US Losing R&D Dominance To Asia? 461
bednarz writes "U.S. companies are locating more of their R&D operations overseas, and Asian countries are rapidly increasing investments in their own science and technology economies, the National Science Board said in a report released this week. The number of overseas researchers employed by U.S. multinationals nearly doubled from 138,000 in 2004 to 267,000 in 2009, for example. On the education front, the U.S. accounts for just 4% of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded globally, compared to China (34%), Japan (5%), and India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand (17% collectively). 'The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking; well above half of all such degrees are awarded in Asia,' NSB said in its report."
asian all the way down.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And most of that 4% in the US is Asian anyways. Just hope we can keep them here in the US after graduation instead of shipping them back to China because our fucked up immigration policy.
Re:asian all the way down.... (Score:5, Funny)
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It lost Rolemaster dominance to Mordor.
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Why don't we clear up a misconception here? That of "American companies". There aren't very many "American companies" traded on the stock exchanges. Go ahead, try to find some. IBM? Nope - they are a multinational conglomerate. Microsoft? Nope - ditto. I'd have to actually look, before I stick my foot in my mouth about one or another companies, but most of them are multinationals, with absolutely no loyalty to America, or to the American people.
I happen to work for an American company. It is NOT tr
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They shouldn't be here in the first place if they're taking slots that belong to our own citizens.
I'm not from the US, so I don't really know, but I always understood that a "slot" at a university in the US is reserved for the person that pays. If the citizens can't pay it, than the universities will just fill these slots by foreigners who can, no?
No sense in not training our own versus helping the enemy.
In light of what I said above, you might want to consider Ferengi aquisition rule N 177: "Know your enemies ... but do business with them always."
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They shouldn't be here in the first place if they're taking slots that belong to our own citizens.
I'm not from the US, so I don't really know, but I always understood that a "slot" at a university in the US is reserved for the person that pays. If the citizens can't pay it, than the universities will just fill these slots by foreigners who can, no?
No sense in not training our own versus helping the enemy.
In light of what I said above, you might want to consider Ferengi aquisition rule N 177: "Know your enemies ... but do business with them always."
Universities, as far back as I can remember, have been thrilled to take on best qualified entrants, no matter where they come from. They do pay for the honor, however, often as much as three times the tuition of an in-state resident. If you don't like it, bother your public university Trustees about limiting availibility or raising the Out of State/Out of Country tuition rates to your satisfaction.
That said, the US has benefited tremendously from foreign-born university graduates, who have started compani
You're putting the cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the point of cracking open a science textbook when you are going to be competing with people in Asia who can produce the same level of genius for pennies on the dollar?
I don't care what you can learn here in America, someone in China can learn the same thing and apply that knowledge for far lower wages than you.
These people are willing to live in cages. Literally. Look.
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong-citizens-living-cages-literally/ [weirdasianews.com]
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Well, there is that whole "Pursuit of Knowledge" thing. And while things might be on the move, they haven't left yet.
Re:You're putting the cart before the horse (Score:4, Informative)
What is the point of cracking open a science textbook when you are going to be competing with people in Asia who can produce the same level of genius for pennies on the dollar?
I don't care what you can learn here in America, someone in China can learn the same thing and apply that knowledge for far lower wages than you.
These people are willing to live in cages. Literally. Look.
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong-citizens-living-cages-literally/ [weirdasianews.com]
There is a difference between knowning the maths and being clever enough to create something new out of them. This is the difference between Reseach & Development worker bees (who pretty much just do as they are told) and someone who says, "Hey, I could create a whole new product/service with this knowledge I've acquired!" (We'll be hearing, next, how all the innovation is leaving the US, too, because some people in Asia aren't simply content to perform repetitive analysis and form-filling. Good on them, I say.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're putting the cart before the horse (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason that's true is because of our veneration of the Most Holy Lord, Our God, The Dollar.
Jobs and technology are being shipped overseas. Anyone with a brain can see where this road leads, but the people walking us down that path don't give a shit, because they'll retire and live like kings before we get there.
