EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
EEVblog => The AmpHour Radio Show => Topic started by: cthree on June 26, 2013, 03:37:44 am
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Listening to the last episode, Chris you mentioned very specific job requirements for a lot of engineering jobs. These job postings are in support of H1B applicants. Basically, an H1B applicant has 5 years to apply for a Green Card but to do so the sponsoring employer has to show that there are no American engineers who can do the job by advertising a job which is already filled. The obscure requirements are taylor made to match only the H1B employee's resume. By asking for very specific skills and experience they can plausibly say that there are no Americans who can do the job. It's big game lawyers play that everyone is in on.
On that basis, the labor department can approve the green card application which is the main hurdle to getting resident alien status. To do it by lining up and waiting takes 18-20 years. That fast track to a green card is a a selling feature to people who leave home and move to the US to work on an H1B.
The only two other ways to express a green card is to either be famous (like an athlete, actor, celebrity, author, etc) or buy one by buying a business and/or investing a wad of cash. Not all H1Bs are from China or India. Most are likely Canadian and European.
The fact is that the margin of error on unemployment stats is something like 20%. Every employable EE is employed. The ones who aren't are unemployable for some reason or don't won't to be employed (like contractors). There is a real shortage of skilled technical workers, programmers and engineers, and has been since the Internet became a thing.
So, if you're an EE that nobody will hire then you've got some personal issues you might want to try and sort out. Bathing, wearing shoes to an interview, speaking a language someone else understands. Funny thing is even those would still have you on the short list. Being a registered sex offender or leaving your last job in handcuffs will limit your options.
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So, if you're an EE that nobody will hire then you've got some personal issues you might want to try and sort out. Bathing, wearing shoes to an interview, speaking a language someone else understands. Funny thing is even those would still have you on the short list. Being a registered sex offender or leaving your last job in handcuffs will limit your options.
Sorry, I just had to :-DD
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The fact is that the margin of error on unemployment stats is something like 20%. Every employable EE is employed. The ones who aren't are unemployable for some reason or don't won't to be employed (like contractors). There is a real shortage of skilled technical workers, programmers and engineers, and has been since the Internet became a thing.
Im not sure that's quite true. Within the IEEE there has been push back on H1B quotas. The reason is not that EE's can't find any job. Its that employers prefer younger lower paid employees so older higher payed engineers are being routinely let go. That's not my word for it..I'm not quite in that age bracket but its certainly the IEEE's reasoning. They have alot of older members struggling to find decent paying jobs. If they didn't have families and were prepared to move around the country they may not have such an issue perhaps. The traditional answer to that has been that older engineers typically have gone into consulting firms. But that avenue has somewhat dried up in recent times.
http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/careercon/proceeding/srichfield.pdf (http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/careercon/proceeding/srichfield.pdf)
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When I worked at one of Microsoft's offices I was told the only dress code at Microsoft is must bathe and wear shoes and sure enough I walk through a department some someone's grubby stinky naked feet are on their desk with nasty toenails that look like rotten corn chips and their hair is greasy and unbrushed wearing a stained t-shirt and some shorts that look like they took a Delorean to acquire.
But...
They did have a very good cafeteria with the best Rueben sandwiches I've ever had and a Starbucks. Not to mention fridges full of every soft drink you could imagine. (The soft drinks were all free)
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The fact is that the margin of error on unemployment stats is something like 20%. Every employable EE is employed. The ones who aren't are unemployable for some reason or don't won't to be employed (like contractors). There is a real shortage of skilled technical workers, programmers and engineers, and has been since the Internet became a thing.
Im not sure that's quite true. Within the IEEE there has been push back on H1B quotas. The reason is not that EE's can't find any job. Its that employers prefer younger lower paid employees so older higher payed engineers are being routinely let go. That's not my word for it..I'm not quite in that age bracket but its certainly the IEEE's reasoning. They have alot of older members struggling to find decent paying jobs. If they didn't have families and were prepared to move around the country they may not have such an issue perhaps. The traditional answer to that has been that older engineers typically have gone into consulting firms. But that avenue has somewhat dried up in recent times.
http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/careercon/proceeding/srichfield.pdf (http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/careercon/proceeding/srichfield.pdf)
The biggest problem older EEs have over younger ones is that they have usually specialized over the course of their career. Through circumstance and years of repetition usually, they have become very experienced at doing one particular thing which makes them "over qualified" for most jobs outside of their field of expertise. That's why they go into consulting. That's where specialists go. If you've spent 30 years designing analog telephone switching gear and you get laid off because that is no longer a thing anyone needs then what are you going to do? Start over at 58 or later learning to design and write code for mobile ARM devices? Most employers aren't going to make that kind of investment in someone who is 58 like they will in someone who is 28.
