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Engineering is Going Overseas - Goodbye Jobs 55

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havesealwilltravel

havesealwilltravel

Structural
Jan 13, 2003
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A friend of mine sent me the following link:


It is depressing but true. The current high unemployment among engineers is going to continue and not only that it will get worse.

One of the threads in this forum concerns itself with encouraging women to go into engineering. If you care about the person, be honest with them (and yourself). Engineering as a career for a large number of people is over. A bright young person would be smarter to pursue another profession.

I don't believe that a person is born an engineer and will only be happy if they become an engineer. Obviously, if current trends continue, a lot of engineers are going to have to seek happiness in another career if they want to earn a living.

Globalization is good only for individuals with substantial capital to invest overseas. For the rest of us who work for a living it has done nothing but lower wages and increase unemployment.

Please read the article !!!!!!!
 
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Here's what the other participants had to say to the committee. If you read Pete Engardio's piece you will realise that it is not just engineering that is being outsourced because of low cost.


Does this mean that we should all shut up shop, choose something else and will the last person out of engineering please turn out the lights...not likely.

Yes some things can be outsourced but a large part of engineering will be that we add value on a local level. The fixed costs for living in our part of the world may be higher, but as soon as you start asking for outsourced workers to come to add local value the cost will increase. It may be that this changes the way engineers will work in the future but that's life, we adapt and will find other roles that outsourcing cannot provide.

If everyone were to stop engineering and move to something else, pretty much everything else would stagnate and all of a sudden engineers would be in demand again...

Regards, HM.

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam
 
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dannym

Look on the bright side, brother. People are talking about this problem with increasing frequency.

In fact, last night on a major news network, I heard the globalization problem reported as "More significant than perhaps any other national issue." (I wrote an e-mail to them this morning telling them "Of course it is, you idiots!!!") I read yesterday that some of the canidates for President are already pointing to addressing the unfair trade balance as a big plank in their campaign platform.

The wheels are beginning to turn as far as addressing and identifying the real problem, where even as recent as 2 months ago we couldn't say that. Contrary to popular opinion, Americans aren't stupid. I feel better about the problem now that it is being addressed publically in the mass media.

I am doing all I can to throw logs on the fire of public outcry. The people at Wal-Mart probably hate me by now, because I send a letter every week telling them what bastards they are for selling imported goods they buy from suppliers guilty of price dumping. I write letters to my congressmen on a regular basis. I am working with a group to buy billboard space across from a locally shuttered manufacturing plant. Sign text: If YOU don't buy American, look what happens!

Now is the time to do something about the problem. If we do nothing- the people that the problem most immediately affects, then WE have not fulfilled our civic responsibility to our country. It is shameful to admit, but the corporations in this country are no great friends to the Republic. The best thing we can do is to not do nothing about it.
 
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This is a true balance between thinking "The sky is falling" and the knowledge that there really are some problems that we need to address.

The question I have is, what can we do as a citizen about this, other than raise awareness and talk to politicians, there is very little we can do to stop the corporate planners from doing this.
 
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I'm going to play the antagonist here and have you think about the macroeconomic outlook of this situation. Granted, thinking about macroeconomics is tough to do when you or your friends/family are standing in the unemployment line, but this is just a discussion so I'll continue.

I'm going to try to make a comparison between software writers and autoworkers from days gone by. (I'm basing this comparison on memory from my macroeconomics class from 5+ years ago, so bear with me.)

When the autoworkers started outsourcing their machining operations to inexpensive foreign countries, Japan for one, everyone was up in arms about losing American jobs. But, because of that shift, we not only taught the Japanese how to build cars (which ended up being better quality than American cars, at least during the 80's) but we had available workers (also known as unemployment) that we could shift into other jobs. Now, rather than being a hug automaker nation, we are a huge technology and pharmesuitacle <sic> nation.

What we are seeing now is another shift. We are getting away from the &quot;new age&quot; factory workers: the computer programmer; and shifting those people resources into other areas, like biotechnology. So, rather than the US being a technology nation, we are becomming a biotechnology nation. The hard part about this is that during the transition time, a lot of people are unemployed until they get new training in the fields that are popular.

Moving the automaking overseas brought us high competition which resulted in lower priced, higher quality automobiles. Moving software programming overseas will bring us lower priced, higher quality code.

I agree with Rhodie in that Americans aren't stupid. Forgive me for sounding arrogant, but it only appears that we are stupid because we are so far ahead of the curve that we are beginning to lap people. Thus, you see us in your rear-view mirror.
 
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&quot;Nationalistic Buying&quot; is indeed not the whole answer, but it is a big part of it. (see: The other part of the answer is to reciprocate the trade barriers that other countries have extended to the USA.

I'm not sure if President Bush's tariff on foreign steel is a good thing or not, but it couldn't save Bethlehem Steel. The WTO declared the US &quot;out of line&quot; with the tariff ruling. So, now we don't answer to our own government but a higher authority? I don't know about you, but I am an American citizen, not one of the WTO. (see:

There are other factors at work, namely the illogical requirement of double digit ROI in today's US stock market.
There may be some greed on the part of American workers, but the first solution for the corporations shouldn't be to take our jobs away.

