It is not just Apple that is losing key skills. Almost all Engineering and Tech companies who contract out work are doing the same.
Outsourcing to cheaper locations might be good for the beancounters (note... their jobs hardly ever go overseas) but the skills drain is immense.
It happened to me twice. The last time I refused to train my Indian replacements. They had two people just to do my job.
The experiences of the first episode made me think long and hard about training people who really didn't care about the job and who were unable to ask relevant or hard questions for fear of losing face with their boss.
I have warned my grandchildren away from going into the IT business as there is no future for it in the west.
What about software engineering?
Err.... That's what I did for 44 years but I know that all sorts of other skills are migrating abroad in other branches of engineering. All those factories in China churning out physical things that we could make at home apart if it wern't for the cost. If that goes on long enough then there will be no skills left at home. Some industries are finding that China/India/Bangladesh are not always the best to make stuff and are starting to bring production home. IF we don't act soon and stop this rush for the bottom in terms of price for everything then we'll have no one able to do anything when it comes to making stuff in a couple of generations
whats falling is the independent engineer - the kids who learned to because it was new and interesting. Technology is not what it use to be in the sense that everything can basically bought now vs having to build it yourself. That generation of people have all grown up and telling their kids "do something else". The same thing happened with construction and masonry. The Italians and Irish who were doing these jobs hauled ass to send their kids to college so they wouldn't have to do these jobs. Construction and masonry is different now because a different set of immigrants came in and filled those roles but they're doing the same thing, they're not trying to have their kids do these jobs.
I doubt the opening line of this piece: "no one" is training engineers any more? So MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Cal-Tech, Purdue, etc., have just dropped engineering from their curricula? I doubt it. I expect those schools have minted more engineers in the past 10 years than during any prior decade. Now how many of those students are American is another question.
The article specifically refers to manufacturing designers and engineers: assembly lines, tooling, machining, paint deposition, etc. Fewer industrial design graduates come out of school having actually spent time in the workshop to build something than before. According to the article, they may just send it to the 3D printer if that.
Pretty depressing article.
Not a surprise at all. I work for a manufacturing company with a bunch of twenty-something technicians. Some of them would be brilliant engineers. When I’ve asked them if they ever thought about becoming an engineer they always said the same thing. If they go to University for a degree they’ll do be in debt for the rest of their life. If they get a tech certificate they won’t have the debt and will have a chance to be comfortable. As long as countries in the West, it’s not just the US, view a University education as a luxury the companies in the west will have this shortage. The same is true of engineers, scientists, doctors, and on and on.
The amount of wasted talent working way below their potential for financial reasons is sickening.
Expertise is developed through years of experience, and good ones are rehired a lot. Young engineers by definition do not have expertise as they are just starting with their careers.
That’s what I was thinking. The obsession with ‘youth’ is probably a lot of what’s going on here. Younger people want to believe their ideas are new, and older people think we need ‘fresh’ ideas, except younger people know so little and so they’re either reinventing a failed wheel (AOC is a classic example...) or not taking into account enough information with their ideas. We need a healthy balance where youth respects and is guided by those with more experience, and where older people are open-minded enough to objectively consider youthful ideas.
That combined with greed—producing things at the lowest cost without regard to the effects—are probably what’s mostly mostly responsible for the problem the article is addressing.
I think the fundamental problem is that education in the US is a privilege rather than a right. Schools are too expensive, many people don't want to end up with a huge debt after graduating. Tim Cook says it all the time, the amount of talent and expertise is concentrated in China, that why they manufacture everything there.
US has to change their ways if they want to catch up with emerging markets.
Not a surprise at all. I work for a manufacturing company with a bunch of twenty-something technicians. Some of them would be brilliant engineers. When I’ve asked them if they ever thought about becoming an engineer they always said the same thing. If they go to University for a degree they’ll do be in debt for the rest of their life. If they get a tech certificate they won’t have the debt and will have a chance to be comfortable. As long as countries in the West, it’s not just the US, view a University education as a luxury the companies in the west will have this shortage. The same is true of engineers, scientists, doctors, and on and on.
