Skills Gap from Retiring Baby Boomers

The shortfall is beacause managers, admin', execs and accountants run the show and pay themselves more than engineers...

Simple as that.

I agree Del, but things have a way of coming around. I think as the baby boomers retire, businesses will compete more for experienced engineers, thus pay will go up.

A week's "boot camp" to get 7 years experience, I love it. If only they understood you can't fake science, at least not for very long.

Yup it's that experience that does it...I always say.. Electronics is easy ..... in theory.

It's the experience you need to fill in all the bits the books and data sheets and circuit diagrams don't tell you, that makes the difference between a circuit that works and one that doesn't ..or oscillates ..or crashes.

Like the old saying..

' Amplifiers oscillate, oscillators don't '

Del

Hi Del.

You are right, I retired two years ago, or to put it into it's right context every engineer over sixty in the company that I worked for was forced to retire.

Accountants had been employed to cut down on expenditure, ie, get rid of all the older engineers!!! This year the company went to the wall, the reason stated was that they could not find enough engineers to keep the company afloat???

Spencer.

Hi

If it wasn't so sad it'd be funny...

And I bet it was the same accountants who got the decent redundancy payouts.

Del

Hi Del.

You are spot on!!!

Spencer.

Hi Del ,

Even though being an engineer myself , i learned trouble shooting from my uncle who was not even a graduate but passion for electric and electronics made him expertise, his experience was more than 45 years when valves and tubes were what electronics was all about , he could not update himself to todays digital and computers due to age and was forced to leave , still these companies offered him hansome convenience for a visit if problem perist and no new highly qualified engineer can go near to his experience , being genereous in nature he used to guide for free but not now he ask for any thing that requires experienced skill ,for companies cannot afford to outsource the rare spares every time for trial and error kind of troubleshooting

I too learned through shear hard time and effort and still learning from 15 years or so ,ready circuit dias don`t show faulty component just test points refered to companies standard , new kid however qualified will take much of his life understanding and detecting such faults even with sofisticated testing instruments

Good post.

If companies had any sense they would let the experienced guys go into 'soft retirement'.... But being accountants and managers they haven't the imagination to allow a 2 or 3 day week.

In fact they can barely think 'inside the box' as that would require 3 dimensions...they can just about think in a straight line.... as long as it is a well travelled one.

I'm lucky, I do work a 3 day week, and intend to go down to 2 when I hit 60. It works very well. (Of course management havn't thought about a replacement ..as it's at least 4years away....)

I get so fed up with asking for things only to be stared at as if I'm mad...then about 5 years later people slowly work out it's a good idea!

Years and years ago.. as I was paying my grocery bill by cheque, I asked if I could make it out for £10 more than the bill and have the balance back as cash..you would think I'd pulled a gun on them!!!

Of course, now..cashback is an everyday practice.

Sorry..drifting off topic there...

I'm lucky, I do work a 3 day week, and intend to go down to 2 when I hit 60. It works very well. (Of course management havn't thought about a replacement ..as it's at least 4years away....)

Good for you. This is because they might know the difference between Engineer and Accountant. Or may be they know engineers "do not Overkills".

"It's the experience you need to fill in all the bits the books and data sheets and circuit diagrams don't tell you, that makes the difference between a circuit that works and one that doesn't ..or oscillates ..or crashes."

-----

Many employers hire a degree over experience. Bad move:

• A shiny brand-new BsEE from University of Colorado came into the lab with calculator in hand and asked where we kept the 11036.228739 ohm resistors.
• Another senior-level MsEE from Cornell didn't know that metals have temperature coefficients, much less different ones. He and I were writing a simulator on which we tested newly-developed control software. We tested the simulator against real current and voltage measurements of the tungsten 'filament' in an actual implanter ion source (the company made ion implanters used in the fabrication of integrated circuits). Charlie didn't realize that the resistance of the filament changes with temperature.
• BsEE and MsEE students from MIT interned at my company during summer breaks. None of them, not one, could explain how a color television displays color images.
• These same students could not explain why a powerful samarium-cobalt magnet always slides down an inclined aluminum sheet slower than a slug of metal the same size and shape.
  

I was employed at DuPont some 40 years ago. It was a great company to work for then (dont know if it still holds true). Back at that time, they had an incentive program that paid bonus money (real bonuses actually tied to how much you saved the company). Management style there has likely changed as Del has mentioned so that the engineers get "whats left after the greedy managers get through ". That may sound like sour grapes, but I firmly believe that if corporations want science/engineeing talent they should pay for it.

To all young engineers, I would suggest never to hire into a corporation without a solid contract and one that is in your favor. Otherwise, you will get !@#$%! every time. They say business is amoral; personally, I believe it is immoral.

