I am getting ready to graduate with my BSEE in June and in preparation I have been frequenting a number of engineering websites message boards to get a fell for the market.
Boy was I in for a suprise. All the message boards I went to were packed with recent grads who could not find employment up to a year after graduating from school. Most were attributing this , at least partially, to the fact that american companies are still importing engineers from other countries to work here instead of hiring american engineers to do the work.
They talk of many workers with H1B visas who are being imported to do jobs that there are 100’s of american engineers dying to do. I also read ALOT of posts buy EE’s with 10 years experience who have been laid off and unable to find work for over a year. And alot of them suggest to teh new grads to PLAN for several lay offs over the course of their careers.
This does not make me feel very good. I put myself thru a VERY difficult program and am graduating with a 3.8 GPA with the hopes of being able to step into a career that I could ride till retirement and make some good money along the way.
The way it looks now is that there is not a market for engineers with less than 5 years experience. And alot of employers want very specialized experience as well.
How and why do companies import people to fill jobs that could easily be filled by fellow americans? And from what I read in Bushs SotU address he made mention of extending H1B visas! Why doesn’t the goverment try to help the situation for american engineers and teech workers instead of making it easier for imports to work here?
I think I made a very smart decision taking a commision in the USAF. I will get a few years exp under my belt and seperate with a TS clearance hopefully. This will help me get a job after. Without that I don’t think I would be too excited about graduating.
Basically, the H1B workers will generally work for less and aren’t going to be a risk for jumping jobs whenever they see a better opportunity. Employers prefer that. Pretty simple for them, pretty sucky for you and my many engineering friends who all worked their asses off throughout university. It is very unfortunate.
Random note, when I switched majors from Computer Science to Eastern European Cultures and a minor in Education, people told me I was freaking mad and made the requisite jokes about burger flipping and denying that there is any work involved in the humanities (hah!).
Then the bubble burst and all of them lost their jobs. More likely to find them “rolling back” the price on Deer Hunter at Wal-Mart than sitting at a cushy computer coding database software.
I believe the hot market now is biotech. My friends there are happy and prosperous.
Purely anecdotal, of course, but I work for a medical product development consultancy. We have lots of engineers, mechanical, software & electrical, also in management. All from the US. We’ve hired a few recently, all from the US. We only hire people with experience.
I also work with a lot of big companies, Honeywell, J & J, Boeing…etc, and thier engineering departments are overwhelmingly staffed and managed by americans.
Sure there are foreign engineers out there, and there is a flow of work to India, but the main reason you’re having difficulty is the fact thst the economy and job markets suck right now.
Pretty much any college graduate will have a tough time landing a job these days, not just engineers.
This is but the latest technique for squeeqing more surplus value from the hides of workers. Manufacturing jobs were sent to Mexico and China. Tech jobs are being sent to India. If it is not practical to export the job, they will simply import the cheap labor to achieve the same effect. The bottom line is that one more decent job disappears to be replaced by a crappy one either here or abroad.
By the way, have you heard of Bush’s plan to replace federal workers like janitors with privately contracted labor? Have you ever seen who works for those building maintainence, i.e., janitorial, outfits. Your got it. Poorly paid immigrants with no benefits or pensions. This is the new, bright furture US capitalism has planned for the people of the US. The new American Dream.
Would you like fries with that?
If this process is not stopped it will not end until the standard of living in the US is not much higher than that of the third world.
As some wealthy nation decides to employ highly skilled workers from other countries, whose education is largely at the expense of the taxpayers of that other country, so the other countries do the same to less well off nations, and the first world winds up sucking the skilled workforce from those poorest countries that need those skills the most.
Yes it is true that first world nations subsidise training and education in third world nations, and there are agencies that employ first world workers to support third world economies, but the real beneficiary is the first world.
You are feeling some of the odd quirky effects in a world market of highly exportable skills.