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Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
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tom66:
At present, the shortage of skilled/qualified programmers has driven salaries sky high in some areas, for instance Facebook pays some of their engineers up to $250k (with the penalty that you have to life and work in SF to get that salary.) 

Will this shortage continue to drive engineering salaries up or will it lead to a stagnation because the interesting tech doesn't get developed to pay for those salaries?

Almost everyone I speak to in engineering recruitment says how hard it is to find highly skilled engineers.  Recently I saw a job ad for an FPGA engineer (contract) at £80ph - the penalty being no remote work all on site in England - but that's not badly paid at all (yearly salary equivalent would be £144k though I guess it depends on contract extensions etc.)
MrMobodies:

--- Quote from: AndyBeez on July 19, 2022, 09:33:10 am ---Not forgetting the most popular science subject studied in UK universities; sport science.
--- End quote ---

Over ten years ago at a local college where I use to live they were doing things like "nail technician", "varnish technician" and "sandwich technician". There was a class teaching people in their 20's and 30's how to read and write, spell out the names of the months, learning how to make a cup of tea and coffee and in their marketing materials it boasted something completely different which was more like lie so I was enrolled by a provider by mistake and the way I was treated before I left on the starting of that day, "So you THINK! you can read and write but you CAN'T!", I said "excuse me, tell me, what is this in front of you? If I couldn't write I would be bringing in a fountain pen and copying down those sentences of joined up writing quickly in seconds. Whilst the others take a minute struggling to write their own name so I took that as an insult." I left to make a complaint about the claims in the brochure then they said,  "it was a mistake and we are sorry", they don't do none of the things and "they will have a "word" with the marketing team.

I found something there just called "security". So I asked what access control stuff do you do, I mentioned names of a few including systems and burglar alarms. They had no idea of what I was talking about. They told me that it was qualification to become a bouncer pubs and nightclubs.

I had a meeting with the director. He told he did electrical engineering in the 80's at this same place to fix and service televisions and radios and in fact one the first things he did there. He said to me that people are not interested in it anymore, if a television breaks down they find it cheaper to go to shopping, pick up a new television and bin the old set. I was quoted £14,000 for an electrical engineering course which would be 1:1 but  could include other people later on if they decided to advertise it.

I went to another place, they did programming classes in Java, the teacher apparently left and the had these teaching assistants run it. Before I knew this they subjected me to this stupid confusing test in their computer suite. It was basic stuff like adding up money. With this testing software the units, pounds and pence were not declared £ or P at all. It found it ambiguous. the person running it said they were not suppose to help as it was a test and I should know already. I added the units in and I failed everything. The person running it said it had nothing to do with them as they where there just print out the scores. I went back to the hall and complained about the testing software, they said nothing about it but wrote an equation down and said "do this". I finished it and they couldn't understand how I got that right but failed their test. I said I told you the problems with it. Anyway then I was told that their teacher left all they were were teaching assistants with no experience in computing and they go by a teaching guide. I asked if you inexperienced with no understand of what you are doing why are you here and running this course? No answer to that. I was furious waste of my time.

There was Cisco class there too that the department set up a meeting to discuss my needs and it was a con, the person running that wanted £3000. If I failed I would have to pay that again and £800 for every test. He said he can't help me with my needs and condition and they have no duty of care as it was private company within a company contracted private by the college so it was not part of the college of what it looked it. They don't have dedicate room, no hardware or testing as he said they do it "academically" where I "self study".  I said that is ridiculous and extortion,  I could do this cheaper if I wanted by signing up to Cisco if I didn't need the help. So I go there just to pay you all this money to do absolutely nothing and he sounded very blunt after that is all he had to offer. I overhead him reporting back that "it was too challenging" for me. I should have gone in start an argument. The last I heard from a friend who went there, they did a geography course, It was all shown on Powerpoint through a projector and this is where it gets better, during the exam all the answers were on the back of the test papers and everybody passed.

I over heard of a conversation between an engineer and a pat tester about 5 years ago, the pat tester said he was about to retire and this electrical engineer replied, "Yes they are either retiring or dying and there are not many people to replace us. The accountants put a stop all this in the 80's when they decided they didn't need anymore engineers and didn't want spend money on training and apprenticeships to save them money."

I found that a bit strange believing that there will always be jobs for electrical and pat testing considering the amount of houses in the UK being built at the moment especially in over crowded areas.
cellularmitosis:

--- Quote from: aeberbach on July 18, 2022, 10:47:30 pm ---From what I see doing software pays much more than anything physical. And the dumber the programming gets, the more money you make. Compare for example embedded C vs. iOS salaries.

--- End quote ---

I understand the point you are trying to make, but you chose a poor example.  I rarely deal with threads, and never deal with asynchronous programming with embedded C.
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