Break Points
As the world turns: recession and engineering
Jack Ganssle
5/31/2009 12:00 AM EDT
I enjoy writing. But the best part about crafting articles is the e-mail from readers. Some signal agreement, others berate, all make me think. Readers send lots of e-mail--lots--and the most common query has been about becoming an embedded systems developer.
Those inquiries have completely ceased.
The favorite subject now is layoffs. Several to dozens of e-mails from newly displaced engineers arrive every day, looking for ideas, for contacts, or just to air despair.
At the April Boston Deep Agile conference, which was focused on using agile in the embedded arena, fully one third of the attendees reported they had lost their jobs.
Waves of layoffs are sweeping across the country and the world like an economic swine flu. Till the end of 2008, it seemed engineering, or at least embedded engineering, was pretty immune. After the dot-com implosion, businesses learned the peril of dumping developers: once that recession ended, companies who had shredded engineering had no new products for market.
As of 2009, engineers are no longer part of companies' survival strategy; they're cost centers that are getting trimmed along with everything else.
Every decade or so we have a recession. Apollo's demise in the early 1970s was a disaster for engineering since those people were tossed on the street in the middle of a downturn. The early 1980s saw a deep recession, as did the 1990s when Bill Clinton won the U.S. presidency, at least partially, with his refrain: "It's the economy, stupid." And of course the dot-com problems at the beginning of this decade spread far beyond high tech.
So maybe today's woes shouldn't be unexpected.
I know nothing about economics, but this recession feels different than the previous ones I've experienced. We always recover. But this time I wonder if the recovery will be into a financial climate that leaves too many chronically underemployed with sagging salaries for those with jobs.
Many forces are squeezing what we now realize is a precarious global economy. Some, like the rise of radical Islam, which will surely be nuclear-armed in the not-distant future, will leave the world rocking as it struggles to find solutions. Businesses will therefore have a hard time making decisions; the worst enemy of business is uncertainty. Popular unhappiness about executives, or at least executive pay, will feed that uncertainty. It's unreasonable to assume that we will have learned anything from this crisis, and even more unlikely that Ponzi schemes and other criminal activities will disappear from Wall Street, so the corruption will fuel unrest.
Then there's capitalism, the best system yet devised for creating wealth. But as Lenin said: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Capitalism may become its own worst enemy.
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krwada
6/1/2009 7:43 PM EDT
Jack...
Dang! That is a lot of hand-wringing you are doing here. I suppose I may not be fair in my assessment since I do not get the volume and kinds of email you get.
I can say this for sure. The dynamic for engineers is rapidly changing. Off-shoring is a force that cannot be stopped. Also, this recession like all things negative must pass ... just as kidney stones pass!
There will be a fair amount of pain still to come though. My advice to most of the folks out there is to not attempt consulting if you have been laid-off.
... and this coming from me! who has made a career as a hi-tech consultant.
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AAS
6/4/2009 2:32 PM EDT
Well I see companies employing alien work visa engineers, and colleges turning away US Citizen applicants, for alien EE/CS majors so the companies give away US jobs to foreign EE's and colleges give away a space in their classrooms for the higher tutition paying foreign students. Our system is broken and it makes our US citizens run away from EE/CS majo> Many jobs are then given away to foreign students who come here to go to school, come here to work, then decide to stay here (Because the USA is so Great!) only to end up taking away jobs from those US students whose parents pay taxes all our lives into a system that gives the opportunities and jobs away to Non-US citizens. You see the BIG problem here!!!
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jbhome
6/5/2009 11:11 PM EDT
I guess this is all unavoidable but I sure hate the cavalier attitude of some about the ramifications of this. We will never be able to compete wage wise against people who pay no tax, have no significant public services as in India and China. Check out Slum dog millionaire. That said, It seems like someone is making out like a bandit. We saw a lady's hat in a store last week. It looked very nice but was $45. A bit pricey maybe. Actually really pricey since it was made of paper. We are forced to pay substantial prices for products with our already overtaxed incomes (if we still have them) while workers in these other countries, if payed, work in sweat-shop environments, in factories that care little about greenhouse gasses, polution or any of the other restrictions we are forced to work with. I wonder what the complacent individuals that are so for this shift will say when the stores close, the gas stations shut down, and our economy unravels as can be expected when you outsource all the jobs that are supposed to support society. The government jobs will no longer be for life as without a significant tax base there will be no money to fund these jobs.
