A coming engineering shortage ? ---- Who agrees ? 86

[MJCronin]

A recent article says that there will be an acute shortage ... particularly in the electrical field !!!

http://www.csemag.com/single-articl...hortage/7b350ef419c231a9f82abc6c8bd8fac4.html

Who agrees ???

Who strongly disagrees ???

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[MikeHalloran]

"Strongly disagree" doesn't begin to cover it.

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[KENAT]

Well now you've done it MJCronin, waving red meat like that to Molten Metal!

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[HamburgerHelper]

Maybe in certain fields. Power engineering is seeing a shortage that will only get worse in the next five years. The magnitude of the shortage is grossly over exaggerated though. Salaries are not yet reflecting a true shortage but more years of total experience in each department is dropping as people leaving due to retiring are being replaced with fresh grads.

 

[FoxRox]

I probably don't have a great "feel" for the engineering field as a whole, but I would guess the future will be something like this:

People with engineering degrees: No shortage

Experienced engineers with deep and confident knowledge of their field: Few and far between

As a young engineer working for a small town manufacturer, I'm not sure I'll ever make it to the second category.

 

[cranky108]

I agree with the part that I read. And I agree that my salary is not sky rocketing. And I am looking forward to retirement.

There is a shortage of power engineers, and schools teaching electrical power.

I'm not sure this applies to mechanical engineers, as so few of us know what you do.

 

[IRstuff]

That's talking about a VERY narrow segment of EEs, even. There may actually be a bit of a shortfall because colleges haven't really been emphasizing power engineering as a viable sub-discipline, but they hadn't been doing that since I was in college, which was 37 yrs ago, so if there were a shortage, it should have already been evident by now.

The big issue is the 25% over 55 bit. Given the state of most people's retirement savings, it's highly likely that most of these people won't retire unless they can get Social Security maxed out, which would be at 66+, which is more than 12 yrs away for the youngest of that group, and that age is expected to shift further out to 67+ for those born after 1960. And these people would have never all left at the same time.

Conclusion: much ado about little.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Comcokid]

If there is any shortage, it is a shortage of the time companies allowing senior engineers to mentor junior or new-hire engineers.

 

[CheckerHater]

This kind of article comes out every time when something (or somebody?) threatens H-1B visas.

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert"
Arthur C. Clarke Profiles of the future

 

[moltenmetal]

Yawn.

We see these dire warnings continuously- even during recessions. The shortage is seldom claimed to be current- it's usually just around the corner. Soon enough to be worrisome, but far enough away that current measurements of employment levels, wages etc. are deemed to be irrelevant to the discussion about whether or not it's a real problem. Sometimes, it's a current shortage of mid-level people in some cyclic industry which completely stops hiring young people during every down-turn in the economy, which is then generalized to the entire engineering profession... For instance, I can predict with 100% certainty that the oil and gas industry will be screaming "shortage" the next time oil prices rise. All the people they're laying off right now, and the tens of thousands they laid off this past year, will have moved on to other things, retired, or be so far from their oil and gas past that they wouldn't be considered eligible for re-employment.

It has been happening like this for at least sixty years.

Google "IEEE Spectrum STEM crisis is a myth" and read that paper. He does the research and shows the pattern.

 

[FoxRox]

I shared this article with two of my EE buddies last night, and they both said their companies reflect these assertions perfectly. One is a project manager for a utility, and the other designs substations at a large engineering firm. Both reported very large age gaps among power engineers. One was already aware of and educated on the issue. He believes the gap is due to the more fun and interesting choices EE's have had for the past few decades. e.g. designing computers and high tech gadgets. Power engineering has been boring and uninspiring by comparison. However, that is changing now that more cutting edge technology is coming to the power industry all the time.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Comocokid,

Why devote time to training when we are already behind schedule, over budget, and understaffed?