Those same robber barons are simultaneously fighting tooth and nail for economic policies that favor the rich. Median wages have stagnated for decades while theirs have quadrupled. If the new wealth had been divided more equitably, median wages would have gone up ~33% since 1980 (that's post inflation).
And in order for those robber barons to win the fight, they need hordes of easily manipulated people to vote their way. So they make sure that their media puppets and pocket politicians create plenty of wedge issues designed to make Americans despise one another, and that includes the vilification of intellectuals (now a pejorative in the US).
So you're left with a populace that is poor, anti-intellectual, and so desperate for employment that they'll abandon all the workers' rights that their parents and grandparents won for them.
The robber barons are a cancer on the nation. They're killing us. They have been for 30 years, and within another 30 the deed will be done.
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The real problem is that our modern economy most richly rewards bankers and lawyers.
Re:You're putting the cart before the horse (Score:4)
It is pretty wacky that our economy rewards those who don't actually create, more so than those who do. It doesn't seem like a formula for long term success.
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Interesting link. Here is a sci-fi story about even-cheaper-than-foreign-labor AI and robotics leading to unemployed US Americans ending up in "Terrafoam" cages: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
A great essay by Philip Greenspun on why US Americans, especially women, avoid science:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science [greenspun.com]
"Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs i
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Re:Then change the preferences to lock Asia out. (Score:4, Interesting)
Next time you use a USB device, google up who invented it.
Ok, right after I finish bitching about the stupidity of the connector design. What idiot thought it'd be a good idea to have a connector that can only go in one way, but that is symmetrical?
I just hope the guys who invented the electrical and software parts of the spec aren't the same as the moron who invented the mechanical part.
Re:Then change the preferences to lock Asia out. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Hmm, sounds like I come from a similar background to you... have you tried simply maintaining a resume / profile at monster.com ? Sorry to sound like a shill, but I pretty much got every job from employers and recruiters looking for me, rather than the other way around.
Even with a degree from an Ivy-League school, if the employer doesn't first have the position open (and not just because it's a formality when they're already trying to hire someone specific, which is the case with most official job postings
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That's because Jesus doesn't approve of STEM. Jesus loves lawyers, or he wouldn't have created so many of them.
Re:Then change the preferences to lock Asia out. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Enemy"?
I happen to believe that there is no sense in paying the Chinese to build products that we are going to buy. Especially when we're just supporting the mistreatment of their workers.
On the other hand, there's every reason to have Chinese and Indians and Iranians and Nigerians, etc come to this country to learn. Because they raise the average.
My daughter coasted through high school, even though both of her parents are professional academics. She had little ambition and little direction. Her interaction with foreign students who actually place a very high value on their education has had a great effect on her. When she got to college, she saw how hard some people work as opposed to some of the kids she hung around with in high school. She saw students helping each other with study groups, tutoring, even sharing books. It took her a while but now she studies with a group of kids that includes Chinese and Korean and Eastern European students, and in Mathematics, when you hook up with smart people, it's a big help, as opposed to many American students who come in as big swinging dicks and think they've got an A coming as a birthright.
National borders are artificial. Cultural borders are not. There may not be a reason to see research and development as some grand competition, or the moral equivalent of war, but there is every reason to start spending a lot more money, public money, on R&D. Not because we have to "beat" the Chinese, but because we have to beat a whole lot of problems right here at home, and over-come the increasing anti-intellectualism of many Americans. Of course, I don't think that's going to be an applause line at the South Carolina Republican debate tonight.
National borders are artificial? (Score:4, Insightful)
Try moving to China to get a job. I dare you. Good luck with that. Then come back and tell me how artificial those borders are.
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Try moving to China to get a job. I dare you. Good luck with that. Then come back and tell me how artificial those borders are.
Wow! That's a lot of research to do for a slashdot post.
But what is your point? That you cannot emmigrate to China? China has several types of visas that can be used for this purpose: short term visas for business (6 months, although this can actually be higher if you are coming from the US!), study visas and of course permanent immigration visas. Yes, you do have to show that you have legitimate business or a job that awaits you, but what country does not have some stipulation like this?
