Needing Design Engineers

Manufacturing must return now to the US before all of our real engineers retire.

The reason why corporations have reported that they are having difficulty recruiting engineers, software developers and other technical professionals is that in 1993, we accelerated the movement of manufacturing operations to other countries and engineers were laid off.  This plus the post-2008 US economic slump reduced the number of design engineering jobs in the US.  

Another problem is the watering down of the engineering curriculum in many colleges and the recruitment of degreed engineers into non-engineering work.  If they don’t use it; they lose it.  Design engineering work that requires daily use of formulas to calculate design details or coding skills. 

These skills are missing in most engineering grads and these engineers are not qualified to take design jobs and hit the ground running.  I always hired engineers from the top of the class and they were successful.

Continued recruitment of foreign students into US college engineering programs is still needed. These foreign students occupy over half of all the seats in our engineering courses in all of our best colleges. The best of these students are able to hit the ground running on design work. 

In 1980, Atlanta became a hub for engineering jobs due to the PC revolution and advances in telephony and the general resurgence of electronics in the US. The hub revolved around Georgia Tech, but recruiting efforts covered the entire Southeast.

Engineers took jobs in Atlanta, because of the vast numbers of engineering opportunities in Atlanta.  They knew if they got laid off, there were other jobs in Atlanta they could get, just because of the sheer numbers of these jobs.

Design engineers are fully engaged at the beginning of the product lifecycle when design or redesign begins. The design cycle has been reduced from years to months and engineers know when they are running out of work toward the end of the design cycle.  That’s when they put their resumes out. 

In my recent recruiting project, I ran into degreed engineers with BSEE degrees who couldn’t do the Ohm’s Law calculation E=IR to determine volts, amps and ohms in a circuit.  Many had been doing non-engineering jobs where these calculations were not used.  Some of it was that their engineering curriculum was watered down.  Some of it was both. 

As companies moved overseas and consolidated operations later after 1993, these engineering jobs dried up in Atlanta.  Companies like Microsoft started hiring the top of class freshmen and offering them summer jobs with housing in California. Obviously, these students went to work for Microsoft after graduation. Other technology hubs like the West Coast, Boston Mass. and Austin Texas held on to their critical mass of engineering jobs.  Dallas Texas was a net gainer.  Florida, Las Vegas and Atlanta emptied out.

Returning manufacturing to the US will require that engineering schools ensure that their graduates can actually do design work.

The H1b and L1b visas has been watered down as well.  They used to be reserved for BSEE and BSME graduates who could actually do the calculations needed to do design work.  US engineering schools need to raise the bar and the US Immigration Service needs to clean up their mess.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader