Author Topic: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?  (Read 20796 times)

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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #100 on: October 22, 2018, 08:46:34 pm »
So the problem is not a lack of engineers, but a manipulated environment that keeps down engineering salaries. This is one of the commonest excuses for a lack of engineers in many countries.
Well you can not explain to someone brilliant that has over 200 patents on his name and earned hundreds of millions of income for a company that he earns $125k when the CEO earns a 100 fold.
This is not about me (I am not that brilliant  ;) ) but take as an example this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kees_Schouhamer_Immink
He left Philips end of the 90s having worked there for over 25 years and having soo many patents, he was considered one of the best engineers of the company. He probably had a good income above 100k but that is not in comparison of what he created for the company. So he started his own company and within two years earned more money than he had in the past 25 years.
It really is strange that someone who is in sales can tell his boss how much money he's worth because what he sold/earned for the company, but an engineer who invented the product being sold in the first place is still considered a fixed cost.
And if the company makes a top profit it is ofcourse all the work of that brilliant CEO that just has been hired  :palm:
Sorry for the rant but this really stinks.

It's really about risk.  The company takes a substantial financial risk every time they bring a product to market.  The engineer, OTOH, just works for wages with no financial risk if a product fails - worst case they look for another job.  But they're not bankrupt!

Now, if that engineer wants to take some risk, they do indeed form their own startup.   It happens all the time in Silicon Valley.  They find some venture capitalist to assume some of the risk in exchange for an ownership position and away they go.  Some succeed, some fail but if nobody tries, nobody gains.

The question engineers need to ask themselves is "How much money do I want to make and how much risk am I wiling to take?".  It's probably easier if there are two wage earners or perhaps being single with no family to support.

Look at Dave, he doesn't work for a company any longer (AFAIK) and seems to make a very good living producing videos.  Sure, he has a lot of technical skills and seems comfortable talking in front of a microphone but it all works for him.

If you want to succeed, you need to take some risk!
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #101 on: October 22, 2018, 09:04:23 pm »
Union electricians are probably making more than design engineers.  Unless the engineer is a 'partner' in the organization, they are just working for wages.  Unfortunately, a lot of electrical is being done by unskilled labor supervised by a single qualified employee.  The unions are trying to stop that practice but they aren't having much luck.
Unsurprising, as most viruses do try to replicate as much as possible. More people paying union dues is an overt goal for most unions and if it's not overt, you can bet it's a covert goal.

I have been on both sides of this debate.  From the point of view of a Project Manager, I will always try to use union labor.  Among other things, the workers will have been through a comprehensive apprenticeship program and will, on average, have far higher skills than non-union workers.  That's not to say that all non-union shops are bad, that isn't true at all.  But I have bigger issues than the cost of labor and it really gets down to 'game theory'.

If I use a union contractor and the project succeeds, I get a small bonus because I spent too much but I was successful.  The job is done, it's a success, everybody is happy!

If I use a union contractor and the project fails, I don't get hammered all that bad because at least I was smart enough to use qualified contractors.  We just need to toss more money at it to recover.

Now...

If I use a non-union contractor and the project succeeds, I might get a slightly higher bonus because I succeeded and saved a little on the way by.  But this additional bonus won't be much because the job is done and nobody cares how much it cost.

BUT

If I use a non-union contractor and the project fails, I'll get fired!  I was too stupid to realize that my chosen contractor was incapable of performing the work.  I lose in a really big way.

So, given that payoff matrix, I never work in the row and column that results in a maximum loss - I never hire a non-union contractor.

And that's pretty much how I made my choices over 30 years of dealing with contractors.  Game theory!

Good book: "The Ropes To Skip and The Ropes To Know"

https://www.amazon.com/Ropes-Skip-Know-Organizational-Behavior/dp/0470169672

Study hard!

Of course the unions want to increase membership.  More money for salaries and more clout by numbers.  That's why the SCOTUS decision that government employees don't have to become/stay union members is considered devastating to the unions and most of the employees.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-union-membership-supreme-court-ruling-20180627-story.html
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #102 on: October 22, 2018, 09:15:31 pm »
Some kinds of risk, yes, but other kinds of risk, not as much.

Corporations are putting taxpayers on the hook to 'insure' them against things like regulatory changes - even when their products have proven to be unsafe and they knew it!

(I'm thinking of Phillip Morris's battle with Australia over tobacco packaging)

Thats what all-risk insurance should be used for, taxpayers should never be held liable for governments changing laws because they needed to.  But thats happening on a massive scale.