Re:National borders are artificial? (Score:5, Funny)
There's literally tons of American expats living and working in China these days.
Well, yeah, but since they're Americans, that's only about a dozen people.
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By denying US citizens such education, you only reinforce the anti-intellectualism that you complain about.
You're gonna have to actually prove that such education is "denied" to US Citizens. You're going to have to show the rates of US Citizens that want to to go grad school, but are refused in favor of foreign students.
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If your own citizens are inept, uneducated and incapable of doing the work required, companies have to fill the skilled positions somehow. When I last posted anything on education on Slashdot, I was greeted to calls of "you can quit school at 15 and do anything". Well, apparently "anything" doesn't include anything that actually makes money, makes new products or makes new industries, and if there's a strong feeling amongst even the geeks in the US that being uneducated is cool and acceptable, then I can't
Train the US citizens instead, thwart offshoring. (Score:2)
If your own citizens are inept, uneducated and incapable of doing the work required, companies have to fill the skilled positions somehow
Then you train said people to correct for such deficiencies - should they really exist. Invoking the words global, competition and skilled are just code words for expressing contempt towards US citizens.
Having a "made in the US" label on every employee might sound cool to America in times of high unemployment but it would kill businesses or force them overseas. And that means losing even more jobs, not to mention both corporate and income revenue for the government.
Yet you underestimate the power of the US Government and its ability to make an overseas move unprofitably painful. Or if they wish to prevent an overseas arm from trying to make a transplant.
Do you really love this country, or do you have some wish to have the US bow before the world?
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The ways that the US are being criticized are not constructive. They imply that the job is done when the US is finished off.
Absolute bullshit.
Re:Then change the preferences to lock Asia out. (Score:5, Interesting)
That would make some sense if "our own" actually wanted to be trained for technical careers. Very few of them do; you can see this by walking into any American university's engineering classes.
Of course, we can debate the causes for this (is it the jobs are unpopular because kids aren't interested in "hard" subjects? or is it that the jobs don't pay enough relative to the time and effort required and age discrimination is too common, so smart kids are avoiding these careers because the American companies have made them bad jobs, and they're going into finance and law positions instead?), but whether the cause is from the bottom or the top, or a combination of the two, it is what it is: Americans aren't interested in technical careers, while Asians are. The Asians aren't taking away anyone's jobs.
Bullshit (Score:3)
The Asians aren't taking away anyone's jobs.
No American wants to compete with 3rd world wages. Other countries protect their workers, not the USA.
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Asians working at US firms as engineers aren't getting 3rd-world wages, they're getting paid 6 figures, far more than the average pay for American workers.
Change Affirmative Action then (Score:2)
If that's the case, US citizens should be able to be given preference based on minority status - a statistical one - while the Asians would be stripped it.
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Wouldn't matter. The numbers of US citizens (which include many people of Asian descent, so stop with the racism/exclusion) who are interested in getting into Grad School is still far, far lower, meaning you'd still have huge numbers of foreign students.
And the only thing I can find wrong with that is the fact that US students aren't that much interested in getting graduate degrees anymore.
Re:Change Affirmative Action then (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of times, if you get a TA or RA assistanceship, your tuition is paid and you get a monthly stipend, in effect paying you to go to school. Yes, you'll have to do research (more likely do grunt work for your prof) or teach undergrad classes (more likely do grunt-work homework grading and study sessions), but it's better than tripling your student loans.
The downside is that you're stuck in school for 2 more years, making no real money, while you could be going into industry and getting real-world experience while making close to 6 figures. You probably also would be building up more interest on those undergrad loans, though you can usually defer payment. Once you get out, you will get a higher salary generally for an MS degree, but not so much more that it makes it worth it, most likely (this is debatable). But for a PhD, it's much worse; it takes even more time than the MS (compounding those interest and no-pay factors), and you don't get any more salary for it except for a few select disciplines, and in fact it'll disqualify you from a lot of jobs because they'll think you want more money (which you will), and they don't want expensive workers, they want cheap ones. Generally, PhDs in engineering fields (and most others) are only useful if your career goal in life is to become a university professor.