The real issue is younger Americans vs. younger foreigner workers. I don't know of any American EEs under 40 who can't find work in their field with a modest amount of effort. Can you think of any? Probably not. People need to finally get out of the post-war mindset that a job for life and a gold watch is something they are entitled to. Younger people today are more mobile and tend to get less pinned into a very narrow specialization than the tail end of the baby boomers did. People need to make sure they maintain marketable skills and experience because ANYONE could be given notice this coming Friday that their services are no longer required.
If you aren't on a continuous learning path you get stale in a matter of only a few months and are pretty much out of the workforce after a year. Older people who find themselves out of work almost always struggle in any field in my personal experience.
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The biggest problem older EEs have over younger ones is that they have usually specialized over the course of their career.
Probably over the last few years with the downturn in the economy we have laid off most of the over 50 engineers where I work. The ones we kept were the specialists. I have one colleague in his mid 50's that burned through his retirement earnings after being laid off.. ended up dying his hair and finally got an offer - he's a generalist. Generalists tend to fall under the wheels fairly quickly when there is any kind of downturn so engineers specialize either on their own through doing an advanced degree or on the job, often with the employers encouragement. The idea is simply that generalists are fairly easily replaceable. But when an employer is faced with hiring a 58 year old experienced engineer versus a new graduate, they should be taking the 58 year old every time. So why aren't they? The benefits a 30 year + career will have brought in must surely outweigh almost everything else. Imagine the number of programming languages they must have been exposed to? The thought patterns they've seen lead to disaster etc etc.
At 58 years old and engineer still has 7+ years left. Thats a longer term outlook than you will find in any business operating today. Most businesses barely look past next quarter.
It's all about money.
So lets throw some salary numbers out there;
interns/new graduates/entrant engineers: 40 - 60K
new Masters/PhD's: 60 - 80K
experienced generalists: 60-100K
experienced Masters/PhD's/rockstar designers/engineering managers: 90-150K
As far as working as independent consultants go.. as best I can tell.. thats what you put on your CV when you are unemployed and sometimes pick up some part time work to help on projects. Perhaps a few can make a great living at it but its not generally an employment outcome. If the economy was pumping maybe that would change, but its not and hasn't been for at least 10 years.
Now lets get back to the question of there being a shortage. As I said the IEEE has been lobbying against H1B's for some time. Here's why there is no shortage.
IF employers were not allowed to import engineers from abroad in that 40-60K range above would they experience a shortage? The answer is no.. IF.. they were to raise their wages and employ older engineers. Older engineers are exiting the marketplace because jobs in the 40-60K range are not going to cut it in modern america for someone who was earning previously around the 100K rate. Its not that hard to earn above 60K by becoming a Nurse. Its not even that attractive to graduate engineers, especially if they are being asked to move around the country. You routinely see PhD's coming in from around the world for a 40K postdoc job at a Uni. Very few american graduates do graduate work because of that.. even fewer would do a Postdoc in that range. Now there is also a huge wage and tenure problem in Universities.. go figure.
So the story is basically that H1B's are pushing down wages and reducing the career length of american engineers. A similar thing happened in the UK when alot of older engineers ended up running bed and breakfasts in Cornwall after the collapse of alot of British Auto. When the mining boom ends in Australia and power engineers are back to servicing council substations we may see a bunch do something similar there. Now from those coming in from abroad (I am one of them) a 40-60K job can look very attractive. If you come from a place like indonesia or india where you might be earning 10-20K a year, some would give their left testicle for a job like that. Now the only question becomes.. can american business compete if they had to pay higher wage levels for their engineers? Commerce groups are arguing no and pushing for unlimited H1B's.
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I don't know how it is in the US, but from what I read it is pretty similar to what happens here:
We have constant complaints from the industry about a shortage of STEM graduates. These complaints are frequently enriched with "calculations", supposed to demonstrate that because we are short of that many STEM graduates the industry loses that much business - a lot of business.
Well, the thing is the alleged losses are so enormous that the industry could easily pay the higher wages of older engineers, and even pay for any necessary training, and still make money if they won't lose all that business. But they don't.
