Semi Conscious
Video: Are tech jobs returning to the U.S.?
Dylan McGrath
2/3/2012 12:12 AM EST
EE Times took to the streets—or more accurately the halls of the Santa Clara Convention Center—in support of our ongoing series "Rebuilding America."
The quest was simple—to find rank-and-file engineers on the tradeshow floor at DesignCon 2012 and ask them, "Are technology jobs coming back to the U.S.?"
Some of our interviewees agreed to appear on camera with the caveat that they felt that they had no particular expertise on this matter. But all of them had informed and relevant opinions based on what they see in their jobs day in and day out.
That was really kind of the point. There are statistics on job growth in the high tech sector published monthly by the U.S government, and it's pretty easy to get the spin from any number of trade groups about the job situation. We have and will continue to explore those avenues. But what we really wanted was to talk to the guys (or gals, though none that we approached agreed to be interviewed) on the front lines and ask them how they felt based on what they were seeing and hearing.
Those who agreed to appear on camera were, for the most part, surprisingly upbeat about this topic. Several reported seeing an uptick in manufacturing in the U.S. Although they acknowledged that products with huge volumes like Apple's iPad were likely to continue being made outside of the U.S., some said a lot of lower volume manufacturing was actually coming back to the U.S., largely because of logistics and quality control issues. One interviewee, Lee W. Ritchey of design consulting firm Speeding Edge, pointed to an old and reliable barometer—the scarcity of commercial real estate in Silicon Valley—as evidence that yes, indeed, tech jobs are coming back.
It should be noted that a lot of people on the show floor declined to be interviewed on camera for this story. Some were simply camera shy or too humble to believe that their perspective on this complex issue was relevant. But sadly (though not surprisingly) a number of them—too many—said or implied that they were afraid that talking on camera about this issue might land them in hot water at work. Any company that doesn't encourage employees to express their opinion on issue of importance to society should seriously re-think that policy.
(For more on this topic, see Rebuilding America: Really? Have we given up?, Rebuilding America: Proposals emerge to fix 'dysfunctional' R&D tax credit, Time to play hard ball on tech manufacturing and Viewpoint: 'The R&D credit doesn't work'),
Video 1: Seeing some tech manufacturing coming back to the U.S.
Thomas Smith, regional manager at high-performance connector manufacturer Positronic Industries Inc., said he's seeing some companies bring back some manufacturing back to the U.S. to ensure better quality control. "Anything that does come back, it'll be about quality."
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http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/poconoarmchairreview
2/3/2012 9:29 AM EST
Engineering employees, with their employers identified, saying mostly upbeat things on camera. It just proves that we are in the Golden Age of Engineering.
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phoenixdave
2/3/2012 10:18 AM EST
If we are "running out of the talent pool" for specific functions, perhaps we can take some "somewhat qualified" American out-of-work engineers and retrain them?
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junko.yoshida
2/3/2012 12:55 PM EST
Exactly. I think the red herring i see here is: when companies say that they are running out of the talent pool, what are they really running out of, and what are the "necessary skill sets" they are looking for?
Are these things something that they can't find among out-of-work engineers in America? Good question.
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KB3001
2/7/2012 6:01 AM EST
It's a red herring indeed. What they want to say really is that they are running out of relatively "cheap" talent ;-)
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daleste
2/7/2012 9:50 PM EST
They don't want to say that, but that is their goal. Right now, the employers have the upper hand and if that changes, they will cry to the government that they need to find the talent from off shore.
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phoenixdave
2/7/2012 9:45 AM EST
"Necessary skill sets":
- Foreign born
- Willing to work for much less than the prevailing wage
- Willing to work far more hours than a standard work week
- Willing to be retrained to fill the positions of more costly domestic engineers
- Do not have the ability to leave and go to another domestic competitor (H1B-bound)and still stay in the country
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phoenixdave
2/7/2012 9:48 AM EST
I can't believe that companies could bring in a foreign engineer who has the "all the qualifications" and not spend any time and money training him/her to fill a desired position
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Duane Benson
2/3/2012 11:33 AM EST
Are jobs coming back or is it just that there's job growth both in the US and abroad? Our contract engineering group has recently won additional business at one of our larger customers. Both our group and the offshore group had been contracted to the same division. We were given the business from the offshore company due to our better quality, service and delivery.
However, the same company that just took some work from an offshore contractor and gave it to us is also expanding their overseas operations. It's just one data point, but perhaps expansion both here and abroad is the real trend rather than jobs really coming back.