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Last I heard (and this I think was back in the 90s when I was in school), Asians and Indians are NOT given any Affirmative Action preferences, as they are not "underrepresented minorities" (if anything, they're very overrepresented). Blacks and hispanics, OTOH, do get preferences; just walk into any university engineering class and count the number of blacks and hispanics there.
Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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More or less, if we want this to change we need to do something about patent trolls and force corporations to demonstrate the need to import workers to fill those jobs if they want to get the necessary visas granted.
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This is simply the race to the bottom that corporate America is pursuing writ large. When we traded our democracy for a corporatocracy, this was the inevitable result.
"Race to the bottom"? So what do you recommend to encourage corporate America to stay in America?
Consumers, not Corporations, did it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simply the race to the bottom that corporate America is pursuing writ large. When we traded our democracy for a corporatocracy, this was the inevitable result.
You are mistaken. It is Consumer America, not Corporate America, that is responsible for the race to the bottom. Corporations do not care where things are made or who makes them. All things being equal they would have things made locally by locals. There are coordination and transportation costs when you move manufacturing or development to some distant place. These additional costs would have to be offset somehow.
Corporations primarily care about sales, costs are secondary to sales. Cost cutting is only desirable if it (1) generates new sales or (2) preserves existing sales but increases the profit margin. Now consider who controls the sales, it is the consumer.
Consumers are responsible for the current situation because the consumer preference is for the lowest priced product or service, the consumer does not care where manufacturing or development takes place. **If** consumers did care where manufacturing or engineering took place and **if** this preference was reflected in buying decisions then corporations would not engage in off-shoring since it would hurt sales.
In other words the U.S. experienced a lot of off-shoring because consumers rewarded those companies that off-shored with sales. **If** consumers had punished those companies but buying domestically manufactured/engineered products from competitors then off-shoring would have been a failed experiment and not have become a major trend. It was all in the hands of the consumer, it still is.
While much manufacturing has moved off-shore the web has made it easier than ever to find domestically manufactured products. If consumers start showing a preference for such goods then off-shoring can be reversed. The power is in the hands of those making the buying decisions, the consumer, not the corporation.
Yes, but... (Score:2, Funny)
...we're the leader in Human Studies diplomas. We're all set for the future.
Nuclear power and is a shit load of natural gas US (Score:2)
Nuclear power and is a shit load of natural gas in the US
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There's tons of things you can invent; obviously I can't list any examples because they haven't been invented yet, but I can point to some things that could be developed as the basic ideas have been invented: space elevator, orbital solar power stations, moon mining, useful fusion power, electric vehicles good for more than just short commutes, personal rapid transit systems like SkyTran, and lots more.
We just don't invent (or develop) many things because of too many problems in our society: patent trolls a
But did they LISTEN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But did they LISTEN? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has been happening since the 1970s.
The problem is that US law as it has evolved in the past two decades is very hostile to a R&D culture:
1: A nascent product can be sued out of existance. I remember an issue about a helmet company refusing to put out a new safety feature for fear of a bankruptcy producing class-action lawsuit because they didn't do it earlier.
2: IP laws are so tangled that a company has a minefield of patents that are overly broad or vague. It only takes one violation to have a company shut down and liquidated.
3: The media shows tech-savvy people as second class citizens. Joe Sixpack is viewed as cooler than Jane Chemist. Engineers are drawn in the press as mentally deranged, toadies, or people from Asia.
4: Operation Sun Devil scared the [white|grey|black]hat types away from ever working for the US government. Contrast that to China and Russia where this sort of stuff is just as important as physical combat in their armies.
5: There is such an income difference between being an engineer and other fields. A smart high school graduate can go into CS and might score a job of barely existing. The same guy who parties at a frat, gets his general business undergrad, goes to law school and graduates will be making $100,000 a year starting out, especially if he interns and gets well known at a decent law firm.