I hear people say this is unavoidable.
Perhaps. Certainly with the mindset that we can do nothing else, it seems likely.
Perhaps it is time to start trade barriers and bring back the work. Those making all the profits on our backs Walmart, Costco might not like it but if we continue to be complacent about this, I shudder to think what our children's future is.
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EclipseRocks
6/6/2009 4:53 AM EDT
Jack,
As usual your column is quite thought-provoking.
You mentioned "...In the U.S., we largely gave up on manufacturing. Offshoring means we give up, first, on service jobs, and second, on highly skilled work. With manufacturing gone, science and engineering going, what special place will this amazing nation hold?"
Well I don't know what will ultimately be the social impact of this fundamental restructuring. But I can advocate a survival strategy for some who are willing to adapt. Alas, the market can only accomodate a subset of unemployed engineers via this approach. As I was recently laid off myself as a senior firmware engineer, my career strategy is to re-invent myself as a systems integration consultant and VAR service provider (think immediate income stream) and to hopefully use any deep customer understanding gained thereof to devise new product opportunities as a part-time inventor and entrepreneur.
While there is nothing stopping the systems integrator role itself from being outsourced to some extent (integrators can and do farm out supporting engineering design work to India or China - just ask ex-IBMers from Raleigh), at the end of the day there still needs to be field application engineers (FAEs) here on the front line deploying solutions at customer sites in North America. One thing that is difficult to outsource is the customer requirements-gathering and sales support role of FAEs. In theory, requirements can be gathered remotely, or engineers can fly from China or India to the US to interview clients and inspect customer operations and gather requirements. But it is cheaper to have somebody local do this and to have these same people get involved again at a later stage for field testing and deployment as well. Get close to the customer!
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Shinjan
6/6/2009 8:59 AM EDT
Nice over view of the current recession and how the future embedded domain would be. However, the article looked too "local" esp. after quoting Friedman.
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PWong
6/10/2009 5:07 PM EDT
Without protectionism, western economies will collapse. Major devaluation of western currencies against Yuan and Rupee will help bring back the jobs to the west, but we in the west will have to take a major hit on living standards. $225 a barrel oil will also bring back jobs to the west, but that's about at least one year away. When K-Mart went bankrupt, they avoided paying pension to people with over 2 decades of service (and then they bought Sears, took the new name, and thrived); GM is doing the same good thing (good for the company). GM is sexy enough to be rescued (think Apollo space race) but engineers are just some invisible (statistics) numbers not worth rescuing. Smart governments or public in China, India, and Singapore, etc. know value of engineers and they will do anything to take western jobs away and be proud of it. Obama has already implemented protectionism, which is good for America. We fools in the west still think we can recover (the economy) without fixing fundamental problem with jobs going to the cheapest offshore. Devalue our currencies, now. Or keep wasting big money on companies without real benefits to individual people (engineers) like you and me.
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N9BDF
6/12/2009 12:15 PM EDT
"Make sure you can get a job! But I was wrong; she has been wild about dance since age four. I don't want her to diminish her life by only being practical. Passion matters."
Perhaps this can be refined by saying that, "The benefits of following your passion will likely give you the will power to deal with any associated downsides, and then some."
-Michael J. Linden, N9BDF
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MATHURNITIN
7/25/2009 7:36 AM EDT
It seems from some viewers, it is fashionable to to criticize Bangalore and China. By doing this, they feel the problem is solved.
The fact is Engineers of Bangalore are Qualified and better than a lot of their counterparts.
India may have sweat shops, but people working there are hard working. People work from 18 to 20 hours a day. Is it wrong?
Is it right to impose trade barriers in the US, so that some people can enjoy an extravagant living, even without contibuting much to the general lifestyle of the society. Just a thought to ponder
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