Japan "Running Out of Engineers" 478
bfwebster writes "A story in the New York Times reports that Japan, a country that rebuilt itself as a technological power after World War II, now faces an increasing shortage of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering. Says the article: 'By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.' The article goes on to point out that the overall trend of waning interest in science and technology has been going on for 'almost two decades' and that the shortage is made worse by the traditional reluctance of Japanese companies to hire and use foreign workers. The US has had a similar trend for quite some time: 'Undergraduate engineering enrollment declined through most of the 1980s and 1990s, rose from 2000 through 2003, and declined slightly in recent years.'"
Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not moderation, its censorship. Its not all that funny, either.
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
Only on Slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
But to really do things is a different issue.
The difference is that an engineer does the things needed, may it be building a bridge or designing a new chip while the humanists just talk and make social theories.
However the persons that are endangering development the most are the economists (actually just bean-counters). They are only calculating cents on and off and tries to shave off costs by forcing the engineers to under-design solutions - and at the same time providing suspicious evidence about "successful" savings which in turn gives them a huge salary bonus.
Just beware of bonus systems for management and CFO:s, they indicate a sick model, but even worse - they also attract persons that tries to gain an advantage while suppressing the quality of life for the average Joe on the workplace.
Unfortunately a solution of only engineers doesn't work either, but mostly because the engineers tends to want their solution to be "perfect".
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
An economist is not a "bean counter". An accountant is a bean counter. An economist studies how people and collections of people make choices. The most famous example is the choice of "guns versus butter"--that's an economics issue. Bean counters try to balance the equity and make sure that the change in equity equals the difference between positive and negative cash flow.
Probably the people you are thinking of are "managers". Managers make short-sided decisions to make themselves look good and temporarily improve cash flow. They are different from accountants and economists. Managers change jobs frequently to avoid dealing with the problems their short sided decisions create.
"Manager" is a title, not a profession (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know of any undergraduate course called "management". Managers have degrees, often in economy or accountancy, but also, in many cases, engineering as well. The problems caused by short-sided decisions do not come from one single profession in particular, but from a general system where managers make all the decisions without much supervision.
I believe the root of this problem comes from the current capitalist system where large corporations are never owned by a single person. If a company is owned by one individual, or a family, who depends on that company's profits for the foreseeable future, they care more for the long view. With modern corporations, if the profits are likely to drop in the near future, you sell the shares. Since most companies today behave in the same way, no shareholder cares for anything more remote than the next quarter.
And, still worse, is that too often corporations own other corporations. All their respective managers have to do is take care of each other. Cronyism at its worst.
Re:"Manager" is a title, not a profession (Score:5, Funny)
Georgia Tech has a "Management" major. It's where all the folks who couldn't cut it in their engineering programs wind up.
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There is a class (Score:3, Informative)
Every college that has a business program has a course offered call "Management" or "Management of Organizations" or something to that effect.
Re:"Manager" is a title, not a profession (Score:4, Insightful)
IMO this goes back to the reason why these people are in the positions in their in. Most of those in the management undergraduate course were taking that course "because its easy and you can make a lot of money"... not my words, that was pretty much the mantra of those I asked. Most of those in engineering and sciences where doing so because they loved engineering and sciences.
Fast forward to the workplace and you have engineers who care about what they're doing and the results they produce, and managers who are only there to kick back and receive a paycheck... which one do you think breeds short sighed decisions and self-centered cronyism?
I am an engineer, and oddly enough I also work for a Japanese company. I do see many engineers make shortsighted decisions, but I know many of them make those decisions against their better judgment because they're either being rushed by management so they have something to show at the next ops meeting or they know that the short term benefits will please management more than long term benefits. what's good for the company in the long term view isn't necessarily good for the customers, similarly Just being family owned as opposed to traded doesn't make it any better.
Doesn't/Didn't Bill Gates own a majority stock in Microsoft? Doesn't the Walt Family own a majority stock in Walmart? Does being "owned" by an individual or family with a long term view do anything to make the company any less evil?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know of any undergraduate course called "management".
The rest of us can't help it that you are ignorant. At least look it up before you act like it is true.
Honestly, I'm not convinced you ever even went to college if you have never heard of a course in management.
University of Washington: school of business administration
http://www.washington.edu/students/crscat/ba.html [washington.edu]
Binghamton University: School of Management
http://som.binghamton.edu/ [binghamton.edu]
University of GA: Department of Management
http://www.terry.uga.edu/management/ [uga.edu]
University of Virginia: McIntire School of C
Joint Stock Corporations (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know of any undergraduate course called "management".
Look around. A HUGE number of respected undergraduate colleges/universities have a business management degree. It's called various things but many of them have management explicitly on the diploma. I had a roommate in college as well as an employee a few years ago who had Bachelors degrees in "Management". You can question whether an undergraduate degree in management is useful (I do) but they certainly exist.