6: Commotization: Why hire people for 40,000 a year in the US when $10,000 can get a contract with 10-20 of the best from Elbonia with guarenteed results?
7: Tax structure. Payroll taxes are expensive, offshoring gives deductions. Hiring H-1Bs pays more for a company with tax incentives than their salaries cost.
8: "We can't find any CISSPS to work for us for $15,000/year" translates to "We cannot find any useful talent in the US... we need more H-1Bs!"
9: It is easy to wind up in jail for vague charges if one shows to be technologically competent. So, people tend to hide this. See #4.
With the laws and regulations in place that make the US actively hostile to anything but sports heros, rock stars, and actors, it is absolutely no wonder why there is little to no technological progress here.
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This.
In Asia a company hires 10 engineers and 2 lawyers to make a new product. In the US a company hires 2 en
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Exactly. You cannot separate the R&D lab from the plant floor. Both make common use of key personnel and resources.
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Well, everybody on this site has read a comment or two of mine.
lose [slashdot.org] your manufacturing [slashdot.org] and lose your economy [slashdot.org].
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Why would we want dirty manufacturing and industry in the US??
Jobs. Further, manufacturing doesn't have to be "dirty". Its just that most companies are lazy and cheap, and would rather turn some 3rd world country into a shithole than invest in clean manufacturing.
In addition, I'm sorry to say, but not everyone is cut out for white collar or knowledge work. There are a lot of people who's main skill is their brawn.
Dirty Manufacturing (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would we want dirty manufacturing and industry in the US??
Better that we have lawyers and doctors and movie directors and investment bankers and graphics artists and social workers and compliance officers and other good clean people like that.
What makes you think that the world wants to buy the services of our lawyers? Or the doctors? Are you expecting the lawyers to sue the world to support the movie directors, even when the movies are made overseas (to save costs, if nothing else)?
American investment bankers are not in great demand either lately. The world seems to value Japanese graphics artists more than American ones. The Government is cutting back on the social workers -- we need to save money. The rest of the world doesn't seem to want American compliance officers, either.
However, the rest of the world does pay for American coal. We have the largest proven coal reserves on the planet, and if we don't manufacture finished goods to ship overseas to pay for our imports we'll just have to export coal. Well, that and cut our standard of living back to the level that we can afford as a country whose primary enterprise is digging holes in the ground.
Sensationalist crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with Asia having well above half of the world's population.
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Asians cheat alot and copy each other (Score:2)
Asian do group work on solo projects and there high / college is all about the test and cramming for it.
Re:Sensationalist crap (Score:4, Informative)
Indians have the following Option's for Higher Education.
Typically if you have outsources your "Low skill high effort" work you are working with someone from Category 4 & 5 who could not get work in the "High skill" sector.
R & D doesn't simply go to lower cost (Score:5, Interesting)
China and India have had massive, massive pushes to educate engineers, medical workers, technology workers, etc. The shift is the pay off.
A couple decades ago my brother, an engineer with Dow Chemical related the project he was managing - an project would be begun in North America, passed to a team in Japan or Oceana, then passed to India, before passing along to Europe and back to North America - each location meeting its objectives as part of the project. That was two decades back. So you can see there are people capable of engineering, research, medical discoveries and such in abundance by now. No doubt someone in Thailand is waking up about now and will correct any spelling errors I have made in this post.
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he was managing - an project would be
a project
You're welcome :) (although I'm not in Thailand, but in cold and dark Scandinavia)
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he was managing - an project would be
a project
You're welcome :) (although I'm not in Thailand, but in cold and dark Scandinavia)
Ah, yes. But you didn't catch all my punctuation errors, which will be detected and forward to the next time zone - all part of the 24 hour continuous global project that is now an industry for /. posting! (c:
Re:R & D doesn't simply go to lower cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. I've made this point several times.
Generally people who think of the 'innovation' economy are largely ignorant colonial thinkers. They lurk in academia or places like Silicon Valley and by in large live in a bubble.
