I am a newly employed engineer in British Columbia and I can attest to that achieving that wasn't easy.
I spent the large part of six months searching for jobs and doing everything to improve how I presented myself to employers, or myself. It just was never enough.
The large part of the graduating body were hired through the companies that they worked for during their Co Op periods. Others were, and are having a difficult time
find employment otherwise. The program directors knew this for the most part, and attempted to put an emphasis on Co Op searching and fitting, but the student
body was largely kept in the dark about why it was important.
My employer was, to my benefit, thoughtful enough to consider hiring a new grad as a way to train someone for different projects that needed to be accomplished.
However, so many of the jobs that are posted were looking for experience of 4+ years. Despite that I was told apply for these jobs regardless, I saw no
sympathy for recruiters.
From my point of view, there is demand for new grads but it is select few companies that contact the schools looking for internship or graduate students.
These companies have a clear agenda and by complying with the schools it shows. However, they are few in the majority.
The bit about the 1% is interesting, because for many two income professional families, $188k would not be outrageously high, which puts them in the top 5% in the US:
We're achieving levels of wealth and income disparity not seen since the 1920s. If we keep at it, we'll have the Dickensian workhouse back before we know it...
OK, the thread has gone off topic... let's hope it returns! But I have to answer that question first- and apologize in advance for venting-
(OFF TOPIC RANT BEGINS)
Warren Buffet has been quite vocal about the need to reform the US tax system such that the earnings of capital are not treated preferentially to the earnings made by actually WORKING- and if we fix that alone, you'd be miles ahead in making the US a more equitable and just society in economic terms. (We have the same problems here in Canada, with just a bit more of the lingering welfare state from the 1950s that the neo-Cons haven't manage to kill - yet). Buffett has also made sure that he doesn't leave a dynasty. Both Buffett and Gates are huge philanthropists as well- I wouldn't give them a choice, preferring the certainty of taxation to the vaguaries of private philanthropy, but at least they're trying!). Both of those guys realize that they didn't- indeed COULD NOT- truly EARN all the wealth they've been able to accumulate. But these guys are the exception that proves the rule in my opinion: the majority of the 0.1% consists not of "self made men" out of some Horatio Alger story, but of dynasties which result directly or indirectly from entrenched privilege and the power that inherited wealth can give for generation after generation. Reform (should I say re-reform, fixing the Reagan-era stupidity?) of the estate tax laws would fix this- if the political system weren't also corrupted by the influence of this immense and ill-distributed wealth!
I realize "parasites" is a loaded term- it's one the communists were a little too eager to throw around. But what else would you call 300 families who control 40% of the earth's wealth? Who could argue that people in general wouldn't be better off if the wealth possessed by those 300 families were redistributed more equitably amongst the people who are actually making the goods and services of real value in the world? You don't have to line them all up against a wall and shoot them- you just need to tax the bejeezus out of them when they die. Nobody's widow or children need to starve as a result of that reform, but nobody should be able to fund a dynasty for five generations either- it's contrary to fundamental justice in my opinion.
Steve Jobs? Don't get me started! That guy made his fortune charging a huge mark-up for style over substance, on contract labour done almost exclusively in China. He's a case in point!
(END OFF TOPIC- RETURN TO TALKING ABOUT THE SURPLUS OF ENGINEERING GRADS RELATIVE TO ENGINEERING JOBS)
"That guy made his fortune charging a huge mark-up for style over substance, on contract labour done almost exclusively in China. He's a case in point!"
I'll disagree on that point. He, or Apple, couldn't have over-charged if the demand were not there. Everyone who owns an iPhone is complicit in Jobs' wealth. You don't have to own an iPhone, but you do certainly have to make a living. So, while some people are stuck working for journeyman's wages, they could have bought some other phone for a lot less, which would have been commensurate with their wages.
Nevertheless, Jobs, through Apple, and others in Silicon Valley did revitalize what might have been a sad epitaph to the heyday of what Silicon Valley started out as. Apple, Google, etal, are providing the compensation that allows new grads to jumpstart themselves into the top 20%. When you look at the totality of compensation for a worker at, say, Facebook:
> free shuttle to/from work
> free meals during work
> free gym with massages (don't know if they're free or not)
> free junk food
> on-site medical, including OTC medicines
> on-site bicycle repair
> signing bonus
> AND stock options
so to that degree, the incentives bear out the notion that some shortage of some disciplines exist. However, were ALL of the STEM indoctrinated high school students to enter computer science, that job market would collapse in a heat beat.
TTFN
faq731-376
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Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
There is a homework forum hosted by engineering.com:
Just getting back to the dumbing down of jobs - to stick with structural engineering, where I know enough to be dangerous. Once upon a time somebody would hand analyse a structure before it was built (if only by eye). If they were good, then it withstood the test of time. If they were less good, but lucky or nervous, they overdesigned it, and the building stood the test of time, at some additional cost in resources. If they were less good, and not sufficiently lucky and not sufficiently nervous, it fell down.