The amount of wasted talent working way below their potential for financial reasons is sickening.
I think this is the post I most agree with. The "socialist" nations are willing to put a shoulder to the wheel and subsidize the best students. We don't do "socialism".
I think the fundamental problem is that education in the US is a privilege rather than a right. Schools are too expensive, many people don't want to end up with a huge debt after graduating. Tim Cook says it all the time, the amount of talent and expertise is concentrated in China, that why they manufacture everything there.
US has to change their ways if they want to catch up with emerging markets.
Agree totally, (see my comment above). The only part I would disagree on is the talent. The US and the rest of the west has plenty of talented eager people growing up. But they aren’t nurtured in public school and university is out of reach. The result is they get jobs way below their ability and aren’t available when Apple, SpaceX, and the rest are looking around.
Unfortunately, companies like Apple are often unlikely to hire people with the deep hands-on experience making stuff, even if they can demonstrate talent in bringing products to market because many of these people do not necessarily have the engineering degrees that are usually required for design and engineering positions.
It is not just Apple that is losing key skills. Almost all Engineering and Tech companies who contract out work are doing the same.
Outsourcing to cheaper locations might be good for the beancounters (note... their jobs hardly ever go overseas) but the skills drain is immense.
It happened to me twice. The last time I refused to train my Indian replacements. They had two people just to do my job.
The experiences of the first episode made me think long and hard about training people who really didn't care about the job and who were unable to ask relevant or hard questions for fear of losing face with their boss.
I have warned my grandchildren away from going into the IT business as there is no future for it in the west.
What about software engineering?
Err.... That's what I did for 44 years but I know that all sorts of other skills are migrating abroad in other branches of engineering. All those factories in China churning out physical things that we could make at home apart if it wern't for the cost. If that goes on long enough then there will be no skills left at home. Some industries are finding that China/India/Bangladesh are not always the best to make stuff and are starting to bring production home. IF we don't act soon and stop this rush for the bottom in terms of price for everything then we'll have no one able to do anything when it comes to making stuff in a couple of generations
whats falling is the independent engineer - the kids who learned to because it was new and interesting. Technology is not what it use to be in the sense that everything can basically bought now vs having to build it yourself. That generation of people have all grown up and telling their kids "do something else". The same thing happened with construction and masonry. The Italians and Irish who were doing these jobs hauled ass to send their kids to college so they wouldn't have to do these jobs. Construction and masonry is different now because a different set of immigrants came in and filled those roles but they're doing the same thing, they're not trying to have their kids do these jobs.
That and companies like Apple who are locking down their hardware and software more and more such that the few young people who *are* still interested in how things work, how to make them better, how to modify them and how to repair them, are stymied at the first hurdle. Woz really was the mould and the inspiration for hundreds of thousands of kids to learn C, learn assembly and to learn electronics with his ingenious designs. It's a shame Apple is so anti-repair and anti-tinkerer now that they'll go as far as trying to sue independent repair shops. It really isn't the Apple of yore that I used to idolise
America will always be relying on foreign talents, we are land of immigrants....but it is sad and correct that kids now a days don’t tinkered with anything....unlike my days we do brakes and maintained our own cars, do plumbings etc. Even military folks I was told cannot fixed down to components levels anymore ...how sad.
I know a guy who thinks he's smart because he knows what the acronym "FPS" means and he's good at video games. He's from the same sad Millennial generation as me. ARROGANT, IGNORANT, iKnockoff user who cuts you off mid-sentence with his "intelligence".
Luckily my father was a hardcore tinkerer and I followed his lead as a child. He would invent strange things like doorbells with holiday-themed tones... for fun, our house was filled with open electronics and funny jerry-rigs. Long long ago he predicted a lot of things we see today like game streaming subscriptions. Some of his predictions haven't came but were interesting like electric cars that would be semi-autonomous which would enforce speed limits.
Nowadays kids throw their toys away when they break, my dad used to fix them and show us how.
