Without skilled labor at all levels, those 'resources' will stay where they are and not become intermediate or final goods.
We have 10 lawyers for one engineer. Twenty (or more) realtors per engineer. Paper pusher to producer ratio is about 100 to 1, and rising. Most engineers are old, getting older. Plants are closing, technicians aren't replaced.
But tattoo 'artists' are increasing in numbers.
It's not that easy to come back from a loss of technical knowledge. It takes a while.
Just starting out of college, I was talking with an older engineer about a well known company that was in the process of going down the tubes. I asked him what he thought was causing that company's demise, and he said "They lost their technology". I'm like "what??" Then he said "They lost their 3 key engineers, and would never recover from the lost talent". He was absolutely correct. Some people are very hard to replace, in spite of what some managers like to think.
AND you have elucidated what started happening back in the late '70s...China/India came on the scene and then around that time , Windows came out and the world has NOT been the same since...I was an mech. engineer and I worked on the VERY LAST OIL REFINERY IN TEXAS AND THE UNITED STATES...we started buying oil from the Saudi's...
Also, MEs don't use the OLD pencil calcs, they use a damn computer...and the Engineering SCHOOLS are filled with FOREIGN STUDENT WHO ARE PAYING EXORBITANT FEES that the American students ALSO have to pay...
Our OWN downfall is through university greed...this also goes for Computer Science programs...AND THE CHEATING THAT GOES ON WITH THESE STUDENTS IS BEYOND THE PALE...Shut the "collage factories" down, send the students back to their own lands, tell the unis ----NO FEDERAL FUNDS OF ANY KIND.... you sink or swim on your own merits...
Apologize for the screed but I am a "RETIRED" programmer AND engineer!!!
Lets just use a small example - an aspiring 6 sigma blackbelt was pointing out all the failures occurring at an inspection station - had to spend hours educating him that the root causes were occurring upstream and the results were being caught by the inspection system - it was his job to find the root causes, but the Pareto chart pointed at the inspection system. Eventually got him pointed in the right direction....
It has other issues too, grift, wokeism etc, but the FIRST thing it lost was its engineering culture, to be replaced with 'sales' and 'business' culture.
The IEEE did a study on the failure of the space shuttle boosters. NASA managers ignored the advice of their engineers who spoke up about the risks involved launching in cold weather. What was particularly interesting though was that that same culture decided on the company they chose to build the boosters, and rather than go with the company with the track record of success, they went with the company with the management structure they preferred.
Not to poke a fight, or cause any malcontent, but I am basing this solely from my life experience where I have seen few engineers become successful managers. I have seen non-engineers become very good at generating ideas, but because they lack the engineering disciplines need the engineers to work out into real time products. Now I'm not against engineering by any means, in fact I know we need as many as we can produce. Here's my argument. Engineers go to school to design, build and create concepts into things. Non-engineers attend "other" disciplines (management) schools to oversee the other important support aspects and dynamics of making the idea into reality. When an outfit can dial in two disciplines to work cohessively, it flows. I have come to firmly believe that in order to survive and flourish is to keep the disciplines seperate but functioning together. Paying the engineers the salary for doing exactly what they do of designing, building and creating while paying the managers their salaries of supporting the engineers to meet the objectives. Allow the engineers to be free of the logistic burdens and do what they went to school for and the managers to carry the logistics burdens all the while an open comms line between the two disciplines to ensure target objectives are met.
My case in point of experience is I was employed at a highly respected U.S. Naval research and development facility as a Program Manager and saw too many young engineers promoted to management positions over a talent pool of former military types with combined 200+ years experience in personnel/logistic management. The long term result was a group of very talented and promising engineers were pulled from viable projects and over time they lost touch of what they originally attended school to do as they became mired in the logistic support arena for these projects. This often resulted in the person leaving for "greener pastures" and the promotion cycle would repeat itself. At the same time, the non engineers mentioned were designated as engineer technicians supporting roles were helpless in advancing some projects because the managing engineers wouldn't listen to the input. Budgets often went over the limits and production targets were missed. It had become so convoluted of mismatched disciplines that I eventually too left. The big difference was this was a U.S. Government facility, not a private firm and monies were always available..... so the cycle is probably still going on.
