Even discounting the impact of the current slowdown on their work life, almost two-thirds of the engineers who participated in this survey during the summer said that they are dissatisfied with their employers, their career or both.

Thus the maxim, "be wary of discontented employees," often cited by human-resources professionals, could well become, "be wary of engineers" in this region. The challenge for employers, then, will be in determining the source of discontent.

"There's no one thing that will help keep people with a company — it has to be the total work environment," Arthur Young, CEO of PSi Technologies Inc., said. "And how do you quantify work environment? The guy likes his boss, he has a great job opportunity, he is moving up in his career, he gets paid well, lives close to the plant . . . it could be a combination of all these factors. But then you realize that people are bound to be unhappy with any of these and they move on."

Obviously, it is not pay alone that matters to the engineer. Over 60 percent of all respondents to the survey received a pay hike in the past year. What is significant is that of the engineers who expressed dissatisfaction in their work life, the majority of them received a salary increase in the past 12 months. What's more, they had also been rewarded with a promotion and greater responsibilities.

Increasingly, "job content" is playing a role in the choice of an employer and a job. Engineers are not being myopic about their careers, but are weighing career development prospects before they make a decision.

"There are both quantitative and qualitative parameters that influence job satisfaction. Salary is, of course, important," said Shambhu Agrawal, leader (Northern & Western Region) of the IT & Telecom Practice of ABC Consultants Pvt. Ltd. "But the kind of work a company does is, perhaps, even more important. For example, we did some hiring for some companies involved in DSP design and software development requiring expertise in TCP/IP protocols.

"We met candidates who were willing to change jobs primarily because they saw the type of work being offered as interesting and enabling career development. There was one candidate who even took a cut in salary because he liked the job content. Career development opportunities offered by the latest in technology and R&D activity attract most Indian engineers," he said.

Innovation promoted
Comparing the views of "satisfied engineers" with those of the "dissatisfied engineers" raises some pertinent questions on management styles adopted in Asia. Engineers resent a strictly top-down management style where decisions are taken by a few top managers and there's not much freedom for staff to disagree. In several cases, although engineers have the freedom to speak up, they do not feel empowered to make decisions.

Agrawal of ABC Consultants said that the corporate culture of a particular organization is a key factor in the level of job satisfaction. "I have seen candidates ready to switch jobs because they didn't like the company culture. In India, this often happens at companies that follow the old style of management — traditional or conservative — or impose a culture on employees that is very alien to the country.

"On the other hand, I have found it difficult to pull out potential candidates from companies — both Indian and foreign — where employees do not face this challenge," Agrawal said.

The value of openness in the organization is important, said Young of PSi Technologies, a young entrepreneur himself and a proponent of modern ideas in managing employee relations. "We keep our people well informed about the overall business climate and ensure a high degree of transparency by being open with the employees," he said.

Owing perhaps to the nature of their profession, engineers have an intrinsic desire to innovate, to create new products, plug holes and improve processes. Failure to reward innovation is perhaps one of the biggest grouses of engineers. The need for novelty and desire to be involved with the latest are endemic to most human beings — engineers are no different.

Adding credence to this, many engineers say that they are unhappy because the equipment they work with is not up to date. Engineers also appear to be very conscious of their image and the respect they command in the organization.

Staying put
Changing jobs among engineers was high during the boom period when they could command high salaries. But these days, engineers would rather keep their existing jobs than look for new ones. And when they do change, it is seldom for any significant monetary gain.

"As one would expect, young engineers change jobs more frequently. There are more opportunities for them since companies can afford to have more people at the junior positions," Marcelle Yih, administration manager of M-tec Semiconductors Corp., said. "The average turnover rate is about 10 to 20 percent when the market conditions are good. But in the kind of slump that we are facing this year, engineers are a lot more conservative."

The survey reveals that the tenure of an engineer in an organization is only about two to three years, especially in the first 10 years of his career. With experience and age, the time spent per company increases. Engineers in the 25- to 29-year-old age group have changed their jobs at least once since starting their full-time careers.

Chih Wang, president of Menicx International Co. Ltd., believes that engineers stay for even shorter periods of time. "I feel engineers stay for only about a year and a half, especially if the company is making money, expecting stock options; otherwise, they move on."

Commenting on what companies can do to retain their engineering talent, Yih said, "Professional training, attractive monetary benefits — such as cash bonuses and stock options, and a good working environment — are key to retaining engineers. Engineers also" want to be free to innovate.

A good work environment is also important, Agrawal said. "Office environment makes a big difference. Facilities such as a gymnasium and a cafeteria are in vogue. Some companies even have a sleeping room for employees who work late hours," Agrawal said.

Young takes a very pragmatic view as a manager. "Our role in management is not just to see how often people move but also to ensure that we will always have the right people in the right job as they go up the chain," Young said. "We have to make sure that no individual is indispensable. Of course, we try our best to keep the people we have, but sometimes we lose them. That's the way business is today, probably more so in the electronics industry than any other industry in the Philippines. People need to be constantly trained and developed."

Upgrading skills
With the pace of change in the electronics industry increasing and product life cycles becoming shorter by the day, engineers are conscious of the challenge in keeping themselves abreast of the latest so as to avoid technical obsolescence. As a result, the potential to get trained and constantly upgrade their skills is one of the high priorities for engineers.

"Maybe advanced studies [degrees] are not absolutely necessary for one to be able to move up in the engineering industry, but certainly, those would help," said Mitch Querickiol, customer quality manager, wireline business, Americas region, STMicroelectronics, who previously worked in the Philippines. "So, now that my company has given [me] an opportunity to take up a master's degree at the University of Dallas, I am doing it. It is like a regular course except that teachers come to the company to teach/train us," Querickiol said.

"The best part is that while the company pays for everything, we're not tied to the company for this, unlike in some other companies where they [employees] have to spend some more years of service in return for the sponsored education. It is definitely a big benefit," he said.

Electronics companies are also striving to keep track of the training needs of their engineers and are initiating programs to cater to this requirement. "We identify training needs of our staff regularly, and conduct in-house training programs on a need basis," Ivan So, regional sales director, Asia-Pacific, Tektronix Southeast Asia Pte Ltd., said.

Agrawal of ABC Consultants also gives examples of engineers being provided the requisite training by the companies. "Several big companies have outsourced their R&D and design activities to their 100 percent-owned subsidiaries in India because of the low cost and easy availability of engineers.

"Take Intel, which has a state-of-the-art facility in Bangalore, or Honeywell, which has a design center in Pune, for instance. A lot of engineers hired by these companies may not have had exposure to the specific technologies in use at these companies, but are hired because of their potential and the educational background. They get trained in-house for say, three to six months," Agrawal said.

Young of PSi elaborates on a new training initiative at his company. "We recently started an in-house education program in conjunction with the Technical University of the Philippines (TUP). The program is for technical staff in our organization who couldn't finish college or complete their degrees due to financial constraints. About 30 to 31 people are already participating in this program, whereby we help them obtain a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree.

"We pay for this and the staff can attend classes after work, where professors from TUP come over to teach. All the employee has to offer is the time commitment to finish the course. We are sure this program will provide a lot of our future engineers," Young said.

"Though this is just a general engineering course, eventually, we want to incorporate a course in semiconductor manufacturing in this program. Besides this investment in training our people, we also offer scholarships at the different technology universities, and also partner with several colleges and tech schools in terms of on-the-job training," he said.

Long hours
Asian electronics engineers also work fairly long hours compared with engineers in Europe, yet they have a fairly comfortable work week. Although, in a given work week, an engineer works about 45 hours in mainland China to about 55 hours in South Korea, over 50 percent of the respondents said that they work only five days a week.

"Flexible work hours are getting popular, and are quite attractive for prospective employees — it is not just a benefit, but also an indication of the management style prevalent in the organization," Agrawal of ABC Consultants said.

Engineers in Taiwan start their full-time engineering careers a little later than engineers in the other Asian countries. For example, while the mean number of years of experience for an engineer aged 35 to 39 is 9.6 years, for engineers, it is 13.5 in mainland China, 10 in South Korea and 12 years in the ROA.

— Compiled by EE Times Asia with reports from Malou Buenconsejo and Vivek Nanda in Manila; Mike Pan and Karen Kou in Taipei.