FoxRox,

Not much is changing in the power industry as people make it out to be. There really is not that much that is "cutting edge" at least in comparison to other industries. No one is going to magically figure out a better way to transmit power over transmission lines. Yeah, super conductors are being used or proposed but those are for odd applications like where space is an issue in NYC or for a super substation like Tres Amigas that will connect the Eastern,Western, and Ercot interconnects together to allow wind generation in the midwest flow more freely. Bus protocols like 61850 will change how the substations wired, and tested but the general relay protection philosophies will very likely be the same. Protection philosophies have not changed much even in the move from mechanical to electronic relays. Power electronic devices are used but in very limited applications. The biggest change that I see is the amount and type of green energy being connected to the grid. A lot of upgrades and changes will also need to be made when electrical cars become prevalent. Depending on how slowly the car charges, it will increase the household kwh draw by mutiple, I think in the 2-5 range, during charging.
Compliance to NERC regulation is becoming a cottage industry in of itself. I don't know. I like it because there are a lot of nooks and crannies and when you pull out 40-100 year old text, almost all that you read is still relevant. With that, experience is always valued as opposed to in the .COM industry where fresh grads sometimes are valued over people who have been in the industry for a long time due to them having experience with whatever the new programming language is. Nobody is putting power engineers with 30+ years of experience out to the pasture. It is a mature industry that in my opinion shouldn't be using something like smart grid (too often a solution without a problem) to convince fresh grads that the field is becoming "livelier". It should be instead sold on the merits of being a mature industry with an old and huge 100 year knowledge base that is all still relevant and will never become obsolete.

 

[JAE]

I was told about this shortage coming....about 30 years ago, then again about 25 years ago....then about 20 years ago...etcetera

I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I've suffered through.





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[truckandbus]

I do a lot of the intern hiring for my department and find that about 1/2 of the students I interview don't want to be engineers in the long run so they don't put in the effort to pay their dues to become good engineers early in their careers.

no shortage of engineers, not many stick with it

 

[moltenmetal]

truckandbus: only 30% of engineering grads in Canada work as engineers, so that 1/2 of the students you interview who don't want to be engineers are in good company.

However, your anecdotal observation of the students you interview runs contrary to the measurements. Our local engineering regulator PEO has been surveying substantial numbers of 4th year engineering students each year for quite a few years, and the results are consistent: over 90% of the graduates will either definitely or probably seek a career in engineering. Only about 6-10% know in 4th year that they are going to pursue something else, i.e. medicine, law etc. So that leaves about 60% of the graduating class, ending up doing something else by default, not by choice. And after a few years out of engineering, they're considered "spoiled" and not suitable for re-use. They've lost their profession for good.

Why do so many fail to gain entrance to the profession? Too few employers are willing to take them on and train them. They expect to find people with 10 yrs of relevant experience gained elsewhere, who can hit the ground running. That only works a) during recessions or b) if you offer significant salary premium. People who build their businesses on that kind of growth model SHOULD find themselves with a shortage of candidates in my opinion- they're shortchanging not only themselves, but the whole profession.

 

[SandCounter]

I suspect any shortage would be in quality, not quantity. Employers, regulatory, and boards can always lower the bar to address demand.

I used to count sand. Now I don't count at all.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

The Raising the Bar initiative is raising bar. A masters degree will basically be required to obtain a PE soon.

 

[davefitz]

I think there may be a shortage looming, and the retirement boom is only one factor. In the case of the US power industry, there is a rapid change occurring that will require an increase in the number of electric power engineers to address. Intermittent renewable energy sources, large scale storage batteries, smart meters and demand management impact, and modernization of the grid to bring it to international standards cannot be accomplished simply by snapping one's fingers. I think the response of the colleges should be to aler their curriculum to better address these upcoming issues and back off on training students for legacy technology that is slowly but surely becoming irrelevant.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[truckandbus]

@moltenmetal - what I am finding is that the new grads want to start in engineering but don't want to end up as the seasoned, grey-haired go-to person with 20 years in the trenches.

 

[cranky108]

I think the comment on quality is a good one, as many companies believe they can hire consultants when they need help. However, I have seen a lack of quality from such consultant groups, and employees that jump from company to company.

Electric utilities have been hiring EE's without power background as a way to keep up with the need. This requires companies to do internal training on the power system.
The attraction of the utility industry is stability, so we see more people tired of the high tech job jumping. However, the background in high tech typically does not translate well.

It is true that many companies don't do much training, and some of that is a management problem, but smaller companies can't justify the staffing to train new people (Utility commissions pressure companies to keep staff low). But the NERC pressure is requiring more engineers with understanding of the issues, as well as staffing of regional groups, and new industries entering the power field.