

Shortage of Engineers or a Glut? No Simple Answer - cwan
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/04/shortage-of-engineers-or-a-glut-no-simple-answer/

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bugsy
Definitely a shortage. To be specific, there is a massive shortage of
engineers with extensive qualifications in very specific sets of frameworks
used by a given company and expertise in their specialized domain, who are
willing to work for less than market rate and/or relocate to some backwoods
town at their own expense.

There is also a shortage of new 2010 Porsche 911 Speedsters in chartreuse with
candy apple red leather interiors available for the reasonable and normal new
car price of $15,000.

There is also a massive shortage of qualified licensed plumbers who will come
out to my house for less than $150.

I am also terribly unhappy about the shortage of reasonably priced fresh
strawberries in winter.

No, I am not the unreasonable one. The government must supply me with the
engineers, plumbers, cars and strawberries of any quality I wish at whatever
price I name. Help me gubmint, help me with the shortage.

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vorg
You mentioned quality, location and price for each product/service, but not
the times and ages? The engineer must be willing to leave a cellphone beside
their bed every night, to be woken up at any hour to fix a problem which may
or may not be related to the computer systems they work on during office
hours. They must be over 25 yrs old, i.e. "mature enough", but under 34, i.e.
with plenty of energy to work 12-hr days, "still not cynical", etc. Their
track record must be in 2-yr blocks of uninterrupted service.

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dadkins
As Pardo says, "There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a
shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little
money." - Piaw Na

~~~
Dilpil
Might I add: on uninteresting problems under terrible working conditions.

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geebee
If you're interested in looking at some hard data on this, you might look at a
recent RAND study.

<http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241/index.html>

This study is mainly focused on PhD level degree recipients and compares
salary and career prospects with "the professions" (jd, mba, md, dds, etc). By
this standard, the study concludes that there is no shortage.

Mr Wadwha is segmenting the "engineer" population differently - including all
degree and experience levels, but also treating different micro-slices of the
STEM workforce differently. This makes sense, and I think he's right - it does
show that the issue is very complex.

If you've read my posts in the past, you'll know that one thing I find
exasperating about Mr Wadwha is that he almost always includes the word
"xenophobia" when describing people who look askance on visa programs designed
to bring more engineers and scientists to the US. I respect Mr Wadwha's point
of view (since I agree with him to some extent that we need to be open to
global talent), but I don't think he gives enough credit to the people who
oppose these programs. When a RAND study finds that there is no shortage of
engineers or scientists, and that poor wage and job prospects are the main
contributor to low levels of interest among US students, then it is immensely
reasonable to question whether we should hand craft an immigration policy
designed to bring more scientists and engineers here, as opposed to a more
general, profession neutral system. Accusing people who hold this point of
view of xenophobia adds nothing to this discussion, and drags it into the mud,
as far as I'm concerned.

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yummyfajitas
Very simple answer: there is a shortage of good engineers, but a glut of
crappy ones.

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rbranson
I've ran into a few people out of work who were "in IT." They are almost
always some kind of one-trick pony who has spent the last 20 years writing SQL
for Crystal Reports or administering Novell servers or maintaining VB 6.0
applications. They didn't bother to modernize their skills and now they're
stuck. I hope I never get like this.

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yesno
In most companies, that's what IT is: doing the necessary stuffs to support
business.

On the other hand, it's their decision to specialize in such technology.
Perhaps they have the necessary business knowledge and they just need to
compliment that with enough IT skills.

Please don't act like a jerk by calling them one-trick pony. There are reasons
before one came to make a decision, be it quality time with family, or piece
of mind, or just to get by in life and do other things outside work.

I met tons of super-ego developers who always try to keep up with the latest
greatest ORM tools in different languages praising the latest technology as
the "best one out there" every 2 years. They did this for their on
satisfaction, not for delivering any meaningful values.

I also met "one-language per year" developers who don't know low-level OS, or
how computer networks work.

I met developers who know how to write code but don't know how to perform
capacity planning, security audit, or heck, even write proper unit-testing,
integration-testing, and acceptance testing.

I met developers who write code according to his/her "raw talent" (you know
them developers, they're smart, but they can't work well with other people.
Don't even bother touching their complex code).

People come in various experience and background. Don't make generalize
judgement.

Some people decided to improve their skills once every 2 years, be it learning
a new programming languages or a new web-me-too-framework. To others, that's
like a rat-race. By the time these developers reached 40 years old, they have
learned 20 different programming languages yet they don't understand the
business inside-out. They deliver great architecture yet it's not what the
business need.

What's that called? one-trick pony?

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rbranson
Yes, those people are bad too, but it's not a dichotomy. People tend to
overvalue their non-portable organization-specific skills.

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tomjen3
It seems as if the good programmers are finally waking up to the actual value
they bring to the table, as opposed to just taking a job getting paid about
the same as the not superstars. This would explain why companies aren't happy
with the level of applicants, and why most people have trouble getting a job.

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omouse
That's funny, there are a lot of engineers! Mechanical engineers, civil
engineers, electrical engineers, etc.

Oh wait, I think they meant Computer Scientists or Programmers.