I believe the root of this problem comes from the current capitalist system where large corporations are never owned by a single person.
Clearly you don't have a clue why corporations typically have multiple owners. The answer is
Re:"Manager" is a title, not a profession (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:5, Funny)
exactly his point, at least a bean counter can count beans! Economists...
A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Let's build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener..."
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah. What happens is that the physicist builds an aircraft out of the soup can, the chemist makes fuel from the soup, and the economist waits until it's almost finished and then kicks the supports out from under the aircraft because the project threatened to not be finished on schedule made by him.
Economists aren't just harmless people who make stupid comments. No, they come up with crazy theories and then implement them in real life. Just look at communism, libertarianism, and the current version of global capitalism. Utter insanity...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead they are "dream counters" - predicting future trends with the help of simple numerology and the absence of algebra. Some of them however are Mathematicians that are looking for a better pay packet and those ones produce various models that show results until they are misinterpreted by the others. Unfortunately they are rare and instead you get clowns like the economist that ordered the slaughter of most of Australia's sheep to drive up the wool price through sc
Also a matter of rewards, I guess (Score:5, Interesting)
A) rewards. If you're going to put 10x more work into something, then you'd expect the rewards to be worth it. That doesn't mean only salaries (though that sure helps too), but also stuff like overall job quality, social recognition of your efforts, etc. I'd say that in the west, for various reasons and to various degrees, all of those gradually declined.
We went for example from a culture which put its intellectual elites on pedestals, to a culture where being technically illiterate or even outright stupid, is cool and fashionable. In fact, if you show any intelectual interests or aptitudes, it's kinda mean of you and insensitive to your below-average neighbours/classmates/etc.
In programming alone we went from being those wizards doing high tech stuff, to being outright disconsidered. Nowadays for the average outsider it's not "I don't know how to do the things he does", it's more like "I have a life, I don't have time for that crap" or "yeah, the neighbour's 12 year old can do that kind of stuff." The idea from the 90's that you can just retrain an unemployed pizza-delivery-guy or burger flipper off the street, and he'll be just as good as those snotty CS and engineering graduates anyway, also didn't do much for recognition. It was hammered in everyone's head that you _are_ no better than him, and he could have had your job too if only he could be arsed to take one of those two-week java courses.
Now not all countries are at the same point, and not all went in that direction as fast, but that was the general direction all went slowly.
That's one reason to put in the extra effort, that went down the drain right there. For a lot of people that criterion is now actually a disincentive, since all that extra effort might actually _lower_ their prestige in the community instead of raising it.
B) Rampant age-ism also doesn't help. Back then, sure, I was young, I thought I'd never get old. When 15 years is your entire life so far, and you probably remember only 10, living another 45 years to 60 seems like a bloody eternity. No point worrying about something _that_ far in the future. Now I see perfectly competent programmers pushed aside or into a corner, because some PHB learned the mantra that only the smart young kids are any good.
If I had a kid, I'd tell him to stay well away of that field. Chances are you _will_ live to _at_ _least_ your 40's, even if you chain-smoke and get to twice your idea weight and go alcoholic too. If you want a job where you start being discriminated against as early as the 30's, heck, go into prostitution or porn instead. (And considering some bosses I've occasionally seen, prostitution might even be the more dignified job.)
C) It's also a matter of, well, excitement.
In all science or engineering domains, there was a time where it looked like there's so much interesting stuff to do or discover, and only the sky is the limit. (Or in aerospace not even the sky.)
In programming, for example, when I looked at some primitive games or programs on the old ZX-81 or later ZX-Spectrum, I thought, "I can do better." Often I actually could. Heck, I could even paint my own sprites by hand, although I'm no graphics artist, and they still looked good enough at that resolution.
Nowadays, if I look at a modern game, well, there's just not the same sensation. Duly noted, nowadays about half can be modded, so you can still tempt someone to programming that way. But for a while even that wasn't the case.
Ok, so that's only games, but the same applies to any other programming domain. At some point you could have been the guy who created the next big language, wrote the OS for some underpowered mini, or did the next great maths thing with a computer, or designed the next computer itself, or whatever. Nowadays you'll be a cog in a 20-people team writing the front-end to some database app.
Or if we move away from programming, as I was saying, the same applies to any other engineering domain. At one point we
Re:Also a matter of rewards, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Also a matter of rewards, I guess (Score:5, Informative)
Then there was also the attempt to stop schools from telling off, expelling or suspending disruptive students as this would be a violation of their fundamental human rights. Then there was the requirement that schools should provide breakfast to students who don't have time to have breakfast in the morning [bbc.co.uk].
