A recent article in the NYTimes is highlighting a crisis happening in Japan. According to the article, Japan is suffering a “flight from science”. It was engineering prowess that lifted the country from it’s postwar defeat but few are interested in entering such professions today.
In actual fact, this is not a problem that is unique to Japan. It is something that is happening everywhere in this world. Even here at Cambridge, a random survey of engineering graduates will find that few end up working in engineering fields while most end up in banking and consulting. Why?
The answer is a very simple one.
Engineers spend many years of our lives working hard and actually learning real skills at university, only to end up in a job that is under paid, under appreciated, working as an expendable component in an over-glorified assembly line, under a boss who knows nothing about solving problems and having them take the credit for the solutions to problems that we come up with.
Hence, such a situation should come as no surprise to anyone at all.
For example, an engineering PhD in the UK, can either get paid £25,000/year for an exciting and challenging engineering job, or get paid £45,000/year for a boring and simple programming job for a financial institution, the choice becomes very simple for most of us. Although most engineers like the challenge of solving real difficult problems, we have to think about things like marriage, kids and a family as well.
Personally, I don’t think that there is a shortage of engineers at all. Most management types think that we are all expendable cogs in the machine anyway. So, economics will dictate the fact that since we can be replaced by any pizza delivery boy with two weeks of training in pressing some buttons in order, we will not get the pay that we deserve.
I believe that there is definitely a surplus of engineers in this world today. This is partially as a result of the push by various governments. Governments recognise that they need a large number of people with engineering skills. But they may have gone overboard in encouraging and pushing people into the service. As a result, we end up with a large surplus.
So, I’ll wait till the day comes when engineers get paid more than bankers. That will actually be the day when there is a crisis of engineering. Until then, we will just have to find other ways to enjoy both the joys of solving real problems, while making enough money to have a life. The only way for engineers to do this today, is to become entrepreneurs themselves.
Sybreon Ones Nought 
I think the attitude of employers towards engineers have a big role in creating this situation. They are letting marketing drive engineering with unreasonable deadlines and functionality demands, leading to crazy schedules and burn out in engineers that really care about making good products and leaving the company filled with engineers that don’t give a damn.
This leads to a cycle where the good engineers drop out like flies and those that don’t care about the job remain. Of course, productivity isn’t as good as it was before, causing the company to start throwing more people at the job. You know, if it takes the 1 remaining engineer that we have 1 month to complete the task, then it’ll just take 4 engineers 4 weeks to do it and if we go out and hire 30 guys, we can finish the job in 1 day! Brilliant!
Now, where do we find 30 cheap engineers to fix this problem? Start bleating out at every opportunity that there’s a lack of engineers! Maybe if universities churn out enough engineers it’ll drive the price down and, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a few good ones that will stay around for a year or 2 before they burnout. But burnout’s a good thing as we can hire some cheaper and younger ones to replace them.
So, you see, there is a lack of engineers but it’s not in the form that companies talk about. This month’s embedded.com has a pretty good article about the pressures in engineering.