If free trade is to work, then EVERYONE must play by the rules. This means no rogue, underhanded price dumping. China is a HUGE violator, even self admittedly: ((
I don't think &quot;free trade&quot; will ever work in its present form. For one, there are no accomdations for the distribution of raw material resources among the trade partners. The US, Russia, and China will always have the potential to be more wealthy than France, Canada, and Italy based soley on land area and populations. Is that really fair? (Of course not, which is why we saw the formation of the EU...)

My answer: as long as domestic capability for producting a certain good exists, then allow no more than an equal amount of import for a given quantity of export. Competition would still exist, quality, not price, would drive product improvement, and the balance of jobs would be far more even:




 
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The tariffs that have been imposed on imported steel have done very little to stem the imbalance in pricing between comparable domestic products and the foreign imports. More than 1/3 of the specialty steel mills in the United States have filed for bankruptcy over the past 3 years. The problem that the domestic steel producers face is the issue of cheap labor overseas. If you pay a foreign steel worker 20% of what his american counterpart would earn, then it stands to reason that the products they make will be much less expensive than the american products. Add to this the performance of a strong dollar over the past couple of years and the reluctance of Washington to step in with any kind of support, and the result is the decimation of the industry. Yes, Washington did finally act, but it was too little too late. What will happen to the US economy if we suddenly find ourselves in another war, but have no domestic steel producers? It's tough to make military equipment without the basic steel making industry. And please, don't tell me how inefficient we are. I spend a great deal of my time making my company more cost competitive by finding ways to improve our efficiency as well as improving the quality of our products.

The world is changing, and we will be forced to change with it. For some of us, this means going back to school for an advanced degree. Others will be changing careers, and/or making lifestyle changes that allow them to adjust to their new lower income job. No, Americans aren't stupid. But some of our trade decisions would make it appear that we are. A co-worker who had recently traveled to China had this same trade issue discussion with a Chinese counterpart. The Chinese gentleman told him that if we (Americans) had any brains, we would assemple a blockade of our ports and torpedo any ship carrying Chinese goods. He stated that China would bury us with imports, because we are too stupid to stop them. A recent trip to a local Harbor Freight store made me realize that he could be partly right. During its grand opening, the store was packed with people buying products made in India, China, and Taiwan. I couldn't find one single product made in the US. Not one.



Maui

 
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My one comment to this discussion is that at least the professionals in the US are talking to their elected leaders and pointing out the problem. Here in Canada no one believes that there is a problem, there is more concern about the brain drain, where professionals like engineers are leaving Canada for the US or the EU. The governments solution to the brain drain is to allow more foreign trained professionals to come into the country.

These foreign trained professionals, once they get licenced, are setting up engineering businesses and contracting out the work to contacts in India and other developing areas. The benefits are obvious as they are charging their clients slightly lower North American rates making them very competitive. The are paying the Indian engineers a fifth of the going Canadian rate so making more profit. Additionally the time difference allows the work to be completed around the clock so they can deliver drawings and reports in half the time - and its all perfectly legal.

At this point the issue is small but its mu opinion that the problem is going to grow as information technology and the internet evolves and develops. Professionals need to learn a lesson from the manufacturing industry where pretty much everything plastic is made in China, Taiwan, or India.

 
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I don't know about other readers, but when the realization hit me, several months ago, that my type of work is going to be outsourced, it precipitated a real professional identity crisis for me. I am only halfway through my career -- with at least 20 more years to work before I can retire, and young children. Until recently, I had confidence that I could adequately support myself and my family. This confidence has been severely shaken as I have spent the last year (+) under-employed.

My only feeble conclusion has been that I will need to find my work at the leading edge of technology development. Anything that even looks like a commodity product, where pennies count, will go to the places where pay rates are much less than in the US.

Does anyone have other hopeful thoughts for me?
 
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An article on MSN says:

In a question-and-answer session following his speech, Gates took issue with the notion that a decline in computer science enrollment might be related to the outsourcing of jobs overseas.
“Basically, no,” he said, adding that there are plenty of job opportunities for computer science graduates, including at Microsoft. It makes sense for Microsoft to keep most of its development efforts centralized in the United States, he added.
“We will always have the vast majority of our (major) software development here,” he said. “We’re not about, ‘Can we do the next version of Windows for 5 percent less?’”


I think Bill's a bit out of touch; the outsourcing is exactly why enrollment is diminshing.

If there are plenty of job opportunities as he claims then why am I reading so many stories about unemployed IT folks?

cbiber - I don't have much hopeful to say. I do think you're right about staying away from &quot;commodities&quot;.

The place I'm looking to bust into is pharmaceuticals or medical devices. I think FDA requirements make it difficult to funnel the production work to China. Even if they could, I don't think the public would be comfortable purchasing its drugs from China, India, Bangledesh, etc.
 