That really was one of the only major risks large corporations used to face. Now entire countries' policies are hijacked or held hostage and the people's lives are changed irreversibly, but transnational corporations are indemnified against pretty much all risks they used to face from regulators. While people (the real 'investors' in a nation) are exposed to huge new risks they don't even know about which can change their entire life. Now they face arbitrary shifts in the corporate regulatory scene that are so nasty they are hidden by regulators and corporations alike..

It's really about risk.  The company takes a substantial financial risk every time they bring a product to market.  The engineer, OTOH, just works for wages with no financial risk if a product fails - worst case they look for another job.  But they're not bankrupt!

Now, if that engineer wants to take some risk, they do indeed form their own startup.   It happens all the time in Silicon Valley.  They find some venture capitalist to assume some of the risk in exchange for an ownership position and away they go.  Some succeed, some fail but if nobody tries, nobody gains.

The question engineers need to ask themselves is "How much money do I want to make and how much risk am I wiling to take?".  It's probably easier if there are two wage earners or perhaps being single with no family to support.

Look at Dave, he doesn't work for a company any longer (AFAIK) and seems to make a very good living producing videos.  Sure, he has a lot of technical skills and seems comfortable talking in front of a microphone but it all works for him.

If you want to succeed, you need to take some risk!



We do now every time we vote, and thanks to ratchet clauses, no matter who 'wins' at the ballot box, we are likely to lose.

rstopher, did you know that huge numbers of government jobs we all think of as stable are about to be put up for international bidding? And that that will likely destroy unions, among other things? If you were in Europe there would be a small chance you would know but in the US... nobody does. What are all those workers, priced out of the market by their high cost of living and everything else, going to do? Its going to be such a big and radical change that the outcome is really unpredictable. They have been working on the particulars for 30 years. I am not kidding.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2018, 09:22:33 pm by cdev »
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #103 on: October 22, 2018, 09:37:01 pm »
Im not convinced the USA has loads of engineers in all sectors…when I worked on the electric drives for UKs latest electric military  ships (by Alstom Marine and offshore, called “Converteam” in UK)…..we had a  large ,  dry land test facility set up by the French in Lutterworth , Leicestershire.  It was needed because it was the most high power density electric drive in the world.   I  know that  the Americans came over and exactly duplicated the  whole thing, and built an exact replica in the States…..so it sounds to me like the USA is a bit short of electric drive engineers
If there's a working system, without serious flaws, and the world needs only a handful of them, you copy the working solution. The only sane reasons for not copying are that you are blocked from copying, or you have such a bizarre oversupply of engineers, that you can't lay off, that you might as well put them to use building a solution from scratch.

This is why the British auto industry, & to a large extent, their Electronics industry "went down the gurgler".

For instance, Joseph Lucas ("the Prince of  Darkness") could see that Bosch made better, more reliable auto electrical systems than they did, (or maybe they didn't---the illusion of "British & best" cast a long shadow),  but didn't do the most obvious thing---- get some Bosch bits, tear them down, & find out what they were doing to make them more reliable.

Another case, in the design of TV transmitters, PYE made a very ambitious 25kW UHF transmitter, of which we had two.
These delighted in killing their HT rectifiers.
The rectifiers were  tiny units which must have been adequate "on paper", but in practice, on the other side of the world, they were not.

When we started using up the spares, we frantically ordered more, but PYE were extremely "laid back" in their attitude to delivery times.----- several weeks to a month!
We got out of trouble by borrowing from other stations with the same transmitters.
NEC used massive rectifiers that usually outlasted the transmitters.

Another delight was the antenna changeover switch which enabled one transmitter to maintain the service if the other died ( they normally used both).
We spent an inordinate amount of time repairing these, (& became very familiar with the smell of burnt Teflon).
Ultimately, they were replaced with much superior switches made by Andrews.
Again, a possibly good product ruined by poor design in key points.

I mentioned long delivery times for parts.
Later, when I worked at a Commercial TV Studio, I was the unlucky sod who looked after Picture Monitors, as well as being the Transmitter person
Not the Brits this time, but the same sort of story.

We had some Tektronix 650series monitors, & they were one of that companies' rare failures.
The less said the better.

We also had some oldish Bosch monitors, which were reasonable, but "too smart for their own good",
having hinges to fold out the PCBs for service, which also served as the inter board connections.
A bit prone to failure.

As well, we had Sony monitors---- reliable, easy to work on, full documentation provided, parts available from Sony Aust, usually by next airfreight, or if they didn't have it, the day after from Singapore, who also held a large stock.

Then there were the Barcos !
"So-so" reliability, poor UI, hard to work on, very poor documentation.
If you looked at the PCBs, they were a thing of beauty, everything lined up straight as a die---lovely!
Compared to a Sony, the latter looked like crap- capacitor & resistors leaning at odd angles, ribbon cables higgledy piggledy everywhere.