If you take their numbers serious they'd rather lose a lot of money than hiring older engineers. You could call that discrimination. If you don't take their numbers serious then it is likely they just want to lure more naive people into studying STEM subjects and simultaneously convince the government to increase the quota for non-EU engineers. Both to undercut wages.
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What many people call 30 years of experience is one year, repeated 29 times. To have 30 years of real experience means having a constantly varying challenges and environment. Those old people have no problem putting food on the table. The guy who has done the same job over and over and over is going to struggle to not be seen as a one trick pony.
I've heard it said that you should aim to be able to put something new on your CV every quarter. That's probably unrealistic but I think having something new on there every year at least should be a goal to stay marketable.
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I have heard complaints about engineering jobs in Canada being taken by immigrants, but percentage of immigrants is much higher here so people generally have no grounds to complain because most of them came as immigrants few years or decades earlier.
My personal hope is that at least for engineers compensation and demand will settle down globally so that engineer with same skills in China will make exactly same money as one in US or Canada or Germany. Then where they will go to find cheaper engineers - Mars?
One thing that seems to be very disturbing in Canada is growing lack of entrepreneurship. RIM (now 'BlackBerry') laid of some engineers and guess what happen? They all went to competitors. In US you lay off 1000 engineers, next day you have 500 start-ups, in Canada everyone starts looking for new warm, secure job. I always expected that if someone has some cool expertise and experienced in any particular area he/she most likely going to open his/her own shop rather than look for another employer.
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There's another significant issue that makes young immigrant engineers more attractive than older American engineers: cost of healthcare insurance. This is especially significant for smaller companies and the group insurance system that we have in the US. If you're at a small company and one person gets seriously ill, you'll almost certainly see a significant rise in your rate the following year, because the insurance companies have to turn a profit on your small group, rather than on their business as a whole.
If you're an American engineer, look around at the age 50+ engineers that you know. How many of them are overweight and out of shape, making a bad bet on their health? Even if they're not overweight, healthcare is generally more costly at this age. Employers know this, and they are always looking to curb rising costs and to reduce risk. They also know that young immigrant engineers from other cultures, especially Asian cultures, tend to have better health habits on top of the lower health risks of being young. (Eating nutritious fresh foods tends to be an important part of Asian cultures, as opposed to the American culture of burgers, fries, soft drinks, etc.)
So an important part of managing a professional career in the US is to not only give the impression of being youthful and healthy, but also to do everything in your power to maintain yourself in a healthy condition. (This also has a lot of other benefits beyond employment.)
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Cthree: everyone I know who had something new on their résumé each year stopped looking for work by 50.
I know for me any could be the day.
But I am always lured into a new project or a new job. So I feel like I should stay a little longer. It may be crazy but I feel guilty, like I'm abandoning them.
A perk if you have something new each year, after 20 years you most have at lease one hard to find skill.
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I have heard complaints about engineering jobs in Canada being taken by immigrants, but percentage of immigrants is much higher here so people generally have no grounds to complain because most of them came as immigrants few years or decades earlier.
My personal hope is that at least for engineers compensation and demand will settle down globally so that engineer with same skills in China will make exactly same money as one in US or Canada or Germany. Then where they will go to find cheaper engineers - Mars?
One thing that seems to be very disturbing in Canada is growing lack of entrepreneurship. RIM (now 'BlackBerry') laid of some engineers and guess what happen? They all went to competitors. In US you lay off 1000 engineers, next day you have 500 start-ups, in Canada everyone starts looking for new warm, secure job. I always expected that if someone has some cool expertise and experienced in any particular area he/she most likely going to open his/her own shop rather than look for another employer.
That's Ontario and Canada. We don't have a strong entrepreneurial spirit or a high tolerance for risk. We didn't ride out the last banking meltdown because we were smart, just to chicken-shit to let banks do anything risky.turns out that was the right thing to do. Maybe its our Scottish roots. We love our government, distrust our corporations. Quite opposite from the US.
I spent 8 years working in California and the difference in attitude is dramatic.
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Yeah, the entrepreneurial spirit in Bay Area is strong. Hell, there's a show called Biz Kids that shows every morning on PBS: http://bizkids.com/ (http://bizkids.com/)
They really get 'em while they're young here...