Exam systems have been tinkered with. Previous governments introduced the concept of Foundation, Standard and Credit 'O' Grades so that everyone could say that they got an 'A' in their subject. Then there was switch to using coursework for assessment rather than exams, and the merger of Biology/Chemistry/Physics into General Science or the removal of various topics from Mathematics (permnutations and combinations, trigonometric equations and Physics.
As the same time, providing sanctuary to large numbers of asylum seekers who couldn't speak English as a first language, overloaded schools in London, which forced the government to "share the burden" across cities all across the UK. The side-effect of this was that the local parents pulled their children out of the popular state schools and send them to private schools instead. Now, the state schools are being forced to close due to lack of demand.
Then if there is a fight between students, the teachers can't intervene for fear of being injured, or being accused of being a pedophile for touching one of the students.
The "Next Big Thing". (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to work with an engineer who constantly lamented he was not an engineer in the late 1800s, when many of the now-common mechanical mechanisms were being invented. He too felt he could have "been someone" if only he lived then.
But the thing is, there is
Well, it does depend on the domain (Score:5, Insightful)
So for most mechanical stuff, yeah, the time where it was "exciting" was in the 1800's. For aerospace it was in the 20'th century. For computing stuff, it lasted more or less into the 90's.
So yes, some new thing will eventually come along, and for a while it will be all exciting to be in it. Then it will become just peon work too.
Basically I'm not saying that progress has stopped, or anything. I'm saying that the motivation to go to university in that domain looks a bit like a gauss curve, sorta. The "excitement" factor of it is high in the beginning, when there's so much to do, and it looks like you too could make your own contraption or just do things better. Then that excitement dies down, most (but obviously not all) stuff in that domain has been discovered, the industry has consolidated into a few dominant players, salaries went down, and what's left is whole teams doing tweaks to already refined designs. And to the guy looking at the question, "do I pick X as a major?" it already looks a lot less exciting than in the early years. He might choose it because the salaries are still good, but not because he actually thinks any more that he'll be the next big inventor of that domain.
Take, say, airplane building. In the beginning it looked so much like everyone's game, that we even had kids building a glider in the barn without telling their father. The feeling was there that you too can make your own flying contraption, and maybe even get it better than the ones that tried before you. There's a certain "excitement" factor in being at such a beginning. Then roll forward a century or so, and you have only a handful of big players who pushed everyone else out, and you're reduced to tweaking turbine blades in a CAD program and testing them in a wind tunnel. There's about as much excitement in it as in accountancy. And unsurprisingly a lot less kids dream of having that as their future job. (Just as well, because pay and number of jobs went down too in that domain.)
Or to better explain what I'm trying to say, that last point in my original message, well, was merely about why less people rush to enroll in a mature domain. I'm not saying that progress stopped. I'm just saying that eventually it just becomes less "exciting" a job. The same people who 100 years ago might have thought "OMG, if I only could work in aeronautics, it would be sooo cool and exciting" now look at it as, meh, just another possible desk job.
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I've been to Japan on a couple of business trips lasting from a week to several weeks for GPS related company. Each time we (the foreigners) worked from 9am to 10/11pm 6 days per week. The J
Re:Also a matter of rewards, I guess (Score:4, Interesting)
The very fact that companies can get away with treating their engineers like dirt just means that they haven't actually hit a shortage yet.
Re:Also a matter of rewards, I guess (Score:5, Interesting)
I love Japan. But do not expect that love to come back to you. God help you if you are of Korean descent, too. They treat them like trash.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Before going to the university I attempted for 2 years to get into the IT sector; I just gave up in the end and got myself a job as a department manager. It is the industry itself which treats engineers (and other qualified people) like shit, then turn around pissing and moaning because there aren't enough people with the said qualification.
Sorry, but when you have engineers (and others) who have gone through the mincer and spat out the other side - many of them bitter, they tell kids what their experience within the engineering area is like, most kids end up saying, "fuck that for a joke" and look for a job elsewhere. That is the cold hard reality of the situation.
When you have wankers have recruiters, wankers as bosses, and the pay is just one big giant wank - one can't help by feel one is just one big giant bitch for the system to have its way with.
Would I ever go back to IT? no way. Many engineers who get out of the field never want to go back - unless they trip over an idea in their garage and they can be their own boss.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Some would argue that they barely overlap at all.
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IT, engineering etc. are all going through trouble finding people - not only people, but *GOOD* people. The problem is that due to the pathetic recruiting procedures and what they consider important - they get a person who can sell themselves rather than a person who knows his or her stuff. They then piss and moan over
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan has (by and large) a market economy. There is no such thing as a shortage in a market economy. If they want more people to do engineering, pay engineers more. You can bet the bank if engineers and scientists were paid football players or rock stars wages, then you wouldn't be able to move for people clamouring to be engineers and scientists.