The thing is, the Sony would still be going 20 years down the track, when the Barco  had succumbed to age & infirmity.
They did what mattered right!

And parts!
If a Barco failed  & you needed non-generic parts, you wouldn't expect to see them for 2 or3 months.
It seems to me that European firms wait until they can fill up a container before shipping it by sea.
(No airfreight for them).

PS:- I'm now expecting hate mail from ex Joseph Lucas, PYE, & Barco employees. ;D
Could you point out which part of that was intended as a response to what I wrote? I'm genuinely puzzled.

Joseph Lucas should have copied the way Bosch made their equipment.
PYE should have copied NEC's idea of "over speccing" their rectifiers, & Andrew's design & quality for the RF switches.
I didn't specifically point it out, but NEC's parts distribution system was much better.
Not that they needed to be, as their reliability was superior.

Barco should have copied Sony's emphasis on functionality & their parts distribution system.

There is a lot more to "copying" than just replicating the engineering .
If you do it in a shoddy manner, you will have a shoddy product, but at least that is better than living in an "ivory tower" where you think you always know best!

 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #104 on: October 22, 2018, 10:00:20 pm »
rstofer, did you know that huge numbers of government jobs we all think of as stable are about to be put up for international bidding? And that that will likely destroy unions, among other things? If you were in Europe there would be a small chance you would know but in the US... nobody does. What are all those workers, priced out of the market by their high cost of living and everything else, going to do? Its going to be such a big and radical change that the outcome is really unpredictable. They have been working on the particulars for 30 years. I am not kidding.

None of the military government jobs will be put up to offshore bidding.  Those other government jobs that require touching an end product or interacting with people won't go offshore either.  Some will move to web based interactions but that is happening so slowly that the workers will retire long before it happens.

I don't believe in your doomsaying, you seem to be caught in a rut.  Fact is we have record low unemployment rate with gradually increasing wages.  Yes, we have a lot of people who are not in the labor pool but, for them, living under a bridge and/or taking welfare is acceptable (to them).  I have no idea what people are doing for a living nor how much they are making.  It must be more than welfare and/or they have run out of unemployment benefits.  It sure seems like everybody is working!

I have always said that the only jobs to have are those that require you to actually touch the product.  Better still if the product is military or otherwise classified.

I started working in '64 and retired in '03 and I have never been unemployed except by choice.  Work has always been available but, then, I didn't major in "Navel Gazing".

In the end, people have to have jobs to pay enough taxes to support a bloated government.  One way or another, people have to have jobs and the .gov will make sure they do by how they tax multinationals.

The good news with Trump is he lowered the marginal tax brackets (by a lot!) and although I have lost some deductions, it looks like I might come out a few thousand ahead.  Wait until March/April and see if there are complaints with the tax cuts.  A few thousand here, a few thousand there and pretty soon it adds up to something.

The median price of a home in California is $393,000.  In my neighborhood it is $484,000 and the house across the street just sold for $700,000.  In Silicon Valley, this piece of crap house sold for $2 million.

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/2/17073100/silicon-valley-house-home-sunnyvale-record-price-crisis

Somebody is making a good living!  Alas, not me...  I'm retired.
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #105 on: October 22, 2018, 11:36:22 pm »
It seems awfully stupid and dangerous to make it so that the maintenance, at a huge cost to society, of a continuous state of anxiety and near hysteria verging on warfare could become all that sustains stable domestic employment.

Also a recipe for voter disenfranchisement if all those jobs that involve even just a smigin of tax money, that cant be framed as totally nonprofit (thats how it works) or secret, can and increasingly will be put up for international public bidding, a race that US companies cannot win unless they fully automate almost everything. Because our wages are higher than the wages in Eastern Europe, India and Africa. (Africa is where they expect the biggest growth to be, and its not to help them, its because they can and will likely be paid almost nothing compared to the people currently holding those jobs)

So the jobs will quite suddenly become precarious labor. That will eventually include local government administration, teaching, construction, infrastructure work of all kinds, including engineering, hospital work, and perhaps even big chunks of what we still think of as the military. (contracts could be restricted to 'friendly' countries, such as the Eastern European allies whose wages are stuck at a few hundred dollars a month would seem to be likely to win them) Oh yes, and perhaps even the new "space force' no doubt proposed as a means of keeping money in the country, might end up outsourced despite their best laid plans. (I think thats not unlikely because of how the WTO handles precedents involving "like" goods and services- see the Bananas case, keeping in mind that the US and EU have already outsourced a great deal of space work.. to - of all countries- Russia!)