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junko.yoshida
2/3/2012 12:51 PM EST
Duane, yes, that's interesting. I realize, by watching what these guys are saying and what you just commented, things are a lot more complex than we had originally anticipated. But a company taking some work from an offshore contractor is definitely an interesting trend. But again, as you said, the trend seems to be more multipronged.
We need to investigate further.
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ese002
2/3/2012 3:13 PM EST
In a down cycle, employers can easily find talent that is "hot". Either they are still working but scared or laid off so recently that they have barely found time to update their resume.
When the layoffs stop, that pool dries up. And thus: "All the things I see, we're almost running out of talent pool again."
It does not mean that talented engineers unlucky enough to have past beyond the "hot" stage are going to be suddenly overwhelmed with job offers.
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GoGoGeek
2/3/2012 6:27 PM EST
I believe that only when the US can offer competitive incentives, only then we can keep the tech jobs and manufacturing here. The US states should learn and adapt the various incentives states or provinces of other countries give. How large is the percentage of tech people who can vote the right people into office who can make this change? Probably not large enough.
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daleste
2/5/2012 4:00 PM EST
During the last few years, the large companies have been laying off the older workers because they have higher salaries. They are replacing them with fresh outs or 2-5 year experience workers. This has reduced the companies' expenses and helped their profitability. When they say the talent pool is drying up, they are saying that they can't find experienced engineers for cheap. They have succeeded in driving down the salaries, but they will continue to import cheaper engineers.
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GREAT-Terry
2/5/2012 9:24 PM EST
I guess N-America is still a place for better education and good in hihg-tech industry. So, if people are really doing very high-tech stuff, it usually won't be large volume, they should move back to US or so in order to stay ahead of Asian companies.
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resistion
2/5/2012 10:54 PM EST
The advanced stuff might be done in-house, but unless you're IBM, the rest of the chip or platform is outsourced as usual to Chinese foundry.
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true_believer
2/5/2012 10:54 PM EST
Instead of looking for tech jobs to return, we should shift focus to new tech development using gov supported money and strong gov policy to protect our IPs. Who is preventing us to have TSMC in USA.
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chanj
2/6/2012 1:33 PM EST
It is true that building high volume product will likely stay in another part of the world. I believe there are 2 major reasons - 1) The labor cost and 2) The cost of building a manufacturing facility.
The labor cost may be the triggering point of moving manufacturing overseas. As the number of labors shrinks over years, the demand of a big manufacturing facility is low. As times goes by, fewer and fewer new graduates will join the industry and the talent pool will shrink. Then, the talent, together with knowledge, of building a production line disappears domestically. It seems like a negative spiral and the trend will be really difficult to reverse.
I believe it takes multiple parties to bring certain type of manufacturing back to US - the willingness of corporation to train new graduates, to build a production facility and the willingness of Americans to put their hand dirty again. If hiring managers are looking for 100% match of skill sets, they will have hard time to find the right talent. If employees are reluctant to pick up new knowledge and are easy on their job, their skills will someday be irrelevant.
Nothing can change over night. It takes 20+ years to move jobs away from U.S. It starts from simple products like telephone, thermostats. Now, complicated products like computer, TV and cellular telephones, are manufactured elsewhere. To reverse the trend, time is needed. We've got to prepared.
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phoenixdave
2/7/2012 9:55 AM EST
@Chanj: I agree with your assessment of the two major reasons, but wouldn't these also be offset by other areas of higher costs such as supply chain, less reliable utility grids, language differences, and other possible inefficiencies/compromises?
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Deepak Sekar
2/6/2012 7:40 PM EST
This well-read blog post may give some perspective on manufacturing issues:
Why Samsung will give Morris Chang sleepless nights?
http://www.monolithic3d.com/2/post/2012/02/why-samsung-will-give-morris-chang-sleepless-nights.html
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hm
2/6/2012 9:13 PM EST
It looks tech sector are coming back to US and that is very interesting news. Every engineer should contribute towards this goal and it should not be difficult to bring down overall unemployment rate to as low as 3%.
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Michael.Fliesler
2/7/2012 1:14 PM EST
"It's all about quality". My experience at two previous employers was that offshore sites were cost-efficient (lower $/hr), but often required rework due to lower quality, language & communications problems, etc. Hence, they were less time-efficient, so overall cost was a wash, and customer relations suffered.
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