interesting

[Aziz]

"
The people,

saying that, saying bullshit, have other goals. They are searching
engineers, that really not exist. I am an excellent engineer and
nobody is asking for me.
This is a policy, to get more green-cards for cheap and young
engineers.

Germany has full of great, experienced and excellent engineers, but
they are for the industry too expensive.

A good engineer (for them) is an engineer, that
- works for no or less money
- works at least 10 hours per day
- works on 6 days a week
- has no holidays
- has no family (single)
- is very young and has more experience (shizophren!)
- is not older then 35 years
and so on..

I will fuck all the german managers and human resources.
They do not know about the worth of german engineers, especially
foreign engineers.

Fuck them all (including BITCOM).
;-)
"
Attention: This is all in quatation (citat).

 

[John Larkin]

http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?section_id=53&document_id=8862


John

 

[Joerg]

Hello John,

Just don't believe everything like that without some serious scrutiny. I
have a lot of contacts into Germany and cannot confirm at all what that
paper says. There are lots of unemployed engineers and the total
unemployment rate is well over 10% AFAIK. That number alone tells a sad
story.

I have read similar sob stories here in the US. Not enough engineers,
can't fill positions, blah, blah, blah. Then you look at the job ads and
they are seeking dreamer combinations of skills that never existed.
Meanwhile a lot of high-credential technical folks around here in
California are hardcore unemployed.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Dirk Bruere at Neopax]

Joerg wrote:

Hello John,

Just don't believe everything like that without some serious scrutiny. I
have a lot of contacts into Germany and cannot confirm at all what that
paper says. There are lots of unemployed engineers and the total
unemployment rate is well over 10% AFAIK. That number alone tells a sad
story.

I have read similar sob stories here in the US. Not enough engineers,
can't fill positions, blah, blah, blah. Then you look at the job ads and
they are seeking dreamer combinations of skills that never existed.
Meanwhile a lot of high-credential technical folks around here in
California are hardcore unemployed.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Same here in Britain.
I'm thinking of joining the police force.
There is no 'skills shortage', unless 'skill' is defined as someone under 30
with a CV of highly specialist skills and more than 20yrs experience willing to
work for Indian wages.

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:02:39 GMT, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Hello John,

Just don't believe everything like that without some serious scrutiny. I
have a lot of contacts into Germany and cannot confirm at all what that
paper says. There are lots of unemployed engineers and the total
unemployment rate is well over 10% AFAIK. That number alone tells a sad
story.

I have read similar sob stories here in the US. Not enough engineers,
can't fill positions, blah, blah, blah. Then you look at the job ads and
they are seeking dreamer combinations of skills that never existed.
Meanwhile a lot of high-credential technical folks around here in
California are hardcore unemployed.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I think that, worldwide, lots of newly-minted "engineers" actually
have CS or IT educations, which both limits their utility to hacking
C++ and makes them prime targets for foreign outsourcing.

John

 

[richard mullens]

John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:02:39 GMT, Joerg
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:


Hello John,

Just don't believe everything like that without some serious scrutiny. I
have a lot of contacts into Germany and cannot confirm at all what that
paper says. There are lots of unemployed engineers and the total
unemployment rate is well over 10% AFAIK. That number alone tells a sad
story.

I have read similar sob stories here in the US. Not enough engineers,
can't fill positions, blah, blah, blah. Then you look at the job ads and
they are seeking dreamer combinations of skills that never existed.
Meanwhile a lot of high-credential technical folks around here in
California are hardcore unemployed.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com



I think that, worldwide, lots of newly-minted "engineers" actually
have CS or IT educations, which both limits their utility to hacking
C++ and makes them prime targets for foreign outsourcing.

I work for a company that has a niche but valuable software product.
What I noticed is that quite a few of the software developers actually have an EE background.
Some work in C, some in C++ & some in Java.
Many I suspect would prefer to be writing embedded software. Perhaps we have sold our souls to commerce.
Perhaps this proves your point (?) that real engineers are more adaptable.

What I would say though, is that if one has talent and can persevere with something till it is complete, then someone will hire
you - in spite of all the outsourcing - even if you are a computer scientist. But there is no passport to prosperity, it has to
be earned.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 02:09:46 GMT, richard mullens
<mullensdeletethis@ntlworld.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:02:39 GMT, Joerg
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:


Hello John,

Just don't believe everything like that without some serious scrutiny. I
have a lot of contacts into Germany and cannot confirm at all what that
paper says. There are lots of unemployed engineers and the total
unemployment rate is well over 10% AFAIK. That number alone tells a sad
story.

