During National Engineers Week, Robert Samuelson writes that the so-called science and engineering gap is phony.

"But it's emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America's ``competitiveness'' implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites."

Yeah, right. He should be sitting next to me when I try to FIND, much less hire, a mechanical or structural or aero engineer.

Agreed, this guy should come see how it looks from where I'm sitting in the Aero department of Caltech.

I think it matters more for US competitiveness that the "best and brightest" aren't going into engineering.

I know several Caltech students who have switched/are switching to law or medicine. They are both important fields but they don't do as much for international competitiveness or military ability as engineering does.

I believe what the article says is true. Except for the facts ang figures I said this same thing a few weeks ago when Rand posted another article.

Let me say, I am not an engineer. I am however a highly trained technician and industrial trainer. I have worked as an I&C tech and operator at a gas turbine co-gen. I have worked as a field trainer teaching manufacturing people to set up and operate computer controlled automated equipment.

I was, during the Y2K lead up, the world wide liason for a major computer company. It was my job to talk to two foreign help desks as well as the one I worked on. It was my task to take questions from our larger customers to the engineers, so that the same question did not go to them from 25 different technicians working on three different help desks.

I worked with many different kinds of engineers, in many disiplines, in several diverse industries. I know what they say about getting that next job.

Aleta I have not been a fly on the wall when you went through the resume's or during the interviews. Here is where the problem comes in. It is my experience as well as the engineers I have worked for and with that companies don't want "just" a qualified engineer.

Aerospace and aircraft companies want Orville and Wilbur Wright. GM, Ford and Chrysler want Henry Ford or Carl Benz. Computer companies, who seem to be the WORST, want a combination of Bill Gates and Dr. Wang.

I've seen this getting worse for years. My wife, who is a computer engineer, just went through 3 years of looking for a job after the collapse of her old employer. On at least a half dozen occasions she went on interviews fo jobs, at less money, with more qualifications than the job requirements for the job, and she didn't get the job.

Two of those jobs were filled later by two of her EX-SUPERVISORS, from her last job. We know this because we see these people regularly.

I am fairly sure these companies didn't really require the skillset and background of these people to do basic support.

It's a little topsy turvy when your on the looking for a job side too.

Well, maybe it was just my imagination.

Hey Kevin

Maybe when we get nuked by one of various countries/nutcases we can send out an army of lawyers to sue for damages.

I wish I was kidding.

Dennis

Aleta:
You can expect lots of engineers to fill your vacancies very soon. Word is that 2007 is going to be flatlined in terms of new contracts in aerospace. We both know what that means.

I agree with K.

Years ago, I read an opinion piece by Thomas Sowell. It talked about, odd to some, the benefits and results of recessions in the business cycle. The primary benefit is that it gets people to move on from dead end work. Don't understand, go read "Who moved my cheese?".

I have no doubt that Kevin and Aleta are having difficulty finding quality engineers where they are. In Houston, finding a quality aerospace job with employment expectation beyond 1 year is almost impossible. Moreover, the pay is absymal.

With that in mind, people ought to move on (I'm being a hypocrit here). This is actually good news for the private space industry. There is a lot of hungry and soon to be starving aerospace engineers.

Sadly, because of the way this transfer may occur, pay is not likely to improve much. As that continues, I expect Kevin to still find students changing majors.

Kevin'
I never meant to say that your experiences, or Aleta's were not true. I believe what you say.

I simply state that from the "getting hired" side of the equation its seems that the companies doing the hiring want 12 years of experience with acompanying references, for jobs advertised as Entry Level, 20 years of experience for jobs listed as 1 to 7 years, etc ad nauseum.

Maybe I'm not getting your point or Aleta's either, are you saying that you are advertising jobs and NO resume's come in at all? Or are you saying you get resume's that don't meet the standards for your jobs? All the hiring level people we talk to say they get swamped for every position they advertise.

I'll tell you the other problem I've seen in the hiring process. When I first went ino the civilian world after getting my initial training from the Navy, I was interviewed by people who were technically trained. The hiiring manager was himself,and in one case herself, a technician or engineer. They had worked themselves up to being in charge of the very important task of finding good trained engineers and technicians.

At some point in the early to middle '80s the all important, and self important, HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER began to rear his ugly head. People who went to college for 4 years to learn to do interviews. And most do it badly.

With no technical background themselves, no idea what the requiremnts of the job are, beyond the words and terms in the job description. They for the most part have no idea, seemingly, that the resume doesn't make the engineer or technician.

When I interview someone I get a "feel" for how that person will do their job, how they will fit my customers and just as important how they will fit with my other employees.

I may be stepping on toes here, but I've been on both sides of this story. I've interviewed people, who got to the second round due to HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGERman, a person who should never have gotten a first interview. The HR folks all had the same line, and it must come from HR 101 class, "...well the resume says they were, or the resume says they have, or worked on....(insert platitude here)...

I've lost jobs to people I know who I KNEW would never be able to do the job. I have heard these same stories from engineers for years.