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I went Student Visa to Work Visa to Green Card to Citizenship. My employer had to post my job on a local newspaper for a month to see if any American had the skills to do my job, that is part of the process. I haven't done engineering work for a long time, I have been doing IT work for the last 18 Years. Each time I look at the Newspapers or online Jobs, the Requirements for E.E. are mostly for senior positions with very specific skills or if they want an entry level one it has to be fresh out of the university. So I would be on the odd pool of people that would have to be given a chance to prove themselves worthy because don't fit most of the molds. :)
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Its true right now, but there have definitely been spikes in unemployment among the technical workforce. I experienced this entering the job market out of college right after the economic meltdown in 2008/2009. The previous year, all you had to do was bring your resume to the job fair, and as you say, show up to the interview wearing shoes. Suddenly found I was competing with guys with 10 years of experience who were laid off, while the lower level technician jobs were afraid to hire someone with a degree because they knew we would bolt as soon as the economy got better. Also had a similar scare when I was just entering school and there was something of a very short but dramatic blip in unemployment among CEs in 2002. It happens, and I can see it happening again if, say, the US military stops throwing money around for advanced weapons systems.
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We love our government
Wow I have never seen those words joined before.
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Comparing immigrant engineers to local engineers is an unfair comparison. Immigrant graduates and engineers are typically at the top percentiles at their home countries while the locals represent the general population of engineers.
If you want top people you need to pay well and expand the recruit to other countries, mostly developing countries with a large pool pool of highly motivated and capable talents such as China and India. Some people or more capable than others and this applies also to engineers.
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If you want top people you need to pay well and expand the recruit to other countries, mostly developing countries with a large pool pool of highly motivated and capable talents such as China and India.
Yes, that is the nice and clean theory. The practice looks different.
If all you want and need are average engineers, and average companies with average products and average jobs tend to look for them, then it works different. Recruiting your average engineer from a low-wage country, instead of using the local population, simply becomes a cost-saving issue. And has nothing to do any more with the fight for top talent.
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EE unemployment in Denmark : About zero...those that are unemployed are the ones that just cant be employed : sick, hasnt got the right skills (phD with wrong special) and so on.
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Did you notice that this thread is from August? :D
It cannot be - should be at least in line with average across Europe. Unless of course they all left to US running away from insane taxes and low wages?
I have been contacted many times by recruiters from Europe, UK mostly, sometimes Germany - what they offer in terms of compensation after tax makes me wonder - how do you survive?
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Survive ? you know.....after taxes 3700 US Dollar...I manage :P Free medical service, free education so i think its ok :P
If i want lower taxes i can buy a house - tax reductable interests :P
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I hope it's 3700 every two weeks, if monthly I probably pay that much in taxes alone.
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Good to know EE engineers earns a living in the states :) We survive here too :)
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Software, sorry, but I think EEs earn close to what we do, or at least they should.
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To be objective you need data. I often use site called Numbeo when I want to find out what kind of money I need to maintain same lifestyle in different city. Here s for example comparison between Vienna, Austria and Seattle, US:
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Austria&city1=Vienna&country2=United+States&city2=Seattle%2C+WA&displayCurrency=USD (http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Austria&city1=Vienna&country2=United+States&city2=Seattle%2C+WA&displayCurrency=USD)
Note that even on average (not just Engineers - buying power of peaps in Seattle is 26.53% higher. You can see that rent is much higher - but people mostly own in US as oppose to Vienna I guess, so if you look at how much square feet costs in both places - it is double and mortgage rates in Austria are much much higher too.
Now if you want to know how much people make for fact go to Glassdoor
http://www.glassdoor.ca/index.htm (http://www.glassdoor.ca/index.htm).
It is very accurate for large employers up to +- 5%.
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In Belgium, if you are an engineer and manage to hold a hammer the proper way and are not employed, you are hiding in a very deep hole...
In certain sectors, such as contract electronics (fields applications) you can say whatever number and clients are not in a position to argue if they want their thing within 12 months.
It's a big problem.
There is a drastic shortage of students studying practical engineering (at all levels) because it's not perceived as good as a career as being a badly paid manager or a bloody unemployed marketer by their parents/the school system. Job angency people sometimes need to be field instructed because there is nothing available... It's a waste of time and resources.
There should be a way to show teenagers that working with your hands and mind is sexy and profitable... And change this silly situation.
(I'm studying maritime engineering right now and not looking for work. Yet I still get job offers every week for engineering positions by desperate companies despite not being an engineer thus it not being reasonable/safe that I do these jobs - HEVAC and piping in particular)
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Insufficient graduates... Pay might seem low compared to the US but we get really good benefits.
And if you really want earn money, you start your own company while still working... No sleep but you'll have I Porsche quite fast (and 100% legit here, but not in France for example).
If a student, it's key to know what the market needs and doing thesis that's actually something saleable...
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And if you really want earn money, you start your own company while still working... No sleep but you'll have I Porsche quite fast (and 100% legit here, but not in France for example).
If a student, it's key to know what the market needs and doing thesis that's actually something saleable...
Haha. If you have something "saleable" and you move to US - you will have 10 of those Porsches twice as fast! As successful entrepreneur in EU you are "greedy capitalist" - in US you are God. If you are very successful they will make a special door on Capitol Hill just for you so that you can get in and vent you frustration about lack of cheap engineering labor whenever it makes you sad. When you will walk in they will throw themselves to the floor and push a golden plate with pile of worker visas towards you so that you do not throw your godly rage on those unfortunate politicians. They will warship you even if you have portraits of Stalin and Mao tattooed on your forehead. Do you think this is my metaphysical exaggeration? - it is true.
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They will warship you even if you have portraits of Stalin and Mao tattooed on your forehead
I have to agree with this. Though you may have invented an new verb.
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They will warship you even if you have portraits of Stalin and Mao tattooed on your forehead
I have to agree with this. Though you may have invented an new verb.
Stalin and Mao, while communists did have a few, erm, "wars" and were not exactly on speaking terms. So to have both on your forehead means you'll be laughed out of the room by the whole political spectrum in any civilised country.
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OK, Ok I blame the spell checker ;D
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And if you really want earn money, you start your own company while still working... No sleep but you'll have I Porsche quite fast (and 100% legit here, but not in France for example).
If a student, it's key to know what the market needs and doing thesis that's actually something saleable...
Haha. If you have something "saleable" and you move to US - you will have 10 of those Porsches twice as fast! As successful entrepreneur in EU you are "greedy capitalist" - in US you are God. If you are very successful they will make a special door on Capitol Hill just for you so that you can get in and vent you frustration about lack of cheap engineering labor whenever it makes you sad. When you will walk in they will throw themselves to the floor and push a golden plate with pile of worker visas towards you so that you do not throw your godly rage on those unfortunate politicians. They will warship you even if you have portraits of Stalin and Mao tattooed on your forehead. Do you think this is my metaphysical exaggeration? - it is true.
I disagree. We like our successful entrepreneurs in Europe. Even the most left wing of the left (Spanish CNT; anarcosindicalists who fought both communists AND Franco yet REFUSE to follow any political party...) you will not find a single word against entrepreneurs. You will find stuff against other syndicates taking state and company money, work sharing, corruption etc. I disagree with a lot of what they say, but I respect them. Furthermore, when I lived in Spain, I found that they tended to work pretty hard and well. And they are rather mad about the state of the job market there that was a result of crony capitalism and financial criminality (all the way to the Kings daughter...) - not some uber left wing Marxist plot.
So your perception that Europe in large is a Communist Hell Hole and the US a collection of Marvellous Unicorn Ranches TM is slightly off the mark.
What frustrates most Europeans (if you sit down and talk for 5 minutes) is that the rules if you are working or start your company are "A". Yet the big boys are operating with a set of rules "B".
Capitalism is great, I'm a big fan of it, but it needs rules and those rules need to be the same for all. The playing field must be level. And it's not. That goes against all sane economic theory.
This is not communism or socialism, I think its Adam Smith (if I'm not mistaken).
I also think that the loadsamoney driven political pandering you praise is also wrong.
Politician should make rules for all in a country and make the same deal for everybody, otherwise it's a bloody banana republic at best.
But I agree that one could earn more for the same amount of work in the US, but a lot of us, having visited a few times, might not want to live or start a company there even if we like going stateside on vacation (but I reserve the same opinion for France right now, so this is not anti Americanism).
One can live a good life here with all the perks (house, car, trips etc) as an engineer (or in engineering) but not sufficient kids know that.
And that's the real problem.
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If politics is what motivates you but not your business idea or money then you should not get into business in first place. I myself don't see any difference between Paris, Los Angeles, Beijing or Tehran - if that is the place to implement my ideas so be it.
There is very nice book by Paul Graham that talk about places where to start business among other things. Book called "Hackers and Painters". http://paulgraham.com/articles.html. (http://paulgraham.com/articles.html.) He is the guy who created Y-Combinator.
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I'll look into that book, thanks.
My main motivator is "quality of life" and "happiness". While money is a big part of the equation (and why I'm currently studying again), it's not the only factor.
I do care where I live, because I live there!