I joined the IEEE (IRE) in 1954 as an engineering student but let the membership run out in the mid-60s, then signed on again in 1972. The March 2003 edition of the IEEE Grid, the publication of the Northern California region, ran a story about how Bessemer Associates is offering a 75 percent discount off the regular tuition for unemployed IEEE members. The idea is that enhancing one's skills increases the chances of landing a job, and that attending classes with employed engineers is an opportunity to network and, hopefully, identify some job opportunities. Nice touch.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 26,000 EEs were unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2002, as were 94,000 computer scientists. The IEEE is pushing our pals in Washington to lower the H-1B visa quota, since the large pool of guest workers makes it difficult for U.S. workers to find a job. Sounds fair.
The same issue of the Grid had a write-up on the 13 Bay Area engineers who had been elected fellows of the IEEE. That's quite an honor. Over half of the honorees were born outside the United States, and hold degrees from such institutions as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology; National Taiwan University; BITS Pilani, India; University of Technology at Llmenau, Germany; India Institute of Technology in Madras; Technical University of Northrhine-Westfalia, Aachen, Germany; and Birla Institute of Technology in Mesra, India.
The contributions these engineers, scientists and educators have made to the engineering profession and to the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nortel, TSMC, Synopsys, Cadence, IBM and other high-tech companies along the way is well-documented. And we are all better off that they chose to come to this land of opportunity. Muchas gracias, amigos.
When Frank isn't cheering both the native and foreign-born engineers and scientists, he can be reached at fburge@cmp.com.
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