The very first HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER I ever butted heads with was in a small company who manufactured instruments and controls. This man also taught at a local university, while he was finishing his PhD in business management.

One of our engineers was taking his course and this brain storm actually said to a room full of students that it doesn't matter what the people say on their resume', they all lie, they'll only do half the work you want done and in 4 years or less they will leave or you'll have to fire them.
Now I've heard similar statements several times from other HR people since then. I expect he taught that attitude because that is what he was taught. That is a p1ss poor attitude, and position to do your hiring from , or from which to manage those people after they get hired.

HR MANAGERman tried to cut several of us out of our yearly raise once because we were, "habitually late". He based this on our clocking in at 18 or 21 minutes after the hour, when starting times had to be at or before 15 minutes. What he did not say to upper management in our appraisals was that those times were 6:18, 7:21 etc. When we complained to upper management, they agreed with us. They saw that you shouldn't be considered late for work at 6:18 when the work day officially starts at 8:00. Upper management appreciated everything we did to help get our company a 60% increase in product output, to cover a corresponding sales increase. We were coming in early and then staying late, something he did not tell upper management, to do that extra work.

All HR MANAGERman knew how to do to make more money for the company was to try to shaft the employees. I have seen his ilk, and their treachery, dozens of times since then. Thats why I work for me now.

I am not attempting to say this is your attitude or your training background, because I don't know you. I am simply saying that overwhelmingly my story is the same as my wifes, our technically trained friends and most of the engineers we know and have worked with.

I don't know who decided to cut the senior engineers out of the resume' perusal before interviews. I don't know why companies decided that non-technically trained people should do any hiring / interviewing of technical people but it is, was and ever shall be a hugely bad idea for industry.

The very term HUMAN RESOURCES screams,"We don't care about the people, we only care about the profits."

A resource is by definition something you use up and buy more. The very LAST definition in Webster for resource is "a source of information or expertise". The first three have to do with "stuf" and not people, or persons.

When you, the hiring people and your employing companies, treat PEOPLE with the same concern and handling that your purchasing agent treats raw materials, i.e. electronic parts, steel, rubber, you are not going to get the best people. You will get someone who can reword their resume' to match your job description, and who then acts like the resume' in the interview.

HUMAN RESOURCES is not a term the PERSONNEL of your company would ever use about themselves. The top of not one cover letter I ever read said." I was a HUMAN RESOURCE in a Senior Software Engineering position at UmptySquat.com Inc.

To prove my point, open Word, open your own resume', and see if that is how you describe yourself.

Steve:
You deserve a clarification of Aleta's comment. First, the small company that Aleta and I work for does not have a "human resources" department for the reason that you state. (The term is demeaning and inaccurate) We look for good people, rather than "qualified" applicants, where "qualified" is a number of years experience and the correct resume. The interview includes determining the difference between 5 years experience and one year experience 5 times over. In this business, it is rare that an employee does the same thing very long anyway. Therefore, attitude and broad skills are more important. Aleta's first screen for attitude is by saying: "The desert is a crappy place to live. Why do you want to come here?"

Then, we look for judgement. For example, designing hardware is a lot more than knowing how to run the CAD software. It's amazing how schools seem to concentrate on teaching computer skills and ignore what is the difference between a good design and a poor one. We really do recognize the difference between a highly motivated self-taught person and one who coasted through school and got the diploma.

I learned what HR represented in the early 80s when I couldn't get a job on IBM mainframes because the company I worked for used Univac equipment. The OS and JCL were absolutely identical between the two but that didn't matter to the HR person. So I never dealt with them after that. In one case I was delighted to recieve a letter from HR telling me they were sorry not to hire me at this time... It was funny because the engineer I was to work for had already hired me.

Their real cluelessness is revealed when they put an ad out requiring 5 yrs experience on systems that are less than a couple of years old. As well as listing an alphabet soup of requirements that if met means the candidate is actually qualified to do nothing.

Of course, I'm now obsolete because I write in the most productive business language ever produced but the largest S/W company in the world decided they didn't want to continue to support and upgrage that language.

Life is a circus.

Dan,
if thats the way your company is you are light years ahead of most. I wish I was a design type and had run across you guys. BTW I love the desert.

Neither of you gives the company name, probably a good thing or you'd be deluged with resumes. You really don't tell me what your industry you are in, hardware design could be anything from military hardware to microwave oven controls.

I have some questions. Are you and Aleta working for a truly forward thinking and acting company or is your industry just one I have no contact with? Are all the companies in your industry run like your? Or are you getting the cream of the crop because of the short falls of your competitors? I hope thats the case, because if what yuo say about your company is true, its a slam dunk to KEEP good people. And I repeat one of my original questions, does Aleta mean she just doesn't get any or enough resume's to fill her jobs? Or she gets 2500 resumes that were a waste of postage?

Steve, Dan and Aleta are two of the founders of XCOR Aerospace in Mojave. Dan is chief engineer, and his airplane was used to build the EZ-Rocket.