So, mathematicians, engineers, and scientists and natural philosophers had a look at analyzing structures, and ultimately invented the sort of analysis we do at uni, and then in a further bit of dumbing down, generated tables of standard analyses and solutions and assumptions.
So what was initially a skill available to very few has now becomes essentially a clerical task, where the skill is in interpreting badly written requirements and regulations to find an appropriate solution rather than the mathematical finessing. As such we'd expect to design structures more quickly, but it is a less skilled job, so more people should be able to do it, so the pay should be less.
To counteract this diminution of the job, we (society) make things harder by proposing and demanding more optimised solutions which cannot just be generated from tables and codes, which by their nature are conservative.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
I think you're over-simplying this a bit. The trick comes in:
> figuring out which equations to use, particularly, as is often the case, where the design does not have an applicable table.
> what the appropriate parameters are
> whether the results make any sense
> how to adjust the design to get the results to converge to the desired result
Most of these are outside of the purview of a typical analysis program. Now, Roark certainly has a lot of tables, but they are almost all exclusively for relative simple structures. Combine a few dozen beams and walls together, and the hand calculations become substantially more complex.
TTFN
faq731-376
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529
Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
There is a homework forum hosted by engineering.com:
Yes IRStuff, Sheldon Cooper was right- we engineers ARE the Oompaloompas of science...
It's important to realize that design codes and standards were written at least in part to ensure that limited design tasks could be accomplished by people lacking an engineering education and training, without resulting in death- most of the time- and that since improperly qualified people have always been doing that work, the codes and standards are a good thing on the whole! That too many engineers use them as a crutch to avoid the need to use their own engineering judgment is regrettable to both society and the profession. The tendency to require these codes, which we wrote, to be followed DESPITE engineering judgment as if they were carved on stone tablets by a deity, is also regrettable.
Yes, productivity gains resulting from technological improvement can climb all the way up the value ladder- only the CEOs and corporate board members and the investor class seem to be immune at the moment. That fact, plus globalization, is a threat to our ongoing ability as engineers to earn a living commensurate with the education, risk and effort required. There are holes to hide in and niches to exploit, but the trend itself is unmistakeable. At present more than 70% of us are working outside the profession for which we were educated, and that astounding number continues to shrink. 20 years ago it was around 35%, so it hasn't always been so. Engineering once WAS a profession in demand, in general terms- and we've kept treating it as such long after it ceased to be! This is a general trend in all professions, but it is most pronounced in engineering by far, based on the data in OSPE's report.
We once looked upon the reduction of labour input resulting from technology as a good thing- because we assumed that as a society we would more or less equitably share the resulting gains. People thrown out of work at the bottom of the labour ladder would find new opportunities created further up the ladder, for which society would be happy to train them. 1950s futurists imagined a further shrinking work week, without the stagnation and indeed retreat of standard of living we've actually experienced- to the extent that the lifestyle once possible on one family income can now only be supported with two- albeit with a few more technological toys thrown into the mix as "normal" rather than as luxuries. And indeed between the late '40s and the late '70s, the rising tide did seem to raise all our boats- more or less. Regrettably, since then, the gains from increased productivity have overwhelmingly gone to a small subset of the population. The "reflux" of taxation support provided by the benefitting subset to the society from which that wealth was extracted, has been steadily shrinking.
What the report cited in my original post proves too is that whereas once we thought that all we needed to become members of that subset were some good choices, an education and a willingness to work hard, those days are also gone. Not for every single person-the top 10% of any endeavour aside from professional sports or music and the like are still going to do well, and it is still possible to become a self-made person and leap into the top 0.1%. But in average terms, for most of us (or more properly for most of the people on this site- our kids or grandkids) those days are gone. The economy simply isn't capable of generating enough cushy white collar jobs to employ all the bright, well educated kids that our universities are capable of pumping out. This is going to generate a crisis of disaffected youth unless something rather dramatic is done about it- other than simply cranking up the university enrollments yet more!
Young eng does not know much about engineering, their knowledge revolve more around computers and software. They ask small salary but no one has money to waste.
Eng with good knowledge as a lot of money and no one want to pay it (except some cases).
Look from investor point of view. He want profit, PERIOD.
All of this is result of the political system. Politicians promise more jobs. But who is actually paying workers. They want less jobs, less people to make more and more. They want good money maker to work for little, which is normal in USA and Canada. Slavery in Canada IS OFFICIAL. No investor is interesting in making good machinery,... he want money, and it is all.
So where in that game are engineers... Who need them. No investor need "new" engineers. University is also a business factory, promising all giving none. NORMAL.
It is all about money in NA. Look at US money, read it the text...
The OSPE report wasn't mentioned specifically, but the state of employment of engineers and other trades and professions was discussed extensively on a 2-hour radio program today:
Talking about it at least, which is a good start- as long as someone who actually knows the situation is there to deal with the inevitable mistruths and myths that are inevitably spouted in the media whenever this issue is raised.
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