By Cherish The Scientist on February 23, 2012
We’ve been hearing a lot on how there is a huge shortage of STEM workers and how the US needs to have more to stay on top. It looks like our concerns are well on our way to being fixed. The financial sector is apparently downsizing, so all those tech majors who originally planned to go into business and banking are thinking of a career in…you guessed it…engineering! An article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek discusses the fact that the financial sector has been seriously cutting down on hiring. Many tech majors discussed in the article said that they majored in technical fields to get into finance, but now that jobs aren’t available, they’re looking for jobs doing the stuff they were actually trained to do. The article does mention that things are shaky in the tech sector, but says that, “few expect Silicon Valley to undergo the carnage suffered by Wall [...]
Posted in Business, Economy, Politics | Tagged economy, finance, startups, unemployment |
By FrauTech on February 10, 2012
You may think we here at Engineer Blogs are “glass half empty” folks when it comes to employment and salary expectations for engineers (though really, the glass was poorly designed with too much capacity). I’ve talked about the overhyped STEM recruitment here before. It’s no secret I don’t believe in an engineering or STEM shortage. I’ve looked at engineering employment over time and it doesn’t seem to indicate any increasing demand or a salary increase based on a higher market value for engineering professionals (unless you’re a software engineer). Cherish just wrote last week about engineering being a common background for CEOs. One of our commenters asked whether engineers need really be concerned with having more options beyond the engineering job. As a former non-engineer in the workforce, I can certainly sympathize with this perception. It does seem like an engineering degree is much more the key to a job and [...]
Posted in Economy | Tagged engineering, H1-B, higher education, jobs |
By GEARS on February 9, 2012
Our very own Cherish has been scheming in the lab lately and came up with something really cool. If you haven’t heard about it, Cherish and two other researchers at North Dakota State University have developed a patent pending, thin RFID tag for metal objects. The main press release (i think) is here. You can read more about it here, here, and here. In a nutshell, RFID tags don’t work too well on metal objects because the metal object causes interference and signal loss. Previous methods to solve this problem required bulky objects to be placed outside of the metal object which could be easily damaged during transportation. Cherish’s RFID tag is only about 3 mm thick, which meets standards for these sorts of tags. First off, let me congratulate Cherish and her team for a job well done. Coming up with a workable, commercially viable solution to a problem [...]
Posted in Business, Communication, Economy, Education, Electrical Engineering, Workplace | Tagged antenna, Cherish, licensing, NDSU, patent, publication, RFID |
By Miss MSE on January 25, 2012
Since the theme of the week is motivation, I was thinking about what motivated me to pursue engineering in the first place. Recently, the Huffington Post had an interesting post on how to inspire scientists, and the disconnect between policy makers and scientists. The author also talks about engineers, and indicates that “useful and cool” are enough motivation to convince students to push through four years of college to get an engineering degree before heading out into industry to get a decent paying job at 22 to 25. And yes, the STEM fields are doing better than their non-STEM counterparts in terms of employment, but as has been discussed on this blog before, the idea of a career is changing. The economy is more global and more volatile than ever. The idea of a secure, well-paying job can be a great motivator, but it’s becoming less realistic. It seems to [...]
Posted in Economy, Education, Engineering Mindset, Politics |
By Chris Gammell on January 8, 2012
You know the term “trickle down economy“, right? It’s a term attributed to supply side economics, both positively and negatively. Basically, it’s the idea that if you have top performers and give them beneficial tax treatment, the effects will ripple throughout the economy. I don’t care about the politics behind it, I care about the idea (and will, in fact, delete any and all political comments in the comments section). That the top performers (or in the case of the economy, earners) should in theory pass any benefit they receive to those less fortunate is what I’m focusing on. However, I have seen a similar effect, though abstracted, in the technology industry. Instead of earnings, imagine knowledge to be the currency. In place of “taxes”, the top tier workers will pay in “knowledge” to the world, which then should filter down to the masses. Everyone still with me? My basic [...]