What people mean when they say "there is a shortage of engineers" is "there is shortage of engineers prepared to do amazing work while being paid less than the idiot with the history of art major in middle management". Big surprise there.
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
My first point should have said something like "in a functioning market for a good with sufficient price elasticity there is no such thing as a shortage".
I also made two implicit assumptions. First I believe that the engineering labour market is reasonably elastic. I don't think the lag time for getting new engineers would be very long. Of the seven people I graduate with from college (all excellent physicists and smart people with 2:1s or better) only two are working as an engineer or scientist. The rest are management consultants, actuaries, that kind of crap. If they could get double the pay they are getting now by switching to do engineering they could be retrained in a year. I also think that if this 'shortage' was as dire as it is being made out to be then the demand would steam roll the stickiness of the price of labour.
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this article, students are choosing to take law school courses instead, and get paid a more rewarding salary which leads directly to management than a long route which only leads to becoming a wage-slave.
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Interesting)
Entry level salaries are low, far too low, but that is not due to any law. It is due to a high number of qualified people looking for jobs on an obsolete economy based on construction work and tourism.
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Interesting)
I assume you mean the H1b visa thing. In which case, the only government "action" is stopping foreign engineers at the border. There is the artificial interference in the free market.
Diamonds are as expensive as they are for two reasons supply is tightly controlled by one company (DeBeers) and domain specific demand is created through marketing.
Ah. So it's a conspiracy. Nothing to do Marginal utility [wikipedia.org], eh?
And if demand can be created via marketing, why can't MS create this demand for the zune or vista? They tightly control production and have vast amounts of money to "create demand" and yet they are struggling in the marketplace.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right, diamonds are more expensive th
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct. But why does labour have to be last? Or first? Why not globalise everything in one go? Why does it have to be a sequence?
And oh, btw, I'm an Indian engineer here on H1b and there are very very few cases on "indentured servitude". The company I work for is glad to have me, paying me more than the base salary, processing my green card and I'm free to walk out any time I want to - the damage I'll cause them by walking out is far greater for them to screw around with me by paying me a lower salary.
The cases where a company pays someone a lower salary (my cousin at Motorola comes to mind) by waving the green card stick is few and even there, the amounts we are talking about is a few thousands a year.
The question you should be asking is why is diamond more expensive than garnet, or quartz. The least useful thing we can do with either is make jewellery right? Yet one is far more expensive than the others. The reason is that supply is curtailed, and demand increased through marketing.
Ask your wife or girlfriend if she prefers garnet or diamond. That explains the price difference between them.
As for demand increased through marketing - there was no marketing in Rome 2000 years ago and yet the Romans bought diamonds from India and paid a lot more for that than pearls.
If your theory, that one of two reasons diamonds are more expensive than equivalent metals/stones is due to increased marketing, is true, then can you explain why diamonds were more expensive than pearls 2000 years ago?
And finally, your theory of marketing increasing demand assumes that people will buy whatever they are told to buy. This is true to a degree - people want what others want. But if that is true in the long run, we'd all still be buying pet rocks.
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Regular degrees are simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Because if your program doesn't compile, it won't work. Because if you got your equation wrong, your results will be wrong. There is no "it is possible", "on the other hand", or even "some believe". Things either are or aren't. In humanities, anything is possible, and the metric by which you're judged is your eloquence.
Working hard isn't just reading tons and tons of books, and writing tons of words. It's what happens when you're sloppy, make a mistake or cut something short. In sciences, shit just doesn't work, and you're dead in the water. In humanities, as long as you have a relatively compelling argument, you're home safe. So yes, humanities majors ARE easier than science majors. Don't kid yourself.
And by the way, proofs of God's existence depends entirely on which axioms you're invoking.
It's probably not waning interest in engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
It's probably more like waning interest in working like a slave and being managed by incompetent managers with no little/no engineering background.
Or perhaps HR departments playing keyword roulette on resumes, requiring ~100% matches in skills vs requirements.
Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:5, Funny)
I consider it a long-term investment.
=Smidge=
(...any day now...)
Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget the beer. Its the one thing engineering students can count on, before and after graduation.
Respect for those who are knowledgeable is low. (Score:5, Insightful)
At the same time that technology is giving more than ever to humankind, respect from management for those who are knowledgeable about technology is lower than ever.
Part of the problem at Microsoft is that it is run by someone with little or no interest in technology, Steve Ballmer [wikipedia.org].
Releasing products that are unfinished because programmers have not had time to finish them seems to be normal top management policy at Microsoft. Microsoft Windows Vista [nwsource.com] is just the latest example. Microsoft employees say things like, "even a piece of junk will qualify" [nwsource.com]. There's no joy in working at a place that doesn't allow you to do a good job.
