Corporate America takes a lot of brickbats. Scott Adams' "Dilbert" regularly skewers absurd memos, bailouts of chief executive officers and human-resources devils. And here in the "Salary Survey," we've heard a lot of griping about wages and management policies.

But in the end, when we ask whether "your company is good to work for," it's no contest: Yes.

By an 85 percent to 15 percent margin, design and development engineers and managers attest that on the whole, their engineering com-panies are pretty good places to work. Few institutions could boast an 85 percent approval rating. Certainly not the White House. And not Congress, or the much-vilified media.

Seven out of 10 respondents in the Asian countries of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea, and two-thirds of the Japanese, go along with the Americans' assessment of their companies as good places to work.

What do engineers and managers like about their employers?

• Flexible hours: Some 28 percent of the U.S. respondents gave employers an "excellent" rating in terms of flexible scheduling, with another 47 percent rating them "good." Corporations have made considerable efforts to accommodate employees' needs to talk with their kid's teacher, go to the dentist and run errands.

That flexibility no doubt contributes to excellent ratings given to the following, at 14 percent apiece.

• Hours worked. As noted earlier, U.S. engineers work an average of 46 hours a week. We do have some respondents putting in awful work weeks-10 percent rate their companies poor in this regard-but on the whole, companies score well. The Japanese rap their employers on hours worked, but the Asian respondents parallel their American counterparts.
• Work/life balance. Nearly half the Americans rate the balance as good. Only 1 percent of the Asians and 1.4 percent of the Japanese rate their employers as excellent on this point.
• Respect for engineers. Here's a rating that might surprise some of our embittered U.S. respondents. But in addition to the 14 percent calling their companies "excellent," another 44 percent gave them a "good" rating on respect. The Asians and Japanese are far more critical of their employers.
• Diversity: Most Americans think their corporation's efforts are good or excellent in recruiting a diverse work force. It's not a Japanese issue.

A Californian praised his company's diversity efforts as "excellent. Extremely diverse group-extremely competent. I am a minority as a native English speaker."

One American objected to the inclusion of diversity in our ratings: "What the hell does diversity have to do with getting the job done?" said a software manager. "Find me a qualified coder and we'll hire them on the spot."

U.S. engineers are less enthusiastic about salaries (only 10 percent call them excellent), competency of management (7 percent) and their employer's community-service efforts (11 percent). And engineers are downright critical about two issues: availability of stock options (5 percent said excellent) and child care (3 percent).

Half the Americans and more than half the Asians rated corporations as "poor" when asked about available child-care benefits. Ironically, the criticism comes at a time when a few companies are doing creative things to resolve the child-care issue.

In the past year, Mentor Graphics Corp. partnered with a school district to open up a preschool facility right on the campus of a public school less than a mile from a Mentor site in California. And Motorola Inc. added new child-care facilities, bringing the number of centers it supports to nine across the country. More common benefits include health care (96 percent), flex time (57 percent) and stock options (46 percent).

Fully 84 percent of the employers have instituted "no smoking" policies through the workplace. Less commonly offered at U.S. technology employers are specified smoking areas inside the company (15 percent), telecommuting options (15 percent) and off-site child care (4 percent).

In Japan, by the way, employers are more apt to offer specified smoking areas (53 percent) than to ban it altogether (37 percent) inside the building. And despite their complaints about work hours, 77 percent of Japanese respondents say their employers do offer flex-time options. The child-care picture is just as bleak in Tokyo as it is in Toledo. Less than 1 percent of our respondents' Japanese employers offer on-site child care.

Best companies
We didn't ask readers specifically about the best companies to work for this year. But in its Jan. 12, 1998 issue, Fortune magazine developed a list of "Best Companies to Work for in America." Fifteen electronics, software, systems and aerospace companies made the cut (as did EE Times' parent company, CMP Media, at No. 40) .

The top technology company, and ranked No. 2 overall behind South-west Airlines, was Kingston Technology, the computer-memory-device maker best known for a year-end bonus averaging $75,000 last year. Following Kingston were:

No. 8. Microsoft. Cited for "remarkably challenging atmosphere for the brainy."

