Ask The Readers — Give Me An “A”!
No, this isn’t about grades. I got back from Maker Faire last weekend on Monday. It’s a festival dedicated to science, engineering, ingenuity and creativity. Really it’s a bunch of nerds like me hanging out, showing off their projects and selling their kits and wares. It was amazing. But the thing that struck me most was the native integration of artwork with all of these technology projects. Art and technology have an interesting co-existence. Some people call it “design”, like how “Industrial Designers” are the ones that draw up cars and other items to make them prettified for consumers. Engineering is sometimes the underlying skill set for many types of art, as well. In general though, the forward facing part of a product is the last concern of engineers; really it’s the first thing that consumers see in a product, it’s actually quite important. And all along the way, when…
Engineers: Not just for engineering
There have been several posts on EB about how recruiting students into STEM is just a Ponzi scheme. However, I finally came upon an article that provided a potential outlet for all those engineers who can’t find a job in engineering. Management! (I can see you hooting and hollering already.) According to research conducted by Identified and Harvard Business School, engineers and other STEM-type people are quickly taking up many of the top spots in most businesses. Specifically, Identified found that nearly 3/4 of CEOs in all industries have advanced engineering degrees. The Harvard Business School study determined that part of the reason that engineers are often at the higher levels of companies is that those companies are seeking people with more specializations. I can see a couple down sides to this: most engineers I know aren’t necessarily interested in getting an advanced degree, nor are they interested in…
STEM Recruiting Games Exposed
There’s been a constant call in the media to recruit more people into science, technology, engineering and math. I’ve talked a lot about this issue on my own blog. Mainly that I believe the argument that we are graduating too few people into STEM disciplines is one propagated by industry to keep wages low on the one hand but also to feed their desire to expect more and more from entry level employees and cut back on training that was standard in the past. There’s been reports on both sides, arguing that impending mass retirement will create a shortage and others that we’re falling behind other countries and need to catch up. Other concerns are probably valid but mis-targeted. Analysis I have done on open jobs shows that the kinds of engineers we’re actually short of are software engineers and programmers and developers rather than the more core engineering disciplines. But…
STEM Recruitment Ponzi Scheme
A couple of days ago my colleague GEARS covered some STEM Employment Data that the US Department of Commerce recently released titled STEM: Good Jobs Now and for the Future. Regular readers of mine know I tend to be overly critical of these sorts of assessments. I tend to see them as optimistic and naive. On my own blog a couple weeks ago I talked about engineering jobs by discipline, then I looked at engineering employment over time and engineering pay, and then I broke down engineering employment and pay for mechanical, civil, and electrical engineers. One of the favorite myths the powers that be like to toss around is that a bunch of engineers and technical workers are going to suddenly retire and STEM jobs will be in demand. So in my eyes this report isn’t a whole lot different. Their two major claims: that a STEM degree leads…
STEM Employment Data
This past weekend, Ken Cid from the US Department of Commerce was nice enough to leave us a comment about the administration’s jobs prospects for STEM workers. The link to their blog is here [figure credit] and the actual report can be downloaded from here. Naturally, this sent us Engineer Bloggers into a tizzy for two reasons. One, They found us! And two, we would actually have to craft some sort of response that might actually be read by government media folks. You’ll probably find a better response from Chris Gammell or FrauTech, who are much better with stats than I am. Sadly, they post later in the week so you’re stuck with me for now. In Summary: The STEM Jobs Report says that 7.6M people or 5.5% of the workforce is employed in STEM fields and over the past 10 years, STEM fields have had more job growth than non-STEM fields. Also,…