I have read similar sob stories here in the US. Not enough engineers,
can't fill positions, blah, blah, blah. Then you look at the job ads and
they are seeking dreamer combinations of skills that never existed.
Meanwhile a lot of high-credential technical folks around here in
California are hardcore unemployed.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com



I think that, worldwide, lots of newly-minted "engineers" actually
have CS or IT educations, which both limits their utility to hacking
C++ and makes them prime targets for foreign outsourcing.


I work for a company that has a niche but valuable software product.
What I noticed is that quite a few of the software developers actually have an EE background.
Some work in C, some in C++ & some in Java.
Many I suspect would prefer to be writing embedded software. Perhaps we have sold our souls to commerce.
Perhaps this proves your point (?) that real engineers are more adaptable.

What I would say though, is that if one has talent and can persevere with something till it is complete, then someone will hire
you - in spite of all the outsourcing - even if you are a computer scientist. But there is no passport to prosperity, it has to
be earned.

Yeah. The three best programmers I know have degrees in engineering,
chemistry and physics. None ever took a programming class.

John

 

[Joerg]

Hello John,

I think that, worldwide, lots of newly-minted "engineers" actually
have CS or IT educations, which both limits their utility to hacking
C++ and makes them prime targets for foreign outsourcing.

Yes, code writing is being outsourced big time. But when you look at
unemployed engineers in Germany there are lots of MSEE, mechanical
engineers, even Ph.D. There seems to be not much going on in R&D. Many
companies in fields such as consumer audio and video have simply
disappeared from there. A few years ago a manager from Germany told me
that when they placed a job ad in a newspaper they received a whopping
800 resumes, mostly from very qualified people and many of them way
over-qualified. It was for an entry level job. Those applicants must
have been quite desperate.

So if someone claims in an article that there is a shortage of engineers
or that one is looming I do not believe that. They can write some prose
all day long. I will usually not even finish reading it unless there are
some hard numbers from official sources. In Germany that would be the
"Bundesministerium fuer Arbeit", they have the exact numbers of
engineers who are on the unemployment rolls less the ones that have
given up.

Quote: "Europe's biggest economy is short of about 15,000 engineers,
says the country's engineering association VDI. The figure represents
the number of vacancies as well as those that are not created due to the
paucity of engineers." Oh yeah? Where did that number come from?
Vacancies not created because of a lack? Considering that an online ad
costs only a few hundred I do not believe that. Just for the heck I
checked for engineer ads on the German Monster database. I got about
800, all categories. Looks like a 25dB discrepancy. Ok, this doesn't
include the stick-my-head-in-the-sand category ('oh, we probably can't
find anyone so let's not even place an ad').

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Joerg]

Hello John,

BTW, I just posted the link you gave us in the German EE forum. Let's
see what they think. I'll report back here when the eggs and tomatoes
start flying.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Clifford Heath]

John Larkin wrote:

...CS or IT educations, which both limits their utility to hacking
C++ and makes them prime targets for foreign outsourcing.

What an ignorant attitude. The reason that EE is being hit so
much harder than software is that it's worked for 40 years to
make products that don't need support (repair and training) and
indeed most mass-market products aren't even possible to repair.
When you haven't got (and don't need) a support industry, you
lose the seeding ground for your product enterprises.

The same hasn't and won't happen with software, because support
is always going to be needed. Some software can be outsourced,
but there will always be smart local folk who can come up with
a bright product idea and make money out of it without being
immediately undercut by an Asian competitor. That's not to say
that broken software can be "fixed" - look at Windows! - but that
its failings are handled by better support, not by throwing it
away and starting again with a new model.

Clifford Heath.

 

[Terry Given]

Clifford Heath wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

...CS or IT educations, which both limits their utility to hacking
C++ and makes them prime targets for foreign outsourcing.


What an ignorant attitude. The reason that EE is being hit so
much harder than software is that it's worked for 40 years to
make products that don't need support (repair and training) and
indeed most mass-market products aren't even possible to repair.
When you haven't got (and don't need) a support industry, you
lose the seeding ground for your product enterprises.