Again, I use this posting based solely from my personal experience and not looking to insult or demean any career path one chooses. Yes, there are the exceptional talents that appear from time to time that can handle the rigor, but I honestly believe that if an organization recognizes the talents and utilize them accordingly with disciplines where non engineers manage and engineers engineer separated yet parallel to each other, phenomenal things can happen.
You wrote a lot to unpack, and I won't get into everything, as that would take more time than I have today.
A couple points - a lot of engineers have the degree, but not the mindset. Some techs do have the mindset, but didn't get a degree, and most large organizations require the degree (for good reasons and poor ones as well).
Attitude matters. Doesn't matter - degree or not - people with poor attitudes are a PITA to work with - doesn't matter how smart they are.
Engineers are generally underpaid by a lot and few companies recognize a technical career path. This is also true of the best techs. The easiest / fastest way to advance in a career is to manage others. I have a daughter who could have become an engineer - she has all the tools and talent, but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I can't blame her for feeling that way.
Concur in all aspects. I saw your post and needed to vent. I was frustrated (still am somewhat) with the fact that we couldn't deliver to the warfighter what they needed in a timely manner. Cost over runs, missed target deadlines, etc.all because of inexperienced personnel in key positions. Not their fault, especially when pushed by their superiors to fill the vacated slots. Our young engineers were brought in at the higher payscales for their experience levels and within a short timeline were given managerial positions which was crushing their abilities. The maddening part was the talent pool of the SMEs (military) who knew exactly what was needed and couldn't advance because the position required an engineering degree. That was where I worked and the senior/executive management mindset. Have a great day fren!!
Correct. We have more people with skills in getting food stamps and medical for free than any other country. Those who comes from other countries don’t want to work or want to be an executive without working and no skills. That’s the type of people are coming plus terrorists and thieves murderers, etc.
Without skilled labor at all levels, those 'resources' will stay where they are and not become intermediate or final goods.
We have 10 lawyers for one engineer. Twenty (or more) realtors per engineer. Paper pusher to producer ratio is about 100 to 1, and rising. Most engineers are old, getting older. Plants are closing, technicians aren't replaced.
But tattoo 'artists' are increasing in numbers.
It's not that easy to come back from a loss of technical knowledge. It takes a while.
Just starting out of college, I was talking with an older engineer about a well known company that was in the process of going down the tubes. I asked him what he thought was causing that company's demise, and he said "They lost their technology". I'm like "what??" Then he said "They lost their 3 key engineers, and would never recover from the lost talent". He was absolutely correct. Some people are very hard to replace, in spite of what some managers like to think.
AND you have elucidated what started happening back in the late '70s...China/India came on the scene and then around that time , Windows came out and the world has NOT been the same since...I was an mech. engineer and I worked on the VERY LAST OIL REFINERY IN TEXAS AND THE UNITED STATES...we started buying oil from the Saudi's...
Also, MEs don't use the OLD pencil calcs, they use a damn computer...and the Engineering SCHOOLS are filled with FOREIGN STUDENT WHO ARE PAYING EXORBITANT FEES that the American students ALSO have to pay...
Our OWN downfall is through university greed...this also goes for Computer Science programs...AND THE CHEATING THAT GOES ON WITH THESE STUDENTS IS BEYOND THE PALE...Shut the "collage factories" down, send the students back to their own lands, tell the unis ----NO FEDERAL FUNDS OF ANY KIND.... you sink or swim on your own merits...
Apologize for the screed but I am a "RETIRED" programmer AND engineer!!!
💯 true..
Where to even go with everything you stated...
Lets just use a small example - an aspiring 6 sigma blackbelt was pointing out all the failures occurring at an inspection station - had to spend hours educating him that the root causes were occurring upstream and the results were being caught by the inspection system - it was his job to find the root causes, but the Pareto chart pointed at the inspection system. Eventually got him pointed in the right direction....
Been there, Done That!!!!!
Case in point, Boeing.