Re:Respect for those who are knowledgeable is low. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you can expand that from just management and include the population as a whole.
Read The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. He bemoaned the fact that so few of our population have the basic knowledge to understand the difference between science and all the crap stuff out there like astrology.
It's the same with technology: for most people we have already passed the point about which Arthur C Clarke spoke:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Most people don't respect/appreciate what engineers do because they don't even have a reference point from which to evaluate what they do. It's all magic to them.
How does a young person today get started? I built rockets, flying machines, and played with chemistry sets. I took apart old tube televisions. I tried concocting rocket fuel. Now we're a safety-is-paramount-consumer-only-don't-void-the-warranty society. No wonder it all seems like magic to most people! Most things these days are made not only not to be "user-serviceable" but to actively prevent anyone from nosing around under the hood.
When people have no idea whatsoever what it is engineers do they have no way of assessing how much respect it deserves.Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:5, Funny)
Possibly a behavior of countries in their twilight (Score:4, Insightful)
When you eke out a living, you won't pay attention to Ms. Lohan and her ilk, but probably focus your efforts on working hard to advance your career to get bread on the table, and since science/engineering jobs often pay well with some hard work.....
My grandparents came over on a boat from Eastern Europe, after growing up in a bombed out basement in WW I - my Dad was an engineer, and I'm a surgeon. Many immigrants families have similar tales.
Re:It's probably not waning interest in engineerin (Score:4, Informative)
But that would require: someone technically educated in our client company to really do the analysis (i.e. "system analyst") and willingness to pay that person some real money. It is much more simple to hire dozen of engineers in Serbia, to feed them with minimal amount of information and to wait if something will eventually appear as a usable product.
I think I'm turning Japanese (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think I'm turning Japanese (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the running around in circles.
So they have a hard time dealing with fuzzy planning which is very important in everyday engineering work (especially if your boss has no idea what he is talking about). So thats when the marooning (maru in Japanese =circle) starts.
So maybe Japan needs more engineers because the current number does not work efficiently enough.
Also foreigners can easily enter a company or any university here in Japan. Only requirement (except being an ok engineer): reading, writing, speaking Japanese. And takes a while to learn..
Boys will be boys.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had many a friend doing engineering (in mechanical and civil) in school end up in an accountancy firm or bank because nowadays junior engineers get peanuts. Whereas these financial and professional services firms love people with an engineering degrees because they are normally better adept to deal with the quantitative issues, even though they man not have the exemptions from the chartering institutions if you come out with a degree in accounting for example.
This is 100% a money issue in Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll also regularly be expected to put in heroic hours (difference with America: we actually do get overtime pay) when something breaks, which is not typically required of sales staff, although approximately nobody on Slashdot would think our sales staff puts in slacker hours.
Given that you're not compensated extra for being an engineer, and engineering is a more difficult course of study in college (you actually have to, you know, work -- most majors treat college as a 4 year reprieve between murderously difficult high school and murderously difficult life), and that most of your training is going to be on the job anyhow, why bother studying engineering unless you have a particular passion for it?
I should note that I'm in charge of managing our new team of Indians because the suits here are as in thrall of the "Why pay a senior engineer $40k when we could pay him $20k?" logic that American suits are. Not to disparage my Indian coworkers at all -- like my Japanese coworkers, we get the usual mix of engineering supermen and people who could not be taught to make peanut butter sandwitches if they were issued a subordinate to butter the bread.
Re:This is 100% a money issue in Japan (Score:5, Interesting)
I teach at a foreign language university in the Tokyo area. My students get hired to become software engineers pretty regularly. No experience. No interest. They just scored right on the company aptitude test.
See, that's the thing that every single person on this thread is misunderstanding: In Japan, university is just a kind of finishing school. You work your ass off to get in, then play guitar in a band or play American football or some other club activity for 3 years, then spend your last year of university going to cattle-call interviews for all the companies you're interested in. You should probably have your job--the job you will have until you retire, I might add--worked out by about the beginning of your last semester.
Companies do not look at your GPA. They don't look at your transcripts. All they really care about is the name of your school and how you interviewed and how you did on the aptitude test. If they want you, they'll make an offer, and if you take it, they will take care of the rest.
For the rest of your life.
All you have to give in return is, well, the rest of your life. All of it. Every waking hour (and by the time they're done with you, that might be 20 a day). Until you're a hollowed out shell of a human who hates life and chainsmokes through rotten teeth in a stained suit at a barbecued chicken place, slamming back beer and shochu until you've worked up enough of a drunk to stumble back to your home and crash, avoiding all contact with the family you barely know, but despise nonetheless.
Okay, that's a bit of satire, but there's some truth in it, to be sure.