(BTW, keep your eye on the WTO next week, especially the controversy between it and the US over dispute settlement body appellate judges. Also, note that a little known case involving the US and India - filed March 2016, is long overdue for a decision. Considering the havoc it could wreak, the silence is a bit strange, isn't it?)

But - for the sake of the argument now, suppose the tiny percentage of jobs that involve secret stuff (perhaps even things as mundane as generic networking or smart infrastructure) and space force and drone force too, areas that likely sill still employ a lot of engineers (that may be the point)  are deemed privatize-able but not off-shoreable. Becoming an oasis of stability bin a sea of job-crapification.. (not the quality of the workers, I don't think that we can say with any certainty that the quality of engineers from any one country or another is that much superior to be determinative of such a huge differential in wages under trade rules which pretend that factors such as costs of living or longstanding labor standards and rules - such as minimum wages even- are not important enough to stand in the way of their global market liberalization)

To workers everywhere, the ways they are treated determines the desirability of the job- So suppose most jobs go but the secret ones can stay (a likely outcome I think) Even after suits brought against us by would be subcontractors tendering dirt low bids.  Remember, what is deemed a fair price in the market is determined by supply and demand. If supply suddenly rises tremendously, and rules creating artificial scarcities no longer apply, wages will fall until equilibrium is reached, like two basins with a tube connecting them equalize in pressure.

Thats an unpleasant world, isn't it, where increasingly rare stable jobs all require security clearances (or are vulnerable to liberalization, i.e. offshoring/outsourcing)

So, everybody who has a stable job will be in some secret profession and will be terrified of expressing any kind of opinion? And at the same time all the things that have held society together, public education, affordable health care, police, fire, teaching and academia, research.. are all tendered out to giant companies that base themselves in the cheapest and least regulated countries in the trading webs.

I'm happy to see that you at least have everything under control.

But where will our future engineers come from if there were no decent jobs for engineers any more?
« Last Edit: October 23, 2018, 12:32:50 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #106 on: October 23, 2018, 01:30:54 am »
And someone in another college only has UK citizens as colleagues and using your method comes to the conclusion that 100% of grads are UK citizens...
Maybe you should think about your methodology.
I think third-graders in china can do it better..

The numbers he gave are obviously biased and the real ones are publicly unknown, but I can confirm the trend (even though not quite as drastic) in a lot of western countries.

And for simple reasons. Engineering jobs are just not attractive anymore to young people raised in western countries. First because engineering is not seen as "cool" anymore. It mostly passes as geeky. That's a cultural trend, a global disinterest for technics as technology becomes ubiquitous. And to most of them, the potential jobs sound boring, unfulfilling and increasingly badly paid.
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #107 on: October 23, 2018, 01:35:35 am »
But where will our future engineers come from if there were no decent jobs for engineers any more?

You probably know the answer. There is no lack of poor countries full of young people dying to move up the social ladder. For them, our crap jobs will be a godsend.
 
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Offline Kjelt

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #108 on: October 23, 2018, 08:05:01 am »
It's really about risk.  The company takes a substantial financial risk every time they bring a product to market.  The engineer, OTOH, just works for wages with no financial risk if a product fails - worst case they look for another job.  But they're not bankrupt!

I agree with you that risk should be rewarded but I disagree that a CEO is the company, he is not! He is just an employee like everyone else, perhaps with more influence and power but still an employee that gets his salary every month.

The company is everyone inside the company. From the secretary to the CEO everyone, and everyone should profit when it goes well for the company and everyone will suffer (a bit) when it goes bad with the company.
If you look at the NXP takeover two years ago, the CEO would get 300 million or something if the takeover succeeded, what ? what ? Why? The worth of the company has been built up the past 30 years in patents, products etc. etc. 2 generations of engineers have put in their energy to come up with the productportfolio what makes the company worth what it is worth and now a CEO starts 3 years ago makes a deal with another company and gets 300 million while the employees get nothing ? That is what is wrong in the world today, we live in a collective , everyone contributes and everyone has risk to be fired.
If you have worked for 25 years at a company and get layedoff due to reorganisations when you are over 55 you will have a very difficult job finding something new.
If you did not work for that company but worked in multiple domains for many companies that might be different, so that is the signal which is being sent: don't be loyal to a single company or you get screwed. Start your own company if you have a businesscase. So the trend is towards individualist vs collective organisations and I can predict that small companies will never be as succesfull as a large company because they don't have the deep pockets which are needed for big inventions unless some investment company will back them up and then the employees again don't own the company anymore.
 
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Offline ferdieCX

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #109 on: October 23, 2018, 12:04:48 pm »

(I'm thinking of Phillip Morris's battle with Australia over tobacco packaging)


Not just Australia, Phillip Morris also sued Uruguay for its anti-tobacco law.
 