I think kids today have less motivation, just overall less interest in doing real world builds and repairs. The information resources available today are absolutely incredible, is there a shortage of 'labs' as this article claims - possibly, I don't know. Creativity as a whole is dying - and I do blame the smartphone for that. Kids have little interest in the hobbies that I grew up with, R/C, models, rocketrey, music composition with real instruments, building a PC, even programming computers using BASIC. They live in a virtual world - more interested in seeing something on a screen than experiencing it in real life. Most American colleges prepare kids for service oriented jobs, the few colleges that do have excellent STEM programs are filled with foreign students!
I disagree with one point in the article, personally I think "Googling it" has allowed me to learn and fix even more stuff - I never would have taken the entire front fender off my car - if I didn't have a video showing me how. Or install my own bathroom sink, complete with welding copper pipes. During lockdown, there are so many kids that don't know what to do with themselves ... besides play Fortnite and watch idiotic Youtube videos for hours on end.
That's because all they hear is learn to code, learn to code. Coding is barely doing and most coders lack a holistic view of what they are working on. They like the freedom to hop from job to job and employers like their interchangeability. It isn't the kids.
That said - good work is happening in AI/ML, VR/MR, etc. Also the tech disdain of unions has lead to a decline of skilled trades in tech.
Coding is also an engineering discipline, or it should be. Very little of that makes sense, software is barely doing?
I work for an engineering company, and they must get the cream of the crop of interns. The "Millenials" we get are inquisitive, self-starters, and I've helped a few file to get patents on the work they do here. They don't "go and get coffee" for the senior engineers, but they are given a project to accomplish, leveraging the knowledge of the senior engineers, and have to present their findings to the leadership (VP level). Their biggest complaint was that they wanted to work more time than was budgeted for them, as feature creep was happening on their projects, or they said in a meeting, "Oh, I know how to fix that," and they'd get another project to contribute to.
In fact, last year we had a high school intern whose work was so good, he was offered a scholarship to go into engineering by our company. I spent 3 hours with him, and while touring the factory and watching the manufacturing process, he was asking intelligent, germane questions, and I could tell he was absorbing the information.
I have high hopes after seeing these All-American kids... errr... young engineers.
I doubt the opening line of this piece: "no one" is training engineers any more? So MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Cal-Tech, Purdue, etc., have just dropped engineering from their curricula? I doubt it. I expect those schools have minted more engineers in the past 10 years than during any prior decade. Now how many of those students are American is another question.
The article noted that learning is different from doing. Sure there are maker-hobby collectives but learning high end design requires doing and that doesn't seem to be happening anymore.
Right. My objection is with the "no one is training the new generation" assertion, that is clearly false. This isn't a on/off situation; it's about scale.
I find it hard to believe that all that is going to come grinding to a halt once the boomers or Gen X retires.
And yet, there we have Apple hiring Mr Janicek after his second retirement. If people were coming through they could hire 20 year olds, or 30 something year olds if they needed ten or more years experience ( which should be enough to separate wheat from chaff). Instead they are re-hiring a 60 year old. So in this case there are no millennials or younger who can do this.
Not that Apple isn't partially responsible. Outsourcing of manufacturing etc.
Schools in the west seem to try and stifle inquisitive kids; kids who ask questions that aren't in line with the syllabus (but are still related to the subject at hand) are told to stop asking questions and answer the contrived question that they've been set that is usually full of holes. Especially in the UK with the ingrained socialism in schools, teachers try and treat all the kids as having equal intelligence, which they do not. And therefore most of the time it just ends up with the lowest common denominator setting the pace of the class, resulting in a disproportionate fraction of time spent on the kid who's probably going to end up as a builder or rubbish collector anyway (valuable jobs don't get me wrong, but not skilled), so the smart kids get bored, learn much less than their potential and are not stimulated. Ultimately reducing the quality of the students.
Expertise is developed through years of experience, and good ones are rehired a lot. Young engineers by definition do not have expertise as they are just starting with their careers.
That’s what I was thinking. The obsession with ‘youth’ is probably a lot of what’s going on here. Younger people want to believe their ideas are new, and older people think we need ‘fresh’ ideas, except younger people know so little and so they’re either reinventing a failed wheel (AOC is a classic example...) or not taking into account enough information with their ideas. We need a healthy balance where youth respects and is guided by those with more experience, and where older people are open-minded enough to objectively consider youthful ideas.