If I were a Japanese kid today, I'd be one of these supposed "dropouts" (called "freeters," for some reason) who just run from temp job to temp job and moonlight at a bar. They make enough money to be happy, not enough to have to pay that much in taxes or health insurance, and they can have a life anytime they want.
Who the hell would want to be a salaryman in Japan?
The likely problem, I think, is that Japanese corporate culture has finally been rejected by the generation of kids who have grown up knowing nothing but the rich Japan and don't have the fearful, hard-headed, overworking mentality of their parents.
That's my reading of the situation, anyway.
free timers (not freeters) (Score:5, Informative)
Got it?
By the way, your description is neither satire nor exaggeration. The security side of it is no longer reality, but other than that, you're better than 90% accurate.
I'm one of those who have bailed.
I've seen some companies that have tried to do the right thing by their engineers, but they just get eaten by the next wave of college grads at the next startup willing to burn themselves out for the mirage of a permanent posh position. Only to get their company killed by the wave after next, two years down the road, about the time they've all hit the wall and simply can't compete any more. Those who stay in the industry go into management or go back after taking a break as free-timers to recuperate (never getting married), or do something equally self-destructive.
I place the blame squarely on Microsfot for setting the role model: selling broken dreams.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only in traditional companies (Score:4, Interesting)
And I should know--I left exactly that kind of job at an NTT subsidiary (despite having that rarest of rarities: an intelligent, competent, understanding boss) for a much smaller software company, and negotiated a salary more than twice what I had been making earlier, even taking into account that I couldn't live in a $70/month apartment anymore. It's totally possible to make a decent living here if you're willing to push for it.
Of course, given the way Japanese society works, I imagine most people here don't even consider the possibility of salary negotioations.
"Average engineer" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Average engineer" (Score:4, Insightful)
The Business Analysts et al have more regular hours and work less overtime.
You have a strong disdain for theory, but what is it you think an actuary or a risk manager actually studies? I'll give you a hint what the certifications look at.
Now, your milage may vary, but I don't think your disdain for what you think of as "theoretical" knowledge is justified or practical. Nor do I think your characterization of "geeks" or "Ph.Ds" is fair.
In the interest of full disclosure: I walk both worlds.
autodidacts should not be discriminated against (Score:5, Insightful)
Will correct itself? (Score:5, Insightful)
A personal experience (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take your engineering degree and go to work at an engineering company, they will offer you maybe £22,000 a year as a starting salary.
If you take the same qualification, and take a job as a programmer for a London financial institution, they offer more in the region of £40,000 a year (including bonuses) as a starting salary.
I'd like to get an engineering job when I finish my PhD - it sounds more interesting than programming for a bank. However, it is also my ambition to some day own a house (marriage, children, you know the drill). I know this will involve a mortgage of about a quarter of a million pounds, and with interest factored in, about half a million pounds.
To put it bluntly, I would like an interesting job, but that may be a luxury my family cannot afford, so I'm willing to compromise. And apparently the free market values my engineering degree more in non-engineering roles than in engineering roles.
You don't "run out" of engineers or janitors (Score:5, Insightful)
What took you so long? (Score:4, Insightful)
Engineers value (Score:3, Insightful)
On a degree, you find that you have to pay for very expensive text books (you never thought books could be that expensive), whilst courses like English get away with £5 ($10) or less cost books to study. All science degrees take up a load of time in study, whether at university or your own time.
Engineering / IT are uncool subjects because most lecturers teach in a style that it's just one long math test.
Students should be given grants to study sciences, and no grants for the other easy subjects that universities seem to push these days.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Engineers value (Score:4, Informative)
Is that really a major expense? I did a 4-year engineering degree and only bought textbooks for the courses where I didn't go to enough of the lectures, otherwise all you needed was the lecture notes.
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
If the paper your degree was printed on is good for more than wiping your posterior, you took a basic course in microeconomics.
As such, you should know that increasing profits (in this case, wages) tend to have a stimulative effect on supply. Decreasing real wages -- which are what we are experiencing what with flat wages and an inflationary economy -- tend to have the opposite effect.
Please apply the education you spent tens of thousands of dollars, and recognize the truth: If you can't find enough engineers at the price you want to pay, it's most likely because the price you want to pay is too low.
Sincerely,
An engineer who recently took a microeconomics course in his MBA program.
PPS: On a related note, Americans DO want to do those jobs, just not at the wages you want to pay. Economics, yes? kthnxbye.
Or even this, when you put a URL tag on it: (Score:3, Informative)
Total BS Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Total BS Article (Score:4, Interesting)
The cynical part of me... (Score:3, Insightful)
When people throw out numbers like "already short half a million", the smell of bullshit tends to follow, along with greater foreign worker quotas and a larger number of students enrolling into the programs that "need employees".
Inevitably, 5-10 years out, you end up with a large number of poorly trained / poorly qualified students looking for jobs along with a number of foreigners who are willing to work for a lot less than a native.
