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Loading ...Do you think engineers are on the way to becoming “cheaper by the dozen”?
Our Engineering Daily Community Forum has for long been an insightful discussion portal for engineers to voice their opinions on issues that affect us all. One particular topic has gathered a wide spectrum of responses, providing a deeper perspective into perhaps the prevailing attitude about the engineering field. One respondent to the topic titled, Have you lost your job? How are you surviving?, voiced his dissatisfaction with engineering by proclaiming that the “reason that so many engineers are out of work and for longer periods than in the past is that there are so many more of them in the work force.”
Badger, the respondent, lost his job in August, 2009 and as of his last post he was still searching for a job. His obvious dissatisfaction with engineering is further reinforced in the rest of his comment:
The ironic thing about education is that the more people have access to it, the less value it has. Having a BS or MS in any engineering field is not exactly a rarity anywhere. Engineers are almost on the way to becoming cheaper by the dozen. I am fed up with the seemingly eternal battle for survival, where losing a job means a year or two years out of work. I did not go to university for four years to get an expensive hobby, but that is what is happening. Based on what I have experienced in 30 years, I would never touch engineering and would also stay away from university as well. A more hands-on career such as plumbing, HVAC or locksmithing would have worked out better for me. Now it is too late, I wish I had dropped out of engineering before I graduated. It is simply not worth the effort I put into it.
As job losses become a reality for most engineers, do Badger’s sentiments echo a serious issue in our profession? In his own words, do you think “engineers are on the way to becoming cheaper by the dozen”?
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5 Responses for “Do you think engineers are on the way to becoming “cheaper by the dozen”?”
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By: matt
Posted at 4:06 pm | Comments on: Be An Engineer
By: Doug Fred
Posted at 8:34 pm | Comments on: All about cloud-computing and how it applies to engineers
Re: Masters in Engineering or MBA?
Posted at 4:25 pm | Engineering Daily Community Forums
Calculate the velocity of water coming out of a double-entry pipe
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I don’t think engineers are becoming too many but rather, we are just going through a phase which is calling for reduced workforce.
However, we should realize that when the economy stabilizes, employers will be more stringent in their hiring practices. This is plainly because, they will have a wider pool of candidates to chose from and they will not want to exercise the uncontrolled exuberance we saw between, 2005 and 2008.
I think if you are a smart engineer and have something exceptional to offer the workforce, then your need not worry. If you are mediocre, you are screwed.
Read David E. Goldberg’s The Entrepreneurial Engineer for what it means to be an engineer today and how to make the most of your engineering degree. The times have changed, but the engineering degree still, more than any other degree, provides you with the skills needed to thrive in this century. Remember, you learn, not only, science, math, and physics, but social science, history, and English. It’s not trade school; it’s a well-rounded 21st century education that prepares you for life and many opportunities, if you’re open to them and where they might take you.
Based on what I have experienced in 30 years I would never change. Engineering to me is not something that I select from the closet in the morning, its a passion, a career, a challange, a life, its me. I wake in the morning wanting to fix the world and study at night hoping that I gain knowledge that I can use.
In the last 30 years I have left engineering twice, needing a job to support my family but I never doubted that I would be back. One year there are not enough teachers and the schools become flooded with new teachers, hospitals were paying bonuses to nurses and now laying them off, professionals in building trades are competing with low cost labor from over the border, every IT person was investing their time to be the next Bill Gates and now most are working elsewhere. There are no guarantees, but if you enjoy what you do its makes it alot easier.
I would have to agree with Badger’s comments, unfortunately. Simply put, there are too many engineers in our economy now. Industry and government projections have been claiming or forecasting shortages in these fields for several decades now, which only seems to have inevitably let to a surplus of qualified people. Even in a big economic slowdown, if there is indeed a shortage of qualified people, then we should still see some job vacancies. At the moment there don’t seem to be any, anywhere. Apart from maybe sofware engineering, most engineering disciplines appear dead in the water (and yet we still keep hearing about ’shortages’). Try any jobsite, and the accounting and software engineering jobs outnumber the traditional engineering jobs 10:1. The answer is somewhat obvious. Nobody forecast a shortage of accountants 10 years ago, so it wasn’t necessarily and ‘in demand’ career path. And all the people that left the IT profession in the dot-com bust moved on to other careers, thus creating another later shortage of IT/software developers. In 10 years time, we’ll have the problem of too many accountants and programmers, and not enough traditional engineers, but industry will have no-one to blame for the dilemna but themselves. Why would anyone study something as difficult as engineering when they could make more money with more career prospects as an accountant, or even a nurse instead? Engineering wages have fallen behind, employers now are often unwiling to cross-train or even higher ‘permanent’ staff, and long-term employments prospects in such industries appears dubious to say the least. The decline in our engineering industries are really just a reflection of the United State’s continuing fall from economic grace on the world stage. One would be a fool to even consider following an ‘engineering’ career path in this day and age. Nurse, bankruptcy attorney, plumber, electrician, auto mechanic, etc. – these are the future growth careers for our country…….
Not necessarily. I do agree that there has been an overwhelming number of job losses, but I don’t think that’s indicative of the an influx in the number of engineers currently in the field. We are just going through a belt tightening episode in the economy and as soon as we are back on our feet, it will be easy to get a job. At least that’s what I am hoping for.
Jack..