~~~
wookiehangover
or maybe even a software engineer...

~~~
jmillikin
When programmers can earn an accredited degree and must be granted a license
before practicing, we will have earned the right to be called "engineer".

Until then, using the title "Software Engineer" is a bit like a man who plays
Warcraft all day calling himself a "Raid Engineer".

~~~
ramchip
In the US, maybe, but your statement is rather insulting for engineers in
Quebec.

Here, software engineers must follow an engineering program at university,
spend at least 2 years working under an Ordre des Ingénieurs member's
supervision, and pass a test before they can use the title of (software)
engineer. The mandatory courses cover things like ethics, sociology, physics,
electrical and electronic circuits, computer architecture, differential
equations and numerical methods, and vector calculus.

Even Microsoft's MSCEs can't use the word "engineer" here:
[http://www.microsoft.com/canada/learning/quebecmcse/default....](http://www.microsoft.com/canada/learning/quebecmcse/default.mspx)

Now, it's true that "programmers" don't require certification. The Ordre des
ingénieurs and Quebec are thinking about ways to make the programmer
profession more regulated, but it's of course hard to implement without an
international agreement on the matter.

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noarchy
I, for one, do not want any kind of regulation for our trade. People can
wrangle over the term "engineer" if they'd like. I don't use it for myself, as
I am quite content to be called a programmer. One could argue that a
guild/regulatory body would put us in a stronger position to negotiate
salaries, via a kind of artificial shortage (since some individuals won't get
certified). But the last thing that I want, personally, is to have to answer
to any kind of guild that tries to tell me that I am or am not a "proper"
programmer.

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Anechoic
When it comes to the use of the term "engineer" in the states, it's not about
regulating the trade or determining what's "proper," it's about making sure
that people who use a title have the minimum knowledge and qualifications
implied by the title.

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noarchy
I understand what you're saying, but what will we consider an "engineer" to
be, in the case of programmers?

A "programmer" can be someone who picked up PHP in their spare time, and may
have a degree in art history, for all anyone knows. It can also be someone
with a solid background in CS, with a degree to boot. Both of them can get
jobs as "programmers" (though in this case, probably very different wage
scales) if they are good enough to get hired.

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VladRussian
when a company is laying off good engineers while b!tching about no being able
to fill the dev positions in another department (same technology, same domain)
for which they are actively hiring - is the company experiencing a shortage or
a glut? (disclaimer: i left on my own ;)

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billswift
>Now, because of flawed U.S. immigration policies, most buy one-way tickets
home.

I assume, since you are claiming that is a "flaw" that you want to hire a
cheap engineer. On the other hand, if you were an engineer looking for a job,
I would suspect you would think that was a good policy. On the gripping hand,
and recognizing this is TechCrunch, you are probably just repeating liberal
cant on immigration without thinking about it.

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robryan
I think this highlights the importance of doing things outside of your uni
work while obtaining a degree. While people don't want to have to train
someone from scratch that's come out of a CS degree if you are able to say CS
degree plus 3 years of contracting on the side it all becomes much easier.