It has other issues too, grift, wokeism etc, but the FIRST thing it lost was its engineering culture, to be replaced with 'sales' and 'business' culture.
The rest followed.
The IEEE did a study on the failure of the space shuttle boosters. NASA managers ignored the advice of their engineers who spoke up about the risks involved launching in cold weather. What was particularly interesting though was that that same culture decided on the company they chose to build the boosters, and rather than go with the company with the track record of success, they went with the company with the management structure they preferred.
Not to poke a fight, or cause any malcontent, but I am basing this solely from my life experience where I have seen few engineers become successful managers. I have seen non-engineers become very good at generating ideas, but because they lack the engineering disciplines need the engineers to work out into real time products. Now I'm not against engineering by any means, in fact I know we need as many as we can produce. Here's my argument. Engineers go to school to design, build and create concepts into things. Non-engineers attend "other" disciplines (management) schools to oversee the other important support aspects and dynamics of making the idea into reality. When an outfit can dial in two disciplines to work cohessively, it flows. I have come to firmly believe that in order to survive and flourish is to keep the disciplines seperate but functioning together. Paying the engineers the salary for doing exactly what they do of designing, building and creating while paying the managers their salaries of supporting the engineers to meet the objectives. Allow the engineers to be free of the logistic burdens and do what they went to school for and the managers to carry the logistics burdens all the while an open comms line between the two disciplines to ensure target objectives are met. My case in point of experience is I was employed at a highly respected U.S. Naval research and development facility as a Program Manager and saw too many young engineers promoted to management positions over a talent pool of former military types with combined 200+ years experience in personnel/logistic management. The long term result was a group of very talented and promising engineers were pulled from viable projects and over time they lost touch of what they originally attended school to do as they became mired in the logistic support arena for these projects. This often resulted in the person leaving for "greener pastures" and the promotion cycle would repeat itself. At the same time, the non engineers mentioned were designated as engineer technicians supporting roles were helpless in advancing some projects because the managing engineers wouldn't listen to the input. Budgets often went over the limits and production targets were missed. It had become so convoluted of mismatched disciplines that I eventually too left. The big difference was this was a U.S. Government facility, not a private firm and monies were always available..... so the cycle is probably still going on. Again, I use this posting based solely from my personal experience and not looking to insult or demean any career path one chooses. Yes, there are the exceptional talents that appear from time to time that can handle the rigor, but I honestly believe that if an organization recognizes the talents and utilize them accordingly with disciplines where non engineers manage and engineers engineer separated yet parallel to each other, phenomenal things can happen.
You wrote a lot to unpack, and I won't get into everything, as that would take more time than I have today.
A couple points - a lot of engineers have the degree, but not the mindset. Some techs do have the mindset, but didn't get a degree, and most large organizations require the degree (for good reasons and poor ones as well).
Attitude matters. Doesn't matter - degree or not - people with poor attitudes are a PITA to work with - doesn't matter how smart they are.
Engineers are generally underpaid by a lot and few companies recognize a technical career path. This is also true of the best techs. The easiest / fastest way to advance in a career is to manage others. I have a daughter who could have become an engineer - she has all the tools and talent, but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I can't blame her for feeling that way.
Concur in all aspects. I saw your post and needed to vent. I was frustrated (still am somewhat) with the fact that we couldn't deliver to the warfighter what they needed in a timely manner. Cost over runs, missed target deadlines, etc.all because of inexperienced personnel in key positions. Not their fault, especially when pushed by their superiors to fill the vacated slots. Our young engineers were brought in at the higher payscales for their experience levels and within a short timeline were given managerial positions which was crushing their abilities. The maddening part was the talent pool of the SMEs (military) who knew exactly what was needed and couldn't advance because the position required an engineering degree. That was where I worked and the senior/executive management mindset. Have a great day fren!!
Correct. We have more people with skills in getting food stamps and medical for free than any other country. Those who comes from other countries don’t want to work or want to be an executive without working and no skills. That’s the type of people are coming plus terrorists and thieves murderers, etc.
AND THAT IS SOME DYNOMITE THAT I HAVEN'T SEEN IN A LONG TIME!!!!!!
WOWZA!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