Posted in Economy, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Mindset |
By Miss MSE on December 21, 2011
Recently, Inside Higher Ed had an article about humanities majors being hired into IT positions. The comment section was immediately contentious, but this is the internet, after all. The argument was between two factions: IT professionals complaining it demeans them, and humanities people claiming the IT people are snobs. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. My parents are both computer programmers, with my mom having worked as a manager for many years. She’s one of the few among IT professionals her age who actually majored in computer science. Most of her coworkers are English majors, or history majors, who made a career change at some point. Why not have that point be very early? The other issue I have with the commenters is that not all IT jobs are the same. Yes, I want the person setting up my database to have a strong technical background. But systems and software change constantly. Even [...]
Posted in Communication, Economy, Education, Engineering Mindset | Tagged humanities, IT |
By Chris Gammell on November 27, 2011
I’m at the tail end of both my Thanksgiving weekend and at the tail end of our “thankful for” series here at Engineer Blogs. Was it predictable? Yeah, a bit. But I didn’t care. I think it’s important to remember what we’re thankful for and writing posts week after week usually means our writers are clamoring for something a bit different. And since I am at the end of the week, I have to get to write something different, but then try and be different from all my co-writers. When I think about that, I am not particularly thankful…Ah well. Though my article title could use some work, I’m trying to get across that I’m glad to be alive right now. Yup, right here. Right this very minute. And all the things that led me up to this minute in my 28 years of life so far. This has been [...]
Posted in Economy, Electrical Engineering |
By Cherish The Scientist on November 17, 2011
The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is not training employees and keeping them. Zig Ziglar Back when the economy wasn’t in the dumpster, I was talking to a friend who works at one of those Internet (with a capital I) companies. He was complaining about their inability to find people with the right qualifications. After spending time talking with him, I ascertained that what his company really wanted was for someone in the same position at a different company to be laid off so that they could hire them. His company had a very exacting list of qualifications and wasn’t willing to train any potential employees. They wanted someone off the shelf, so to speak, and weren’t going to take anyone without those qualifications. On the other hand, they would wait months rather than train the employees themselves. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time. FrauTech has [...]
Posted in Business, Economy, Education, Workplace | Tagged education, immigration, job market, job training, jobs, training, work |
![Think Outside The [Toe] Box](http://engineerblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/treksport800-150x150.jpg)
By GEARS on October 18, 2011
In engineering, great ideas are often found when the current trend is going one direction and someone decides to take a completely different approach to the problem. While I’m going to use running shoes as an example, this thought process is analogous to many situations that engineers deal with on a daily basis. For years, running companies have been devising new gimmicks technologies to increase sales enhance the running experience. I’m only going to mention a few major instances (read: commercial). When I first starting running in high school, Reebok came out with the DMX foam which is supposed to be a lightweight, cushioning, yet long lasting foam for shoe midsoles. I never could afford a pair of DMXs in HS but I did buy a pair in college and they were meh. They didn’t seem to cushion more or less than other shoes, nor did they last longer. In college, it was [...]
Posted in Business, Economy, Education, Hobbies | Tagged brainstorming, engineering concepts, Five fingers, nike free, Running, vibram |
By Cherish The Scientist on October 13, 2011
While I would really have loved the title to be a pun on signal processing, I have to admit that today’s post is not about that esteemed branch of electrical engineering. Instead, I’m going to talk about mixed messages I’ve been receiving. I had some colleagues from our university career center come and speak to students last week about the services they offer. Recently, the career center held a job fair, and one of the speakers said that many of the companies asked her where all the electrical engineers were. Apparently, the midwest has really had some serious job growth since the economic downturn in 2008, and there just aren’t enough students for internships and maybe even jobs. While I appreciate that being the perspective from a career counselor, I spent a bit of time looking over the engineering entry in the occupational outlook handbook compiled by the Bureau of Labor [...]
Posted in Economy, Education, Electrical Engineering, Geological Engineering, Mechanical Engineering | Tagged education, engineering fields, job market |
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