Good to know!

I've heard Australia and Canada are in the same condition

 

Hi Gareth,

Does that research take into account the improved accessibility of engineering software and small to medium run manufacturing options that make hobbyist and entrepreneurial engineers by passion instead of schooling better able to potentially fill many of the consumer level engineering needs?

 

i agree Australia Canada are the same conditions ..

 

I would say about 1/10 people are engineers today. And most of them cant find a proper job. Big Companies do not want to hire newbies, newbies do not want to work for companies that don’t provide a good package, small companies with good packages hire only a few engineers every 2 or 3 years. And the whole thing is a circle of disasters.

To companies that do not want to hire newbies on senior position. Why don’t they promote junior staff and recruit more junior staff? Then it comes down to how efficient the hiring process of the company is and how effectively good their job advertising is.

Honestly, instead of having such a long procedure on hiring the right candidate for the job, if companies would do trial and error on choosing their employees. That would be more efficient, I guess.

Many hiring managers don’t want to recruit senior staff above a specific age, because they think their seniority will cause problems in the team. I wish the hiring process was not so long and tedious. What a wonderful world it would be.

 

I know that Design and Mechanical Engineers are on the approved professions list for immigration into Australia so they must be fairly in demand there.

 

While I agree we do need more engineers, I honestly don't know what the sources think being an engineer means at this point. Education has been progressively watered down and overspecialization is leading to some odd niche jobs or degrees.

I hate to use the expression "back in my days", but back in my days, someone exclusively meshing or exclusively making 2D plans of parts or riveting wasn't called an engineer. Nowadays though, the title is much broader.

A second point is the paycheck of an "engineer". I was last year on a job fair for middle-schoolers (yep, recruiting starts that young) and none of the kids I met was interested in being an engineer. And when the parents ask about the paycheck, they have some weird maybe 80s statistics numbers in their mind. One straight told me he was making more than my boss and he was a Quicktrip (gas station and store) manager with a high school degree.

Oh well.

 

Yeah, true. I'm sometimes shy about calling myself an engineer when around 'real' engineers. I basically draw pictures and make things that work, but if you asked me to calculate anything complex then I'd be lost... but to the average person what I do is voodoo!

I recently adjusted the brakes on the walker/stroller of an old lady on my street and my wife was just like, "How do you know how to do all this stuff?!"

 

This is actually so true, when I am around people who are working in RnD I am usually the quiet one. Just listening to their talk. And thinking to myself am I even an engineer if I don’t do this.

But that is not true. I am more into code development and structural analysis. I don’t design new things, or come up with ground breaking ideas. But people who do come up with ground breaking ideas always need the analysis team to rectify their mistakes anyway. Its kinda like making a good thing better. Making something work more efficient. Small things but it does matter.

Last time I was helping my friend who is data structure analyst and somehow I knew what exactly he was looking for and I was glad to help. But he was so surprised on how I knew something about networks when he himself didn’t know this. Well because mechanical and aerospace engineering teaches everything in combination I guess.