Pah. John's bang on wrt CS/IT, although its not just foreign outsourcing
thats the issue -there are ludicrous numbers of CS/IT parasites spewing
forth from universities, mostly because they pay the same fees as, say,
civil engineers, but are a hell of a lot cheaper to train, ergo are a
source of greater profitability for the universities, which invariably
have to meet economic goals. From an individuals perspective, I would
steer clear of this group, because there are more of them hence more
competition. The "law" of Supply & Demand suggests this will drive wages
down (hey, its part of the reason I chose power electronics as a
specialty. The explosions were the main reason though), as evinced by
the massive outsourcing of sw jobs from the US to countries like India.

wrt the non-repairability of electronics, that is IMO mostly concerned
with fucked up economic models. When the assembly staff are being paid a
few cents per hour to build a complex product, invariably in a country
with little or no worker protection (reminds me of the taiwanes pcb
plant I my boss took pictures of, staffed by barefoot Filipinos
breathing highly noxious fumes), its hardly surprising that replacement
is "cheaper" than paying a 1st-world tech to repair it - said tech being
paid tens of dollars per hour, within some sort of framework of worker
protection legislation.

The same hasn't and won't happen with software, because support
is always going to be needed. Some software can be outsourced,
but there will always be smart local folk who can come up with
a bright product idea and make money out of it without being
immediately undercut by an Asian competitor. That's not to say
that broken software can be "fixed" - look at Windows! - but that
its failings are handled by better support, not by throwing it
away and starting again with a new model.

Clifford Heath.

Really? I would argue that "support is always going to be needed"
precisely because those writing the software are mostly talentless,
bungling fools. Almost all electronic products nowadays contain embedded
software, much of which *never* gets upgraded - usually because it was
well written and tested, by EEs. OTOH PC software is usually inflicted
on the hapless public the minute the GUI is looks vaguely useable - I
have seen several companies not even *consider* a testing phase for
software, instead releasing it ASAP, followed by huge amounts of code
revisions lasting years after the original project was "finished", and I
am sure that is only the tip of the iceberg.

Alas managers dont seem to grasp such subtleties as total cost of
ownership, or if they do appear to be blinded by the flashy graphics of
GUIs, coupled with the low pay rates inexperienced CS/IT grads command.
This ensures crap software prevails.

Cheers
Terry

 

[Paul Burke]

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

Same here in Britain.
I'm thinking of joining the police force.

Dirkson of Dork Green?

Paul Burke

 

[Clifford Heath]

Terry Given wrote:

Pah. John's bang on wrt CS/IT, although its not just foreign outsourcing
thats the issue

He's right that many CS/IT grads are hopelessly underequipped. But
that just reinforces what I'm saying. The fact remains that EE has
done *too good* a job over the last 40 years for its own good. The
customer reaps the benefits!

From an individuals perspective, I would
steer clear of this group, because there are more of them hence more
competition.

Unless (like my son who's just transferred from an EE degree to CS/IT)
he is likely to get high distinctions throughout and have his pick of
whatever meagre interesting jobs Australia has to offer. The same was
not true of his prospects in EE. Time will tell, of course.

The "law" of Supply & Demand suggests this will drive wages down

Globalization is driving wages down anyway in both fields. Supply is
high in India and China, and though the average quality may be lower,
the volume makes up for it. So the only answer is to pick a field and
work until you're at the top of it.

wrt the non-repairability of electronics, that is IMO mostly concerned
with fucked up economic models. When the assembly staff are being paid
....

True, but we're talking about the design staff here, and the degree
of miniaturization just makes it infeasible to debug a broken phone,
for instance, even if the tech had comparable skill to the designer.
In any case it's usually the external hardware that fails, not the
components, because the component reliability has been pushed so high.

The software analogue is just not comparable.

Really? I would argue that "support is always going to be needed"
precisely because those writing the software are mostly talentless,
bungling fools.

Hey, I didn't try to justify it! I almost feel ashamed to work in an
industry that has delivered such large amounts of crap. But that
doesn't change the reality. And for myself, my determination to
deliver value for money means I haven't made much money compared to
those who've chosen to deliver crap . But I have my dignity, and
a pretty productive record.

...because it was well written and tested, by EEs.

It's just a pity they don't often have any software design skills.
I don't mean skills to make a chosen solution work or fit, but to
choose a solution in the first place. Too much emphasis on the
hardware, not enough on the user. The sheer percentage of badly
programmed embedded designs is staggering, worse even than the
software industry proper (if possible).