Sure, it's easy to pay these people less, but quantity doesn't overcome a shortage of quality - especially in fields such as engineering.
Engineering visa requirements are insane (Score:4, Informative)
1)You need to have graduated in engineering from a 4-year university somewhere, preferably somewhere famous
2)You need no less than 10 years of experience in the field.
3)You have to pass some funky test that the visa office administers.
4)The guy in the visa office who approves all the visas is subject to mood swings, and will approve or reject a given application based on a) the position of the moon the previous night and b) whether there was any Pocari Sweat left in the vending machine at lunch time, among other things.
You won't even get close to 4) unless you clear 1~3).
This "shortage of foreign workers" is artificially imposed at a far-higher level than what is implied in the article.
Take a look at slide 9 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Take a look at slide 9 (Score:4, Informative)
No longer attractive (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, there is a clear, anti-intellectual trend in many Western societies. Most people have never understood that scientists are not there to find The Answer; that the most important thing in science is the question. So, they have become disillusioned and don't feel they get what they want from scientific research.
And of course, the money. You study hard - sometimes even extremely hard - for many years, you borrow money to survive and to pay for your education, and then you find that you don't actually earn much afterwards. In many countries an academic earns less than the average tradesman, whose education was 3 - 5 years of salaried apprenticeship; as an academic, you will normally be in debt when you are newly educated, whereas a newly educated welder, builder or whatever is likely to have no debt.
All in all, the only reason why anybody would choose an academic career is because they feel a deep calling.
Outsourcing to Japan (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I just got back from the SODEC trade show in Tokyo last week promoting our company's outsourcing services... As someone whose company which is engaged in providing software outsourcing services to Japanese companies, I can personally attest to the barriers to entry involved in doing this. Language is a serious one: while we would like to think that we are motivated enough to try to learn, it is a very tough language to try to master, and misunderstandings can be costly. We were humbled when we were handed a Japanese software specification which took us a month to reasonably understand but a only week to implement and test. Japanese also seem to have an entrenched attitude of looking down on foreigners, and having more than a little skepticism that the people in companies such as ours will be able to adapt to their ways of thinking and doing things. So far, we haven't seriously disappointed our existing customers, but still, even a brick-headed software engineer like me can sense their skepticism. They are also a lot less flexible than other outsourcing markets that we have had the experience of working with. These are some of the problems that we've encountered, but still, we do think that going into the market for the long haul will be profitable. They really have few choices to remedy their situation with the way things are going.
Can't fight demographics... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Can't fight demographics... (Score:4, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see if the US can maintain its high levels of skilled immigrants in the face of rising global wealth. It is one thing to snag a skilled Indian engineer when India is one big impoverished wasteland. It is an entirely different challenge when sections of India approach American levels of comfort and wealth at a small fraction of the cost.
Re:Can't fight demographics... (Score:5, Funny)
Make it prestigious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple as that.
Rubbish. I don't buy it. (Score:5, Interesting)
How else is it then that I'm struggling to survive as a freelance Software Developer with 8 years of experience under my belt? Why is it that I'm not even considered because I don't have a grade - allthough I can easyly out-develop any graduate I've met?
This whining is nothing but a salary lowering measure. The best that will happen for true experts is that salaries and benefits will reach the old levels.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You just answered your own question.
If you truly can "out-develop any graduate you've met", prove it. Go get the little slip of paper that gives them the career advantage over you.
You may even learn something at Uni that you didn't realize you should need to know.
Not as simple as it seems. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not even at the college level will you find decent computer courses that can mass produce decent programmers. Japanese is naturally a less abstraction oriented language, and in school, they get attached to the details and technicalities, making the courses boring, difficult, and alienating, not to mention unproductive. What they really need to teach is how to abstract those details away and how to be constructive. This is done creatively, not logically.
Then there is the whole video game situation. These programmers don't mix with other industries, so it acts like a huge black hole for programming talent by not sharing their talent pool with the software industry.
Overpriced and incompetent, software houses in Japan have wrecked havok on Japanese businesses since day one, and now pretty much everyone is just scared to try anything.
Re:Not as simple as it seems. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with everything else you've said except this. I don't think the language is any more or less abstract than English. I can say whatever I want in either language. Whether or not that person has the background to understand what I'm saying is another story. The problem isn't linguistic, it's cultural.