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Offline ferdieCX

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #110 on: October 23, 2018, 01:54:37 pm »
So we have to be smarter.  We need to invent magic!  We don't have to manufacture it but we do need to invent it.  We will wind up with 3 classes of people:  Perpetually unemployed, burger-flippers and engineers.
I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?
It seems, that our technological development exceeds by far our moral development.
I am afraid, that mankind is heading toward some form of a new dark "Middle Age" :(
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #111 on: October 23, 2018, 05:59:07 pm »

I agree with you that risk should be rewarded but I disagree that a CEO is the company, he is not! He is just an employee like everyone else, perhaps with more influence and power but still an employee that gets his salary every month.


Yes, the CEO made a lot more money than me.  Somehow, that never bothered me very much.  I didn't want the CEO's job nor was I necessarily capable of doing it.

Quote
The company is everyone inside the company. From the secretary to the CEO everyone, and everyone should profit when it goes well for the company and everyone will suffer (a bit) when it goes bad with the company.
If you look at the NXP takeover two years ago, the CEO would get 300 million or something if the takeover succeeded, what ? what ? Why? The worth of the company has been built up the past 30 years in patents, products etc. etc. 2 generations of engineers have put in their energy to come up with the productportfolio what makes the company worth what it is worth and now a CEO starts 3 years ago makes a deal with another company and gets 300 million while the employees get nothing ? That is what is wrong in the world today, we live in a collective , everyone contributes and everyone has risk to be fired.

CEOs are paid by the Board of Directors who are elected by the shareholders.  Somehow they all got together and said what a wonderful goal the acquisition would be and how much more money the company could make.  Then they decided to add a bonus to the CEOs compensation if he could bring it about.

Sounds right to me!  Remember, I am a shareholder!  In fact, I may be a shareholder a lot longer than I am an employee.  I want the company to succeed for my own personal gain whether I work there or not!  I'm counting on the Board of Directors to install the best performing officers possible.

Quote
If you have worked for 25 years at a company and get layedoff due to reorganisations when you are over 55 you will have a very difficult job finding something new.
If you did not work for that company but worked in multiple domains for many companies that might be different, so that is the signal which is being sent: don't be loyal to a single company or you get screwed. Start your own company if you have a businesscase. So the trend is towards individualist vs collective organisations and I can predict that small companies will never be as succesfull as a large company because they don't have the deep pockets which are needed for big inventions unless some investment company will back them up and then the employees again don't own the company anymore.

It is also an indication of the necessity of maximizing your 401(k) contributions (where applicable).  First because most companies match some percentage and you want to get ALL of the matching money and, second, so when you retire at the tender age of 58, you don't have to worry about money - ever!

There are quite a few employee owned businesses.  This usually means is the employees own company stock and perhaps that stock is what they invest their 401(k) money into.  If the company fails, their retirement goes out the window!  I don't know what to think of this idea.  It's good to own stock, it's nice to be able to see how the company works, it's good to be able to improve the company and, hence, the value of your retirement fund.  However, the guy working in the stock room isn't going to sway the CEO so the idea that the employees run the company is dubious.  The officers will have a LOT more voting stock than the employees.

I am not a fan of the current thinking re: equal outcomes.  There seems to be an idea floating around that everybody should have essentially the same advantages, especially financial.  Left out of the idea is equal effort!  The CEO is smarter at running a business than I am because he has spent time learning to run a business.  All I ever wanted to do was build stuff.  I'm real good at building stuff but it doesn't pay as much as being a CEO.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2018, 03:09:28 pm by rstofer »
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #112 on: October 23, 2018, 06:10:16 pm »
The numbers he gave are obviously biased and the real ones are publicly unknown, but I can confirm the trend (even though not quite as drastic) in a lot of western countries.

And for simple reasons. Engineering jobs are just not attractive anymore to young people raised in western countries. First because engineering is not seen as "cool" anymore. It mostly passes as geeky. That's a cultural trend, a global disinterest for technics as technology becomes ubiquitous. And to most of them, the potential jobs sound boring, unfulfilling and increasingly badly paid.

So, how do the non-participants plan to make a decent living?  I don't have a basement and all 3 bedrooms are full.  And, no, nobody is going to camp out in our gym.

All of the technology was invented by engineers - somewhere.  As technology itself increases, there will be an exponentially greater effort to employ it.  Kind of like the early days of the Web.  Anybody who could make a screen pop up suddenly had work.  Some of the web pages were truly trash but over some period of time, things settled down and now creating web pages probably is routine, ie, boring.

But there's always something else.  We haven't even started with Robotics and AI is going to be a really big deal.  Computer vision is the talk of the town.  People need to get involved with these emerging technologies.