Clifford.

 

[Dirk Bruere at Neopax]

Paul Burke wrote:

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:


Same here in Britain.
I'm thinking of joining the police force.


Dirkson of Dork Green?

Easier, more secure working conditions, better pay (or at least it would have
been by now if that had been my original career choice) and one gets to meet a
varied and interesting cross section of the public while arresting them.

Engineering can come and go, but all societies need police.
Of all 'professions' the only ones that society will eternally support are
prostitution and the head crackers who keep the revolting peasants in line.

This means you!

--
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 20:01:10 +1100, Clifford Heath <no@spam.please>
wrote:

It's just a pity they don't often have any software design skills.
I don't mean skills to make a chosen solution work or fit, but to
choose a solution in the first place. Too much emphasis on the
hardware, not enough on the user. The sheer percentage of badly
programmed embedded designs is staggering, worse even than the
software industry proper (if possible).

Disagree. Most embedded products - cars, appliances, calculators, home
entertainment stuff - just work. Most computer-level stuff is buggy
crap. I have scores of designs in the field, thousands of products in
total, that use an embedded 32-bit CPU, and we have zero known
firmware bugs, and all coded by EEs. My brand-new Dell/XP computers
had stupid software problems right out the box, like occasionally
insisting that floppies are write protected or unformatted (fix?
reboot!) or messing up the Zip drive fats or Word crashing when
certain graphics images are imported.

I've seen some Windows source code, and I understand why it's such
tripe. It's written exactly like the academics teach programming these
days: jillions of files, convoluted logic, abstraction for its own
sake, zero comments or visible context, all based on a language that
was designed to substitute sequences of punctuation marks for keywords
(which is literally why they call it "code").

Modern CS education scoops up masses of youngsters like herring in a
net, and teaches them how to code and how not to think. A Fellow of
United Technologies made that same comment to me two days ago.

John

 

[Joerg]

Hello John,

Within just a few hours there were dozens of posters in the German forum
who said pretty much what I thought they would: The "shortage scare
stories" appear quite regularly but in reality there are lots of
unemployed engineers. There are positions that remain unfilled but they
hinted that's because these offer a "salary" that won't even pay rent
and food. IOW, you could make more money driving a cab. I have seen that
in the US, too. No kidding, someone was looking for a chip designer at
$35k a year. Probably w/o benefits...

According to the thread there are engineers in Germany who have
graduated a year ago and after oodles of resumes are still looking for a
job. Well, I guess there is the real story.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Joerg <notthisjoergsch@removethisp
acbell.net> wrote (in <%bFZd.21979$OU1.15209@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>
) about 'interesting', on Tue, 15 Mar 2005:

No kidding, someone was looking for a chip designer at
$35k a year. Probably w/o benefits...

Maybe with free wine, Chinese food and personalized owl...(;-)
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Joerg]

Hello John,

Maybe with free wine, Chinese food and personalized owl...(;-)

Or maybe you can opt for the occasional free ride in a tuk-tuk ;-)

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:45:05 +0000, John Woodgate
<jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Joerg <notthisjoergsch@removethisp
acbell.net> wrote (in <%bFZd.21979$OU1.15209@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com
) about 'interesting', on Tue, 15 Mar 2005:
No kidding, someone was looking for a chip designer at
$35k a year. Probably w/o benefits...

Maybe with free wine, Chinese food and personalized owl...(;-)

I've got the owl, but I'd like to see your attempt to "personalize"
him ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson
<thegreatone@example.com> wrote (in <u9ie31tlmplronpq3b8kmvoovuo75n9m2o@
4ax.com&gt about 'interesting', on Tue, 15 Mar 2005:

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:45:05 +0000, John Woodgate <jmw@jmwa.demon.contra
spam.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Joerg <notthisjoergsch@removethisp
acbell.net> wrote (in <%bFZd.21979$OU1.15209@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com
) about 'interesting', on Tue, 15 Mar 2005:
No kidding, someone was looking for a chip designer at
$35k a year. Probably w/o benefits...

Maybe with free wine, Chinese food and personalized owl...(;-)

I've got the owl, but I'd like to see your attempt to "personalize" him
;-)

Well, you already have a personalized gazelle, so all you need to do is
find a new species of the Strigidae. (;-)
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk