Complex Numbers

Rarity

For the second year in a row, engineer is the hardest job to fill in America.

Why are engineers so hard to find? "We have whole generations of people loving liberal arts, not going into science and math," says Larry Jacobson, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/107149/the-hardest-jobs-to-fill-in-...

Oh, look, I'm one in a million!

But wait...

It is definitely an employers' market, broadly speaking. In 2006, 44% of U.S. employers surveyed reported having a hard time filling jobs; this year, only 19% did.

19%? Really? In this economy, anyone had trouble filling jobs? Which 19%, the ones with no benefits and minimum wage starting salary?

"Companies are looking to replace more than half of their engineers over the next eight years, because baby boomers are retiring," Jacobson says. "When you have 80,000 engineers working for you, as Lockheed Martin does, that's a lot of jobs." He says that even if every single seat in the nation's engineering schools is filled, that's only 75,000 engineers being trained annually. That won't come close to making up the shortage.

Okay, without getting into whether that 75,000 includes disciplines unlikely to be hired by an aerospace firm, and assuming an average engineer's career to be 40 years long (22 to 62), that's three MILLION engineers available at any given time. Granted, if LM's geekforce all walked out at the same time, they'd have a hard time replacing them all, but that's not going to happen because

Businesses try to create a glut of workers so that they can have more control over the workers. Supply and demand, folks. If there are 30 engineers competing for one position, they'll go with the competent one who can live on the lowest salary. Just business. If, however, there are 30 possible positions for each engineer, the engineer's in the catbird's seat.

It's one thing to learn the theory of building a bridge or a tunnel in school, but it's quite another to have decades of work at it behind you.

Now they're just mixing people up. Civil engineers design bridges and tunnels. They do NOT get hired by Lockheed.

Also, any government-funded project--including ones resulting from the stimulus package--requires an engineer to have passed the test to get a professional engineering license. Only one in 10 engineers has that advanced-level document, Jacobson says.

Again. Mostly only civil engineers get their PE license. I have one. I have to because I must take legal responsibility for plans drawn up under my supervision. Your average electrical engineer generally doesn't get the license; they're only responsible to their employer. So I'd say that for MY discipline - the one that's going to be working our collective geek asses off on infrastructure projects if all the promises come true - that number is closer to 9 out of 10.

Beginning engineers need only an undergraduate diploma--and with that they earn a starting salary of six figures.



In what Bizarro World universe is this true? Maybe if you're working in NYC or some other place with a high cost of living that requires a higher salary... but I can tell you with some confidence that in the real world, engineers are lucky to start out in the mid-fives.

(Which doesn't suck, mind you. But this smacks of Amway-type promises: Riches beyond your wildest dreams! Listen, I have some wild-ass dreams, and my salary doesn't factor into them.)

Of course, you have to be a stellar math and science student. To get admitted to a top-tier school, you need to take pre-calculus by your junior year in high school--not an easy feat for most teenagers.

It would be if they actually, you know, TAUGHT MATH in schools anymore. There's nothing inherent in a 16 year old's mentality that keeps her from learning pre-calc (which is actually easier than trig, in my admittedly math-inclined opinion).

The next profession on the list, nursing, also requires an interest in math and science. But that isn't why there's a shortage of nurses. The demand for them is higher than ever because the aging American population needs more and more health care, and advances in medicine are enabling nurses' patients to survive and need treatment longer, while many nurses are reaching retirement age.

I don't know as much about the health care industry - but I do know that my comments above about creating an artificial surplus of nurses could easily apply.

Oh, and how does "Sales Representative" make that list?

Let's play SAT test (don't worry; no math in this one). Which one of the following does not belong?

Engineer: Essential for an industrialized country.

Nurse: Essential for a healthy population.

Technician: Support staff for engineers; see above.

Teacher: Damn important for ANY society (especially math teachers, dammit).

Sales Representative: ...

I'm not dissing sales representatives, you understand. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can do something that involves understanding people, which is a skill engineers notoriously lack (I like to think I'm ahead of the curve there, but if I'm wrong, no one's told me yet. Unless they've been using body language. I can't read body language). I certainly couldn't do it. I couldn't even sell a heater to an Inuit. But let's be honest: it's hardly essential to sell shit to people who don't really need it.

Bottom line: don't take anything you read on the internet at face value.

Including this post. I made up most of the statistics in it. Because I could.

I'm just saying.