There will always be work for people with cutting edge skills and education.  The others are going to be left behind.
 
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Offline Bassman59

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #113 on: October 23, 2018, 06:28:17 pm »
I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?

This is the question that needs an answer. The rest is commentary.
 
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Offline coppice

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #114 on: October 23, 2018, 09:40:35 pm »
I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?
I think the key word here is equilibrium.
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #115 on: October 24, 2018, 12:15:07 am »
The unemployed engineers?

I don't see there as being much of a market for burger flippers, they have machines that do that now, they look kind of like a laser printer for meat.

I wonder, if most people are perpetually unemployed or burger-flippers, who is going to buy the beautiful devices that the engineers are supposed to develop ?

This is the question that needs an answer. The rest is commentary.

What about YouTube , Ebay and Uber?
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #116 on: October 24, 2018, 12:25:13 am »
From where I sit (and I read a lot of papers on economics these days) the world is very much removed from the idea you proposed. Instead the dominant way of thinking is basically this one.

" \should A be allowed to harm B or should B be allowed to
harm  A"?   His  solution  to  this  question:  \avoid  the  more  serious (in financial terms)   harm".   That  is,  Coase
suggests we need to weigh the marginal benefits of polluting activities with it's associated marginal  costs. (I.e. lost wages, this is why polluters always locate in poor countries or areas)

"For  example,  in  the  case  of  the  contamination  of  a  stream,  or aquifer we  need  to decide \is the value of the  "fish" lost greater or less than the value of the product which the contamination of the stream makes possible?"

So thats the exact opposite of what you're proposing.

I am not a fan of the current thinking re: equal outcomes.  There seems to be an idea floating around that everybody should have essentially the same advantages, especially financial.  Left out of the idea is equal effort!  The CEO is smarter at running a business than I am because he has spent time learning to run a business.  All I ever wanted to do was build stuff.  I'm real good at building stuff but it doesn't pay as much as being a CEO.

The same logic applies to the "bullshit promises" made by corporations and unfortunately also politicians. Its widely known and accepted that politicians 'have to' make outlandish promises to get elected, and in certain circles they are accepted as having nothing whatsoever to do with reality.  As sort of a joke. They just pick a target audience and make stuff up that they think that audience wants to hear. People fall for this every time.

Even the good ones do this.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2018, 12:36:49 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #117 on: October 24, 2018, 12:30:24 am »
To remain employed, people have to keep in mind that the time from lab to commercialized product to unprofitable is now just a few years, by the time a technology is taught in schools it may no longer be profitable. It may be old hat.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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Offline ocsetTopic starter

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #118 on: October 27, 2018, 01:08:08 pm »
The  following shows that even in the United States, there were only somewhere between  3000 and 11300 US_citizens who qualified with a degree in  Electrical/Electronics in 2015….
https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/15EngineeringbytheNumbersPart1.pdf
…that’s nowhere near enough to sustain USA industry at current levels.

