I remember when the initial trends towards offshoring started. Manufacturers were exploring and pursuing it behind the scenes because, as you might imagine, it was terribly unpopular. The thought of moving american jobs overseas didn’t do good things for the brand and reputation for those companies. But soon enough, it became an open secret. And …
Education and Career Insights
The Best Domestic Talent Pool for Engineering?
It seems like finding the right engineering talent for your organization is never easy. There’s the STEM shortfall issue where we aren’t graduating enough engineers to fill the roles needed domestically. And even with a number of engineering roles available, organizations, as one article from EETimes suggests, are getting more picky about hiring the right …
The New Engineering Career Choice? Hyperspecialization or System Generalization
A couple weeks ago while up in Boston, I had the chance to talk shop with an engineer about how their staffing had changed after the recession. I know. I know. Maybe not the most thrilling topic initially. But it was actually a extremely worthwhile conversation. I had asked if they were hiring back or …
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Do ‘In-the-Trenches’ Engineering Managers Get More Respect?
Do you know of any engineering project that is overstaffed? Yes. That was a serious question. But I’ll take that as a no nonetheless. In that context, I’ve seen increasingly that engineering managers, even though they have taken on more responsibility in terms of managing a team, are still asked to work as an individual …
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A Glimpse into Reshoring Engineering in the U.S.?
When it comes to sourcing in terms of engineering, it’s interesting to watch the pendulum swing. Over the past decade, a lot of engineering work moved offshore. Either it was outsourced to companies that operated overseas or manufacturers moved their technical and R&D centers offshore. The trend lagged a little behind the movement to offshore …
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Apprenticeship as the Future of Engineering Education
Where’s the next generation of engineers going to come from? Longstanding question. Right? At the rate we’re going, we won’t have enough graduating engineers to fulfill the employment needs of manufacturers in the United States as well as several European and Asian countries. Seems we’ve beaten this horse before. Yet I haven’t really seen any …
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A Peek Inside Your CEO’s Head
Insight is valuable. Understanding how the executives in your organizations think is important to understanding if you’re aligned to their goals and objectives. And ultimately, that determines a lot in terms of your role and your engineering team’s role within the company.
The Biggest Loser of the STEM Shortfall?
It’s now been over a week since I got back from Arizona, and COFES is still on my mind. To get an idea of what it is and what it is all about, head on over to Monica Schnitger’s Hot Topics post on COFES 2011: Desert, Ideas and Horses to get a broad overview. But …
Are You Losing the War for Engineering Talent?
I have to admit, I am ready to move on past all of the talk about the recession and recovery. But there’s some good news that deserves some attention. Most notably, some relatively recent research is showing that executives at manufacturers are planning on hiring again. An article in Industryweek titled Manufacturers Expecting to Hire …