It's Saturday night, and Bob Yocom is riffing on the drums. The full-time ASIC designer for Agere Systems Inc. has worked as a musician "at a semi-professional level" since his teen years. "Drumming is often an extension of my interest in engineering and sometimes a complete contrast. I am passionate about both," he said. The design work is more profitable, however.

Yocom received a $10,000 pay increase last year. With the memories still fresh of his 16 months of unemployment following a layoff from LSI Logic Corp., where his salary had been frozen for several years, Yocom found the increase "flattering. They could have had me for a fraction of what I was making at LSI."

As for the dark days between engineering jobs, "I took immense comfort in recording and performing," he said.

Yocom has moved comfortably back into the engineering work force as a member of Agere's hard-disk controller group in Longmont, located along Colorado's mountainous Front Range. "Agere has restored a sense of being appreciated," he said. "Seeing a product the team has designed being introduced into the consumer market successfully is quite satisfying and rewarding."

Nonetheless, as is the case for many of the engineers who responded to EE Times' 2005 State of the Engineer Survey, undercurrents of anxiety pull at Yocom's happiness. Offshore contracting, for one, looms large. "After the reduction of 2003, I realized that a great number of jobs I would have been qualified for had been relocated to countries outside of the U.S.," Yocom said.

The top issues of concern among U.S.-based engineers, EE Times found, are job security and unemployment (68 percent), offshore outsourcing (64 percent), professional demands and their impact on day-to-day life, or the work/life balance (64 percent), and the quality of technical education at U.S. elementary and high schools and universities. "As a boy I remember an emphasis in school, 'Study math and science, and someday you might be an astronaut.' That was exciting," Yocom said. He's not sure today's kids have the same motivation.