This is likely to be because……
1….The USA does not adequately encourage USA  youngsters to get into electronics.
2…The USA has, to a large extent,  “opted out” of “easier electronics”….ie stuff like massive SMPS design and build companies. This means that there are seen to be less jobs in Electronics in the US, and also that the remaining jobs in electronics are too highly specialised to encourage a large number of youngsters to enter into electronics, as they fear they will not attain the high skill level in order to ultimately get a job.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This could be remedied by starting up a large  government funded company to design/build SMPS’s (and other companies  to design/build other such “easier” stuff).
This then would encourage the USA youngsters to get into Electronics, as they would then  feel that there are a  sufficient number of  potential jobs available, and also jobs  available that they  stand a chance of  getting good enough to do.
Its important to get high numbers of students into electronics…because out of any undergrad cohort, there will only be a very  small number of the “brilliant” engineers….so therefore you need a big number coming in,  in order to reap a sufficient number of  the “brilliant” ones.
However, the following people would, for reasons of self-interest, never agree with what I have just written…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1….Current engineers who are making a good living, since they would fear the job market getting saturated with job competitors. (however, their  fears are actually irrational…..the situation would actually improve for them).
2…Large electronics corporations…since the last thing they want is loads of electronics engineers  saturating the market, and being available to work for their smaller competitors and make them turn into bigger rival companies.
2A….Politicians who are under the influence of the corporations of Part 2.
3…….College lecturers……the last thing college lecturers want is the market getting saturated with loads of  qualified engineers…because they will feel that this makes their job under threat…(however again, this is an irrational fear)
4…”Middle men” who are making  a fortune out of taking a cut out of large consignments of power supplies imported from the Far East.
5…Retired engineers who have sons/daughters who work as electronics engineers…because again they would fear the  saturation of engineers in the market bringing wages down (but as I said before, this is actually irrational…the opposite would happen)
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A government run company could, if it became very  successful, go private, but the government would have to stipulate  that if sold into private hands, it would never be allowed to be sold out of US ownership.
“Mass electronics” industries like SMPS companys, do not make much  profit  in the West…….not enough profit to entice a big Western corporation to do it. However, such an industry could be made to “break even” when run in the west….obviously it would have to be a government  supported entity, because no private company wants to just “break even”….The fact that there is a definite market for power supplies means that the  taxpayers would  always get their money back. Also,  their would be advantageous spin-offs, such as the training/experiencing of lots of engineers who could later  go and work for more exotic companies in the private sector. Also, there is the fact that the prescence of  such huge electronics companies  in the USA would encourage USA youngsters that there are plenty jobs in electronics that they can go for…..so then they would choose to study electronics  in large numbers.
All the above applies to other Western countries too.
Incidentally, there is no reason, why,  in the beginning, this government run company could not buy in  a certain amount of power supplies itself from the Far East..and distribute these within the USA…..it could use the profits from  this to help fund itself…..this is a lot better than dubious, private,  unknown “middle men” taking a huge  “middle man cut”.
-None of us knows what this “middle man cut” is. Suffice to say, what the American citizen ends up paying for a Far Eastern power supply is a lot more than what the Middle man payed.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2018, 01:10:53 pm by treez »
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #119 on: October 27, 2018, 04:00:13 pm »
Are you nuts?  Governments don't run companies in any capitalistic system.  Mostly because a) they don't know how and b) the employees don't take risks, it upsets their promotion opportunities.  Visit any government office and see how much is actually getting accomplished.

Companies solve problems by throwing money at them.  Just toss out some bonuses, stock options, education grants, <whatever> and see what can happen.  Governments don't think that way.  They have to write a thesis on every expenditure and soon the bonuses become an established fact - expected every year or after every little job.

We don't have to grow our own 'brilliant' engineers, we buy them.  Any engineer with an advanced degree can apply for a visa and work permit.  Where they go from there is up to them.  EB-2 visa...

True geniuses represent a small portion of any population and we treat ours pretty well.  Some wander into academia, some create startups, some just work for companies.  We seem to have our share.

I'm not going to chase it down a rathole but the US has almost 3 times as many Nobel Prize winners as the second place country.  We must be doing something right:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-30-countries-with-nobel-prize-winners.html

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, we need to add only 26,000 EEs between 2016 and 2026 - not accounting for attrition, I suppose.  That's not a very big number over 10 years.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm

In other words, we have all the engineers we need and are growing them at a sufficient rate (your number) to meet the anticipated needs.

We are NOT going to get into the jelly bean business of making power supplies.  If we need some, we buy them.  The money is not made on the power supply, it's on the widget it powers.  And we won't make that either.  We'll farm it out and use our engineers to design the next generation widget.

Do you really believe that if China cut us off from power supplies that we couldn't make them starting right after lunch?  We invent the stuff, of course we can build it.  We can't build it as cheap but, national interest involved, we can still get it done.

Your views on supply and demand are at odds with reality.  If there is a plentiful supply, price drops - always!  Scarcity drives prices up - always!

When my father was teaching me the electrical trade he told me: "I'll teach you all you will ever know about this trade but I won't teach you all I know!".  Never train your replacement.  Age discrimination is still a thing!  Older engineers are viewed as obsolete and overpaid.  Of course they aren't going to tutor their replacements.
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #120 on: October 27, 2018, 04:41:21 pm »
The US military/aerospace/ship-building industries are as close to government run businesses as possible.  All contracts are "cost plus a fee" so where is the incentive to cut costs?  You haven't experienced bureaucracy until you work in aerospace!  It's an amazing industry!  No business could operate that way and survive.  But bless their hearts, they had two IBM 1130 computers in a little lab that weren't used very often.  I had unlimited access!  It was great!

http://ibm1130.org/

NASA lets the booster rockets fall into the ocean, SpaceX recovers them.  I don't know what they are worth but I'm betting that the profit motive of SpaceX trumps "cost is no object" at NASA.  In fact, NASA is just about privatized by SpaceX.

It's good to have an organization like NASA drive the need for advanced technology and fund its initial development (like integrated circuits) but once the requirements are understood, private industry will find a way to make it profitable.  Nothing succeeds like greed!

There's nothing wrong with DARPA and NSF funding basic research.  They have the money to burn studying new technologies (like the Internet from DARPA) but once the technology is reaching some level of maturity, private industry brings down the cost and develops the market.  DARPA came up with the requirements for universities to exchange information and proposed some kind of network.  Universities developed the hardware and software and then along came WWW and Google.  Now we have networking on cell phones!  We need to applaud the .gov for getting the technology off the ground but it is industry that brought it to your pocket.

DARPA had autonomous cars driving across the desert many years ago.  Now just about everybody is working on the project.  Eventually, it will be commercialized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

We're working on going to Mars, somebody else can build power supplies!

 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #121 on: October 27, 2018, 06:22:19 pm »
rstofer, governments by and large are not allowed to engage in business any more.

The WTO sets up a new system that basically turns all this into a web of cross entitlements to sell them any and everything they might be, even services which we normally think of as being supplied by locals.. Thats no longer what the rules say, though.

Shhhh! - big secret!

They can't tell the countries this, but the fact is, they set up a whole system that makes it illegal for governments to go into business in any area where others already have or may, and then attempts to force countries to put everything up for competitive bidding and they are required to buy the cheapest one thats good enough quality.

Whomever is cheapest gets an entitlement to sell and even in the case of services, may get the entitlement to sell their services. Across borders. Any rules that stand in the way may even in some cases have to be changed. Even ones people rely on like core labor standards, they may be framed as trade barriers.

Even if that is extremely disruptive or costs a huge number of jobs.

The whole system in no small part works on precedent.

If you let one country do something.. others - they all - may get a right to, IF they bid it cheaper.

Governments that are signatory to the WTO agreements are constrained from getting involved in any business unless its provided "in the exercise of governmental authority" defined VERY narrowly.

Also in many cases "Any conditions, limitations and qualifications to the commitments noted below shall be limited to existing non-conforming measures", basically, involvement or regulation is frozen and has to be reduced, never enlarged.

and also in many areas under WTO and in US style 'negative list' everything thats not excluded in writing at the beginning - things like this apply- for example - "Each Member shall list in its schedule pertaining to financial services existing monopoly rights and shall endeavour to eliminate them or reduce their scope."

They keep this secret because people want to think the government can step in and help them in a financial disaster, like the 1930s, but the fact is, all those things that they did back then are off the table now.

Not only are people on their own, the owners of everything everywhere, are almost totally united, against them "as a matter of principle".  Because they feel that its a slippery slope, you know what I mean?
« Last Edit: October 27, 2018, 06:37:57 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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Offline ocsetTopic starter

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #122 on: October 27, 2018, 10:04:13 pm »
Quote
In other words, we have all the engineers we need and are growing them at a sufficient rate (your number) to meet the anticipated needs.
Thanks, but im not so sure, the US is loosing ground to China in a big way.
I think China can do most of the stuff that the West can do now, and the growth of technology  in China is at a faster rate than anywhere in  the west...and the Chinese have enormous Power Suply design /manufacture companies....and all their industry is essentially tightly controlled by the Chinese government.
By the way, both the USA and UK  have virtually payed the cost of China building these islands in the South China Sea, by all the electronics we have bought off them.

I was at a big UK University in 2001......the 5th floor was all for PhD students studying in Microwave Engineering.......this whole 5th floor was occupied by Chinese PhD students.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2018, 10:08:55 pm by treez »
 

Online BravoV

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #123 on: October 27, 2018, 11:46:28 pm »
By the way, both the USA and UK  have virtually payed the cost of China building these islands in the South China Sea, by all the electronics we have bought off them.

I was at a big UK University in 2001......the 5th floor was all for PhD students studying in Microwave Engineering.......this whole 5th floor was occupied by Chinese PhD students.

C'mon, although its expected coming from you, your demagoguery is popping out like popcorn now.

So are you saying that the Chinese are also funding the UK's education, that at the same time it is abandoned by the native Brits ?

Instead of bashing the Chinese, you should be thanking them feeding the UK education staffs, at least at UK universities as you claimed above.

Don't be lazy, go promote and campaign to Brit's youngsters to attend the Engineering class, instead of wasting your time here.

 :palm:
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Why are Western companies getting offline power supplies designed in China?
« Reply #124 on: October 28, 2018, 12:44:28 am »
Some American grads are fleeing the US because their wages are so low their student loans cant be repaid and they just grow and grow. They cant get out of debt.

Many people in their 60s here, even, are in default and have been struggling for decades, and then when they get older they lose jobs and cant get new ones. They go into default and their lives just fall apart.

The wealthy in the US REALLY don't want any more college grads with student loans. Could they be messaging it any clearer? But one needs a degree to get a good job.

The wealthy globally seem to be circling the wagons. They are forming partnerships with one another to futureproof the future, and don't want to owe others anything.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2018, 01:00:13 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 
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