That combined with greed—producing things at the lowest cost without regard to the effects—are probably what’s mostly mostly responsible for the problem the article is addressing.
I don't think the article is addressing anything, except for playing in the usual story of many electronics, clothes, and other products being produced overseas. For this sector of manufacturing, the talent and education goes to where the manufacturing occurs. Same old same old. If the USA want this stuff to come to the USA, they can subsidize it or provide incentives to be more competitive. Whatever politics hasn't produced the policies to do this.
In the meanwhile, the USA is basically at the peak of its manufacturing output prior to COVID19. So there is manufacturing going on. It could be the typical story of the nature of manufacturing has changed in the USA, and the new way of doing things have left people behind. You need to be a polymath these days with coding, robotics, materials, and supply chain these days. That takes a lot of time to acquire expertise and you don't acquire that in school.
In the meanwhile, the AI article has very poor examples as Bob Mansfield is ostensibly in charge of a software product and Glenn Reid was rehired for his software chops. There other two examples are home grown experts. You don't hire fresh outs to play high level roles. So, uh, where's the problem?
Hire more Mechanical Engineering ABET accredited US students then. As one, we designed and made products in machine shops and they still do this to this day at Washington State University, University of Washington and every other Pac-12 university. I'm sure it's the same with the B-10, etc. Industrial Design has never been a heavily invested discipline inside the US. It's incorporated into the more rigorous Engineering Disciplines, and sure the less intellectually skilled artisan is going to never get certified and dropout.
I have to run and might not gt back to this thread but just had to add this point, something is really shitty with modern management!!! I work in a different technical field, lets call it medical related for now, and need to train a new generation of automation technicians. It is perhaps the most frustrating experience in my work life that started in 1978 and farm work before that. I can not get management to grasp that you need training far beyond what a college degree offers up. All they care about is the cost and deflect the fact that they spend millions every year on "executive training". I literally can not even do the minimal that I got when entering industry in the small business world. For whatever reason mega corporations can't seem to allocate a penny for decnet training for anybody below the executive level. It isn't for a lack of money either. Mostly it is just plain stupidity.
Yes, Apple and all technology firms do outsource work all around the globe, but in doing so they also open up global markets for the sale of their products and services. The outsourcing of jobs to emerging economies helps to accelerate the creation of a consumer class in those countries as well. Without massive consumption on a global scale, Apple would be a tiny fraction of its current size and market cap.
Apple, like most US and global reach firms, worships at the alter of Capitalism. Capitalists invest in capital, using money to make more money, and as long as the reward systems (like Wall Street and economists) favor those who play this game at the highest level, it will continue as it currently is. Capitalism is king and people outside of the top 10% of wealth holders are only needed as long as they keep consuming as much "stuff" as they can, whether they can afford to or not.
As far as human resources are concerned, there has always been a trend over time towards driving technical competency requirements down the food chain (commensurate with lower wages) and driving business competency up the food chain (commensurate with higher wages). Bank tellers were once considered principles or at least management staff in the banking industry, now they are clerks making little more than minimum wage. Engineers in industry (as opposed to pure research) are the grunt workers of modern manufacturing, product development, and technology services. You need them in vast numbers across a stratified collection of specialties and skill levels, if you want to make modern things for huge profits on a global scale. If the local supply of engineering resources (aka grunts) doesn't meet your demand you have to acquire them wherever you can find them. Like any resource, they still have to be up to the task and available in sufficient numbers.
Unfortunately in the US alone, there is an insufficient stratification of engineering specialties/skills to meet current demands. On the top end, there's rarely an inability to acquire the top-notch talent with the premier credentials, experience, and price tags, but you don't need a lot of them. On the other hand, there's a huge demand for highly skilled, specialized, highly competent engineering talent that can fill in at all levels. Unfortunately, again, the US education system isn't churning enough of these needed resources, not just at the 4 yr university level, but at high-school, community college, and trade school level. Education and knowledge is fabulous, but hard skills and getting things done is what brings home the bacon.