No. 10. Hewlett-Packard. Selected by EE Times readers as the "Most Admired Company" in previous surveys, HP was described by Fortune as a "trailblazer in people practices."

No. 25. Cisco Systems. A "pumped-up atmosphere" where "every day begins with Cisco Boot Camp at 7 a.m.: One hour of calisthenics."

No. 32. Intel Corp. "Very egalitarian," says Fortune. "Great stock-

option plan has turned more than 1,000 employees into millionaires."

No. 35. 3M. "All technical employees encouraged to devote 15 percent of their time to their own projects."

No. 47. Medtronic. Minneapolis pacemaker developer has company mission "to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life."

No. 55. Compaq Computer. Work force has "increased 50 percent in the past two years."

No. 56. Adobe Systems. Free refreshments, $100-a-month child-care subsidy.

No. 69. Sun Microsystems. "Work hard, play hard" philosophy.

No. 70. Analog Devices Inc. "A brainy, open environment and a much softer culture than some of its dog-eat-dog competitors."

No. 77. Texas Instruments. "Has embraced the openness pioneered by its West Coast rivals."

No. 88. Motorola. "Supports more child-care centers (nine) than any other company in the U.S."

No. 96. AlliedSignal. "One of the best 401k plans around."

Toss and tumble
Want a small business that would do well in these times? Try becoming a business-card printer. Names, places and job titles switch with regularity.

Mergers and acquisitions have become commonplace. Just under 15 percent of the 491 readers who responded to the question said their companies have merged with another. A rather startling 214 respondents reported that their employer bought another company during the past year. That's 43 percent.

One engineer noted that his company had changed hands "two times in three years. Crazy!"

Just take a look at EE Times' "Top 100 Systems OEMs" (see May 11, page 82). These are companies that the editors deemed influential integrators of new technology and products. (Component and semiconductor vendors weren't included; they sell to these integrators.)

Looking only at mergers involving both parties in the Top 100 since 1997, we've seen Compaq swallow up Digital Equipment, Raytheon eat up Hughes Electronics, Lockheed consume Loral and Martin Marietta and fail to get Northrop Grumman-itself an intra-Top 100 merger-and Tracor get bought by the British-based General Electric Co.

Meanwhile, in the past few weeks, Top 100 vendor AlliedSignal announced its intention to bid for non-Top 100 AMP, the Harrisburg, Pa., connector maker. As you can see, merger mania is rampant.

Among our Asian respondents, a business-card printing service would see less volume. Only 9 percent of the Asian and 5 percent of the Japanese employers went through a merger in the past 12 months.

Divisions are being bought and sold with alacrity, U.S. readers tell us. At 34 percent of their companies, divisions were added, and at 25 percent of the workplaces, divisions were sold off. Another 6 percent say their employers have a business unit currently on the selling block.

"Quit merging, selling out and moving," demands one reader.

With all this movement, the inevitable happens: People get furloughed. One-third of EE Times engineers and managers report downsizing in their corporations in the past year, even in a thriving economy. Unlike some previous years, it would be fair to guess that most of the downsizing took place in the wake of sell-offs and buyouts. However, as noted earlier in the Career chapter, more than 35 electronics and technology companies trimmed jobs or plan cutbacks this year. It could be a different story next year.

On the upside, U.S. engineers and managers in the trenches report lots of new-product development programs being launched. Less than one-third saw an increase, while 16 percent perceived a cutback. Four out of 10 Japanese and three out of 10 Asians report increases in product development.

How are we doing?
Back in the doom and gloom days of 1993, only 40 percent of our readers saw the U.S. electronics industry as "progressing." An additional 20 percent thought the technology business was on a downward slide. In reality, it was on the cusp of a boom that has lasted five years. In 1998, three-quarters of the respondents agree that the past five years have been good ones for the U.S. electronics industry.

And we're still on a roll, say two-thirds, with a scant 5 percent seeing a decline.

Of course, this poll was taken before the 299-point plunge in the Dow Jones average on Aug. 4, the subsequent partial recovery and the flurry of laggard earnings reports from companies. For instance, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported earlier this month that worldwide chip sales reached $9.84 billion in June, representing a 2.2 percent decrease from May and a 14.1 percent drop from June 1997.

