, my oldest brother is a retired "operating engineer" which means he used to operate bulldozers, backhoes, graders, and other kinds of heavy equipment. Not to put the profession down, but IMO someone in that profession is not an "engineer". His union was The Operating Engineers' Union or something along those lines.

People insert the "engineer" term in their job title when they certainly are not an engineer. You can bet that the minute a paralegal starts using the term "attorney" or "lawyer" in their job title the regional bar association will be on them immediately to change that tile or make them answer to the law.

The engineering profession is under assault from all directions. Bean counting corporate management wants to reduce salary costs so they lower the bar to let in high school graduates while luring them in with the title of "engineer" and, of course, promises of rapid advancement and much higher pay (NOT!). This last job hunt (my last, hopefully) showed that engineers are being reduced to a commodity for corporate consumption to be hired and fired willy nilly under the protection of "at will" employment law (in the USA at least). Whatever happened to mature management? Not everything is about money. The VALUE of the work it pays for must become an equal or higher consideration.

Yes, it is time we get organized and put a stop to the trend of unqualified people, lower pay, and the loss of the positive public perception we still enjoy with the title "Engineer".



ElectroMechanical Product Development
(Electronics Packaging)
UMD 1984
UCF 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

 

[CWB1]

CWB1 you say that capitalism will quickly weed out incompetence. Either you work in a utopia or you just aren't paying attention to the corporate world. In my experience, if you're talented but not good at playing office politics (sucking up to the right people) you have little chance for advancement. I have seen racism, nepotism, and favoritism practiced across the spectrum to reward and promote incompetent people.

Ha, far from a utopia I assure you. At the end of the day my work is subject to the demands of business and I have watched great work butchered many times once it leaves my design control. To suggest that most good engineers are somehow held back unless they're willing to play games at the whim of incompetent management though is as absurd as the accusation that racism, sexism, or favoritism is common. IME, those brilliant minds making these excuses while puffing out their chests and disparaging everyone around them are usually neither brilliant nor in the right profession. Many if not most of the engineering managers I know couldn't play office politics well if they wanted to, they're simply the biggest "nerd" in their niche. Yes, incompetence tends to get weeded out of any decent-size engineering department, unfortunately it tends to move into product definition, marketing, finance, or other roles that impact us.

Yes, it is time we get organized and put a stop to the trend of unqualified people, lower pay, and the loss of the positive public perception we still enjoy with the title "Engineer".

Please support your posts with something other than personal anecdotes or just stop posting. There is no trend toward lower pay, in fact we are at record highs stateside per the society surveys thanks to record demand and are well inside the top 10% of individual incomes in the US. Good luck finding evidence of a "loss of positive public perception" or any trend toward "unqualified people" that isnt severely opinionated.

We have the same behaviors in the USA. It harms the profession by allowing them to call themselves engineers and garner the work by not charging what a Model Law Engineer will charge. When they mess up, and they do, it gives engineering a bad reputation. The things I have seen...just defy logic to me but corporations wield a lot of power over and influence with legislators in each state.

Yet the common stigma about incompetent engineers here stateside is the one-man PE firm/consultancy, not those operating under the industrial exemption.

 

[Tunalover]

...in fact we are at record highs stateside per the society surveys...

The 2017 ASME Salary Survey says that the median pay for MEs in the membership is $144k annually. Surely that figure is tilted to help the membership in the marketplace!

If I am guilty of stating anecdotal evidence and propping up my opinion without facts, you are equally guilty CWB1. Where are the facts supporting your opinions? I gave a prime example earlier of an incompetent engineering manager. I provide the manager name and employer at risk of a lawsuit. That was something I lived through. If you believe that any incompetent engineer or manager will be flushed out of any organization, I'll have what you're smoking!

ElectroMechanical Product Development
(Electronics Packaging)
UMD 1984
UCF 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

 

[lacajun]

Yet the common stigma about incompetent engineers here stateside is the one-man PE firm/consultancy, not those operating under the industrial exemption.

Life is very dynamic and one never knows where one will end up. I used to be a hardliner but the last several years have taught me a great deal of very needed lessons that have significantly softened those hard edges. At any rate, I am glad to be a Professional Engineer and I am glad to run my own one woman shop. If I can get back on my feet and grow it, I will. Hopefully you will not be so ill tempered towards me, if I succeed.

Tunalover, your experiences are viewed as mine are and they are, by and large, not believed or believed to be irrelevant. Character Disturbance, by Dr. George K. Simon, Ph.D., helped me understand quite a bit as did Mindset, by Dr. Carol Dweck, Ph.D.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter
Dinner program:

http://nspe-co.org/events.php

 

[canwesteng]

I'm much more concerned about "engineers" operating under the industrial exemption than one man shops. One man shops typically stick to their niche, and they know how the design should end up looking. I've seen cowboys working on industrial sites make safety critical mistakes for structural and piping works.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I have only come across a one - one man shop that I couldn't figure out how the guy won the job. Almost all the guys who went out on their own only stuck to their small speciality, often selling services back to their former employer, and/or had so much experience that they were qualified beyond question.

At a large consulting firm, you are far more likely to get work done by a fresh grad, even for work that was won with an experienced engineer's resume. Sending work to a one man shop or a very small firm, almost guarantees your job is going to be done by someone with 20+ years of experience.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.f.

 

[Maui]

Tunalover,

The 2017 ASME Salary and Benefits Survey reveals that the median base salary for
mechanical engineers was $116,000 in 2016, compared to $102,617 in 2013. U.S.-based
mechanical engineers experienced an income gain of 3 percent over the three years,
falling directly in line with the income gain reported in the nation’s overall workforce.

This excerpt was taken from the following report:

https://www.asme.org/

http://wwwasmeorg/media/ResourceFiles/AboutASME/News Media/2018_Sal-Survey.pdf

How could the median income among the ASME membership have jumped to $144,000 in 2017? Please clarify.


Maui