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Our biggest problem is that our governments (run by wealthy people who have large amounts of money to invest and who don't have to work for a living) are bucking to the special interests and their large campaign contributions. Our work is rapidly going away to cheap foreign labor.

Look at the new trade agreement being negotiated between the U.S. and Chile and Singapore. They will be permitted to send large numbers of workers into the U.S. for an indefinite period whether or not there is a need for these workers. Singapore is negotiating with India to provide the workers who will enter the U.S. on Singapore visas. If this continues unchecked, good well paying jobs in engineering and computer science will be only memories.

Go into Wal-Mart and see how much is manufactured in the U.S. Very, very little. Many products say &quot;Designed in the U.S. and manufactured in ______&quot; Everyone realizes that the &quot;Designed in the U.S.&quot; will go away soon.

cbiber

One &quot;safe&quot; area is government work. It's currently not allowed to send this work over seas. Particularly defense dept. work. However, if congress and the current administration has their way, much of this work will go foreign.

Rhodie

Currently a lot of pharmaceutical development is going overseas. One drug I take was developed in Japan and is produced in Ireland. Currently, it is illegal for me to buy this drug from Canada where its about 1/3 the U.S. price. The big power struggle is for exclusive marketing rights not U.S. jobs. The large pharmaceutical companies will move development and production overseas and then control the distribution of the product with the blessing of congress. Just look at the campaign contributions. The bill you cite has a &quot;poison pill&quot;. You will only be able to buy from FDA approved foreign pharmacies and the FDA is refusing to approve any. You can buy from Canada. It is legal for pharmacies in Manitoba to ship to you but it not legal for you to receive them. However, the law is not enforced. It would be political suicide for a District Attorney to prosecute an old person who cannot afford his medicine any other way.
 
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How much of this is related to the artificially high value of the dollar. With the USA running an increasingly high trade deficit, the dollar should be decreasing accordingly. This is not happening. If it was adjusting accordingly then, oversees labour costs would increase some bit.
I’m from Ireland but I have a brother working as an Engineer in Silicone Valley. I know from talking to him how bad things are getting at the moment.
[rockband]
 
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Jobs will continue to be moved overseas until the businessman quit practicing good business. If the cost of labor is cheaper there then the businessman must move some labor costs overseas to stay competitive. What else should he do? If his competitor can sell the same thing cheaper than him because of the labor issue then he must cut costs somewhere in hopes of staying competitive. Given the economy today, there is no choice. In the past, it used to be overseas meant lower quality. This is not always the case anymore.
The majority of engineers are employed by small business. Generally, it is not practicle for small business to have operations overseas. It is still somewhat troublesome.
I worry more about our manufacturing capability being moved overseas, including the machines. An example of the catastrophy that awaits us, albeit in a different form, is when the harbor workers went on strike. All of that product (from overseas) was sitting off the coast and we nearly had an economic disaster because of one group of workers. Now step up the scale some to an unforseeable issue with a country/s or political party. What will happen then when we can not manufacture our own goods in the event of a large scale war(or not)? Given the sophistication of todays manufacturing machines, it is not practical to make these production machines over night, delaying product availability.
I do not see the trend changing for manufacturing until we get into a major bind. You can not expect manufacturing businesses to remain in the US given the labor costs in other countries. Until the public gets in an uproar and stays there, forget about keeping manufacturers in the US.
 
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Thanks Rhodie. This is the kind of thing I was talking about. Great example. Never knew this kind of thing was going on during the war. I knew about some European countries speaking freely against the war and everything else but this is ridiculous. Bomb the Swiss (JK).
 
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The problem with the bill is that it allows no consideration for well established and historic agreements between the US and foreign suppliers.

For example, the US's fighter planes in WWII would have been half as effective if it weren't for the English Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. (Some say we wouldn't have won the war without it...)

Fast forward 60+ years, and you find that Rolls-Royce is still manufacturing piston and turboprop engines for the military. The new C-130 uses turboprops made by Rolls-Royce, and it is the cargo workhorse of our modern military.

This &quot;Buy-American&quot; Bill, proposed by a Pentagonian named Hunter, would forbid the US from purchasing these engines from Rolls-Royce. That would be a really bad thing, for US and the UK.

The languange in the bill needs to be strong enough to kick American R&D into high gear so that we can manufacture suitable replacements for certain parts more cheaply (such as the JDAM example), but observe strategic alliances with long-time foreign suppliers. I don't think a &quot;cut-and-paste&quot; solution exists to the problem.

I wholeheartedly, entirely, 100% agree with the intent of the proposed bill, however.
 
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On a more encouraging note, addressing the general topic:


People are talking more and more about this. The problem is becoming news. Maybe we'll get a solution.

The best paragraph in the article:
&quot;The exquisite political irony is that the howling is now coming from some of the same business groups that pushed so hard for China's entry into the global trading system. Now they are suddenly discovering what happens when you open your borders to a former communist country that, while making impressive strides in liberalizing its economy, still manipulates its currency, closes its markets to imports of agricultural products and financial services, violates patents, and prohibits investment outside its borders.&quot;

Only time will tell...
 
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