"The instability of the Asian economies continued to take its toll on global chip sales in June," said SIA president George Scalise. "However, Asia's problems had very little impact on sales in the American market." That may be one reason why U.S. respondents remain optimistic.

Readers offer wide-ranging views of the top issues facing their industry. It's no surprise, in view of the Wall Street gyrations, that a Texan believes the top industry issue is "too much focus on Wall Street and not enough on research."

"There is too much money being invested," according to a member of the technical staff of a Georgia company. "Companies are forced to move too quickly to get products to market." As we noted in our chapter on "The Way We Work," a growing number of readers work on projects of less than six months' duration, from specification to production.

A software engineer worries about industry's "ability to meet demand (short term) and to adjust production quickly to develop newer products in a shorter time span."

Other readers fret over technology issues.

"Computational power increases regularly, but communications is grossly behind," declared a California department head in the computer field. "Just look at the Internet and poor efficiencies of our networking MAC protocols."

One reader thinks we're heading for an "economic collapse," saying, "I believe we are approaching the point where it will not be practical to take advantage of the advancements." Case in point: $1 billion wafer fabs.

Planned product obsolescence concerns another reader. "Electronics is driven by the computer industry, but not all products need or can afford to use a Pentium vs. an 8051."

Less frequently cited in recent years by American readers is foreign competition. In the early 1990s, this was a real issue for U.S. readers. The focus for one reader has shifted toward how foreign markets affect U.S. companies, which have to be concerned with "maintaining market share, globalization, problems with global markets (Far East)."

A relatively new issue that's arisen only in the past two years is the reputed shortage of engineers. A group leader finds a dearth of "competent, well-rounded, committed engineers."

Maybe there is an "insufficient supply of engineering/technical help," a Massachusetts project engineer responds, but industry is driven by "a desire to maintain a low wage base."

Other reader picks for top electronics-industry issues:

• "Development of a practical electric car."
• "Advancing military technology while using more [off-the shelf] hardware."
• And "the end of Moore's Law. Soon process improvements won't drive innovation."

Top technology trio
Some intriguing differences showed up between our Japanese and U.S. respondents when asked to rank the three technologies that will be most important to them in the next three years. (There was no response to this question from readers in the Asia survey.)

U.S. and Japanese engineers pretty much agree on the importance of digital signal processing and networks. U.S. engineers placed DSP technology at the top of their list, and the Japanese ranked it second. The surging communications market has to be contributing to DSP's high ranking.

Similarly, networking comes in high, rated No. 1 among the Japanese and No. 4 for the Americans. But American EE Times readers gave wireless communications a much higher rating (No. 2) than did the Japanese engineering readers of Nikkei Electronics Japan (No. 6). The best explanation? U.S. and European engineers are more actively involved in wireless design today. Japanese companies have large wireless communications programs under way-but much of the R&D work is taking place in the United States. Uniden, Sony and Sharp all opened wireless design centers in the West to tap into U.S. expertise. So, while the Japanese companies may be prominent players in the wireless market, Japanese engineers are absorbed in other projects-such as systems-on-silicon.

Now, here's a bit of a surprise. System-on-chip technology is ranked No. 7 by U.S. engineers and No. 3 by the Japanese. One theory: The Japanese, realizing that the commodity chip market is drifting away to offshore fabs, look to one-chip systems as one way of adding value to the chip market again. The emphasis would be on expertise and value-added as opposed to price.

National issues
Nationally, the traditional top issues are the economy, education and morality, and they show up again this year.

"Education of our children is a disgrace," a Wisconsin engineer writes. "Parents must insist on sound educational techniques instead of the well-intentioned failures that are being pushed today.

Sparked by President Clinton's soap-opera saga, the morality issue surfaces among readers. "Clinton's lack of moral fiber is affecting our future generations and their sociological wholeness."

It's difficult to find a negative development in our 1998 survey. You like your employers, you enjoy your career, you're earning more (if not an optimal amount). As you approach the second millennium, the engineering profession has rarely been in better form.

Return to 1998 Salary & Opinion Survey