You are right on that , companies should pay for talents that drive the throughputs , lots of students opt for accounting and general science rather than engineering , as scopes diminish , i too had a experiance regarding this issue , when i was working for an engineering company as a design engineer , i used to get lots of incentives for my work , but as company shifted its operation base to china and started trading we almost were neglected and forced to join marketing , i accepted that but account guys were doing that very well , big bosses were earning handsomely we were left with salary with no benefits and intensive work , ultimately they started getting low salaried younger guys working in less than half of our perks , i had to quit the company and start my own business in repaires of electronic instruments and learned business is surely immoral , i too advise new generation of engineers to look for company background and ask for fortune with good contract

I do not disagree with your statement Del, but the fact is that they are not having any more babies in the age cohort that immediatelyt followed the baby boomers.

This is not a single dimensional problem. it is both availability of bodies as well as the system that begrudges talent its due.

Managements stupidity just amplifies / exacerbates the effects.

milo

Hey...I might borrow that expression... 'stupidity amplifier' I like it!

Hi Milo.

It's not the avaiability of bodies here in the UK, we have 2.4 million bodies aged 18 to 30 on the dole here.

As for a system that begrudges talent, well that has been going on in the UK for the past 20 odd years. 600,000 16 to 18 year oldes are leaving our bog standard comprehensive schools that are both illiterate and innumerate.

There are no real apprenticeships any more, and 67% of 18 year olds cannot change an electical plug.

All this is the reason that the UK is losing out to other countries.

The future, don't ask! Spencer.

The shortage of skilled personnel of all kinds is the result of management NOT paying attention to their prime responsibility of taking care of the business in ALL of its ramifications.

Sears management in Chicago was so taken with the design and erection of the new Sears Tower downtown that they neglected their first responsibility. Sear is no longer the Worlds Largest Store and Catalog Mail Order Business. It is now owned by K-Mart or vice versa. Makes no difference as it is near the bottom of the pile. Even their once sought after Craftsman brand tools are having a tough time to be competitive with other brands such as "Cobalt."

A one week "Boot Camp" is a start but it will take more that one such effort to transfer all of the experience of the retiring & knowledgeable to transfer their expertise before they retire. One solution would be to hire them as consultants following retirement!

Surely you are right, but my thought is as an engineer you should only give management what they pay for, and training someone to do your job is not part of any contract an engineer signs. Personally, I would teach the newbies how not to do the job. If they dont know engineering when they get out of school, let thhem learn the hard way!!!

But it's not just engineering!

The example of CEOs has trickled down, all the way down to the poor shlub taking out a subprime loan, knowing full well that there's no possible way he'll be able to make the payment when the teaser rate expires.

The poor shlub was trying to play like the big boys & cash out, when the prices are going up 10-30% per year it looks like a good bet.

companies are taking short term profits to boost todays stock price.

ps if Dupont can orient new engineers in such a short time frame, why would they ever pay more than minimum wages.

upper management cashes out & moves down the road, or should I say floats on their golden parachutes.

Training & retaining quality help costs real $'s

in todays market, management always makes more than talent

management pulls the strings of government, perpetuating the on going scheme where the rich & powerful use misdirection [ see Geo Bush ] to keep the real issues off the table!

The tax code can encourage any sort of behaviour, right now it's short term profits!

The company I work for pays engineers well, recognizes they have to, and allows for soft retirement ( a few days a week, or a short term project at a time).

A one week boot camp is not much help, and in fact our new engineering grad training is about 3 years with a good bit of class room time and a lot of OJT.

I had an older co-worker who always said that a good engineer needs at least 10 years of experience before he/she is worth a damn. Part of the problem in my company is that the real technical engineers are the ones working the long weekends, plant start ups, called in from vacation, etc. People look at that job, and then look at a job where they can run a spreadsheet all day and get paid more, and the decision is easy from then on. That "boot-camp" sounds suspicious.

Hmm, a week-long "boot camp" I agree that is suspicious. Sounds to me much more like a very thorough orientation measure, as DuPont is a very large company with a very diversified product list.

The brain-drain is here now. Our state-side manufacturing of hard goods and machine tools is practically gone, hence less need. I am unemployed again, and having a tough time competing with the young faces that are fresh from school.

The points made about the "experts" of accounting practices forcing the seasoned engineers out is very much a reality-it happened to me last year. It seems that any engineer past fourty-five (45) years of age is being Six-Sigma'ed out the door.

The same prophecy (loose interpretation-I know) was made more than twenty-five (25) years ago about skilled machinists and toolmakers. I do remember the "threat" of affordable CNC machines, yet this did not have the impact on the demise of these skilled mechanics as did the outsourcing of manufacturing. Yet, try these days to hire a true toolmaker who can economically carve anything you place on his bench.

At least there is no substitute for the creativity that can only come from the human brain-the brains of we engineers.

Good Topic!

Ing. Robert Forbus