There is no widespread execution model operating against a national strategy to supply US companies with the stratified engineering workforce that it needs to compete globally. Playing politics doesn't cut it, limited scope boutique/hobby programs like FRC and STEM aren't enough, traditional engineering education as the only option isn't working, yearning for a return to the "great past" is meaningless and futile, and blaming anyone other than ourselves for our inability to compete is pathetic, follower constrained thinking. Nobody took away our (US) jobs, we gave them away by buying into economic strategies and implementations that made our workers uncompetitive, and in some case inconsequential, in the global economy.
Comments
That combined with greed—producing things at the lowest cost without regard to the effects—are probably what’s mostly mostly responsible for the problem the article is addressing.
US has to change their ways if they want to catch up with emerging markets.
You reap what you sow.
Luckily my father was a hardcore tinkerer and I followed his lead as a child. He would invent strange things like doorbells with holiday-themed tones... for fun, our house was filled with open electronics and funny jerry-rigs. Long long ago he predicted a lot of things we see today like game streaming subscriptions. Some of his predictions haven't came but were interesting like electric cars that would be semi-autonomous which would enforce speed limits.
Nowadays kids throw their toys away when they break, my dad used to fix them and show us how.
Not that Apple isn't partially responsible. Outsourcing of manufacturing etc.
In the meanwhile, the USA is basically at the peak of its manufacturing output prior to COVID19. So there is manufacturing going on. It could be the typical story of the nature of manufacturing has changed in the USA, and the new way of doing things have left people behind. You need to be a polymath these days with coding, robotics, materials, and supply chain these days. That takes a lot of time to acquire expertise and you don't acquire that in school.
In the meanwhile, the AI article has very poor examples as Bob Mansfield is ostensibly in charge of a software product and Glenn Reid was rehired for his software chops. There other two examples are home grown experts. You don't hire fresh outs to play high level roles. So, uh, where's the problem?
Apple, like most US and global reach firms, worships at the alter of Capitalism. Capitalists invest in capital, using money to make more money, and as long as the reward systems (like Wall Street and economists) favor those who play this game at the highest level, it will continue as it currently is. Capitalism is king and people outside of the top 10% of wealth holders are only needed as long as they keep consuming as much "stuff" as they can, whether they can afford to or not.
As far as human resources are concerned, there has always been a trend over time towards driving technical competency requirements down the food chain (commensurate with lower wages) and driving business competency up the food chain (commensurate with higher wages). Bank tellers were once considered principles or at least management staff in the banking industry, now they are clerks making little more than minimum wage. Engineers in industry (as opposed to pure research) are the grunt workers of modern manufacturing, product development, and technology services. You need them in vast numbers across a stratified collection of specialties and skill levels, if you want to make modern things for huge profits on a global scale. If the local supply of engineering resources (aka grunts) doesn't meet your demand you have to acquire them wherever you can find them. Like any resource, they still have to be up to the task and available in sufficient numbers.
Unfortunately in the US alone, there is an insufficient stratification of engineering specialties/skills to meet current demands. On the top end, there's rarely an inability to acquire the top-notch talent with the premier credentials, experience, and price tags, but you don't need a lot of them. On the other hand, there's a huge demand for highly skilled, specialized, highly competent engineering talent that can fill in at all levels. Unfortunately, again, the US education system isn't churning enough of these needed resources, not just at the 4 yr university level, but at high-school, community college, and trade school level. Education and knowledge is fabulous, but hard skills and getting things done is what brings home the bacon.
There is no widespread execution model operating against a national strategy to supply US companies with the stratified engineering workforce that it needs to compete globally. Playing politics doesn't cut it, limited scope boutique/hobby programs like FRC and STEM aren't enough, traditional engineering education as the only option isn't working, yearning for a return to the "great past" is meaningless and futile, and blaming anyone other than ourselves for our inability to compete is pathetic, follower constrained thinking. Nobody took away our (US) jobs, we gave them away by buying into economic strategies and implementations that made our workers uncompetitive, and in some case inconsequential, in the global economy.