The problem is that classrooms are overwhelmingly teacher-centric. The Confucian idea of a school is that you have the teacher in front disseminating all the knowledge, and the students in their seats receiving the knowledge. This is great for rote memorization of kanji but horribly inefficient for anything requiring creativity. A bad teacher will teach someone how to play baseball by sitting him down in a chair and telling him about gravity and the musculature of the human arm and the sweet spot of a baseball bat and the measurements of the playing field and the position of the players. A good teacher will throw him a ball and say, "Catch. Now throw it back. Here's a bat, try to hit the ball as I throw it." Baseball is learned by doing. The same goes for foreign languages such as English-- you learn by speaking to others, by writing new sentences, by practicing it repeatedly until you can do it easily. But English is taught here in middle school and high school by some goofball reciting grammar points from a textbook, and forcing students to memorize vocabulary lists and conjugation tables. And Japan wonders why its students can't do well on TOEIC and nobody can speak English. Programming and creative engineering work exactly the same way. They simply can't be grasped by listening to some guy jabbering in front of a group of people. Coding can only be mastered by doing. For some reason the test-obsessed Japanese haven't wrapped their heads around that concept.
Sorry, I'm a bit bitter. Years of trying to change the education system here will do that to you.
Shortage at what price? (Score:5, Insightful)
should be specified. I'm correct when I say there's a shortage of gasoline
at $1/gallon. But I can find plenty of gas around here at $3.80/gallon.
This money argument is specious. (Score:3, Interesting)
You're technical people. Get used to the fact that you'll never earn anything like what a CEO's PA does: they've got more on their plate thn we give them credit for. Not only have they got to organise a capricious meatsack with an ego the size of God, they've got to interpret the whims and rants of said person into intelligible commands for their minions. On top of that, they've got to look good while doing it.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not belittling our associated trades: I love what I do, and the day that I give it up for something else will be a sad one. The 'engineer as demi-god' days are over, for now, because we don't have the same sociological drives anymore: we're not in a post-war depression, there is no cold war, there is no great enemy that's immediately tangible. We are, currently, comfortable, aside from the self-imposed economic problems.
While we're not as socially respected as we once were, I don't believe that we were ever part of a richer social subset, unless employed by a government program of some description. Culturally, we're more used to luxury now. The traditional view of an engineer/technician is that of someone who is rather conservative in their habits, choosing to express themselves through their craft and abilities, rather than having three EeePCs.
Of course, having said that, the next manager that asks me why I'm so special, and whether I deserve the money that I earn, because 'we can outsource' is going to get a knee in the groin.
Robots can't fix everything I guess (Score:5, Funny)
Look Japan if you need help with impregnating your women I'd be happy to help.
Gee, Really? (Score:3, Informative)
Or, you can get a degree in management, and your salary range at the same level of achievement as the engineer in the previous sentence will be in the $250k - $1m range. And you'll have the option of going senior executive, and hitting numbers 20 times that.
And management is not harder than engineering. (different skill set, and hard, but not harder)
Gwarsh, I just can't understand why there's a shortage of engineers. Oh well, perhaps someday this inscrutable enigma will be solved.
On a different note (Score:3, Informative)
Does Japan have a shortage of good places? (Score:3, Insightful)
The US used to have a number of really good places to work in engineering. We all knew where they were - Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, HP Labs, DEC R&D, IBM Almaden, RCA Sarnoff Labs, Lockheed's Skunk Works. At one time or another, I've visited most of those places, and been impressed with the people. All are gone, or a shadow of what they once were.
What do we have today? Google? Google is an advertising agency. All the classic good places were part of manufacturing companies, where engineering turned into working hardware. I know of little places doing good stuff, but the little places come and go; you don't have a career there.
Is something similar happening in Japan? As manufacturing moves to China, in time, the engineering follows. The outsourcing organization is hollowed out, and eventually replaced by a China-based company. Japanese companies have been outsourcing electronics manufacturing to China for about a decade; not as enthusiastically as US companies, but outsourcing nonetheless.
Yes, there are good engineering places where people have full careers in the US. I visited one recently, a well-known visual effects movie studio. Some of their staff have been around for 15-30 years, and everybody is very good at what they do and proud of it. Their CEO is big on keeping the core team together, because they know they have an organization that can deliver good work on tough jobs on schedule. The place is advanced technically but felt very retro, in a good way, as an organization. Few such places are left.
That's why few people want to become good engineers.
videogame nuts (Score:3, Funny)
I pity them.
Re:Mr. Fukuda, tear down this wall! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Germany has been there for more than a decade.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying they're right or wrong, it's just the way they want it to be, and it's different from the way chosen by Europe or the USA. But one thing is certain: by pursuing this policy Japan has no "risk" of becoming "less Japanese" over time, while Europe is slowly becoming more Slavic, Arabic, Latin etc. each day. Whether "going international" is ultimately good or bad for Europe on the long term, or whether "going ethnic" is ultimately good or bad for Japan on the long term, is something we'll only discover when that long term is over.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I second the other replier's call for pharmacy school. Two years of undergrad, 3-4 years of Pharm.D. program (6 years total after high school). I have 5 cousins who just finished