They tend to think like 'I'm working on high-tech and it's a great living' so if everyone was as educated as me, everyone could have a good educated job! Of course it eventually hits home that there's no demand for so many educated people.
It's great to be educated... but that doesn't mean people are going to pay you lots of money for it.
The progressives especially have pushed the idea that education leads to jobs. Which is true... so long as there aren't that many educated people.
But as more and more of the world becomes educated, in reality you run into the same problem that manufacturing hit. Its a commodity. Just like how being the only literate person in a village hundreds of years ago probably entitled you to a reasonable living. But today, in a Western country where pretty much everyone is literate... it means nothing.
And yes a portion of that means that with free trade and globalization, R&D work will get pushed to the country with a lower standard of living. This is not just in terms of pay, but also in terms of quality of people. For example, given the pay scale in North America, a decent software engineer might make 100k. That's not going to attract the best and brightest. They've learned and now go into finance, law, medicine...
Compare imagine what quality engineer you could buy in India/China for 100K? You're talking the best and brightest... and they're motivated.
And people who now worry about high-tech moving offshore face a huge moral dilemma. They've spent the past 50 years with the following mentality.
- farm work? let migrant workers do it.. our people will find other jobs
- textiles? we can do it cheaper overseas. who cares about the western textile worker's job.
- manufacturing? we can do it cheaper overseas. who cares about the western manufacturing worker.
Now suddenly, their 'educated labor' is a commodity and can be done overseas... now suddenly you see people worrying.
Why should the manufacturing worker or service sector worker should have to pay higher prices for western made R&D or pay taxes to support Western R&D?
Yes, I'm educated and work in high tech, but I do get pretty annoyed at educated people be they coworkers or those in the public sector who seem to think education entitles them to a high standard of living. It's going to hit home pretty fast.
Eh, literacy pays? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then why was literacy so long the domain of Monks? Who were not known for their richness...
Even back then an education was of limited wealth. A person needs a baker each and every day but how often do you need a letter written when you are a lumberjack or a small farmer?
Star Trek never touched upon the problem of what all those billions of people making up the rest of humanity were doing. It had some episodes with miners in them but they made no sense if you wondered why people would mine for stuff in a world with replicator technology. Count the number of episodes where they still desperately need a part despite a working replicator sitting in every cabin.
The simple fact is that the western economy post WW2 survived on the factory worker and the harvester (miners etc) when those jobs disappeared entire regions grew depressed and never really recovered. Meanwhile modern media kept showing "Friends" with people with jobs that never require them to simply be in from 9/5 doing just average not very interesting work. The entire economy (if you believe the media) runs on odd jobs paying enough to afford gigantic flats in the heart of New York and more time off then a Greek working for the state.
Walmart is celebrated by these people as offering very cheap goods without anybody wondering that if nobody local gets payed to make these goods and if the people selling them don't get payed much either... then who can afford these goods in the long run?
Go ahead, go to a store and try to buy western made goods... oh, they still exist, somewhat... e-reader. Name one made in the west. Tablets? MADE in the west? Where is the factory with the production line paying dozens if not of hundreds of people funding an entire large city producing iPads?
It isn't just about engineers who make iPads, it is about engineers who make brake pads. Just as most scientist end up working in a production facility doing the same tests over and over, most engineers do not make ground breaking tecnology, but keeping that development on break pads going with all the production know how, that can keep an entire town in business. Jobs for the average person, a reason for the highly educated to come back to their home town.
Remember a little game called SimCity? Fun game right? Do you remember how it was very easy to create slum areas by accident because there weren't enough jobs near by?
Okay... now enlarge SimCity to SimWorld and remove all the factory from that little corner of the world called the west and put all the work and housing the "Asia"... what happens? Do the endless living areas with only shops become an affluent area or ,,, do they become Detroit? Manchester? De Bijlmer (pure living area now being torn down in Amsterdam Holland, do you think bad planning are a US problem only?)
Douglas Adam spoke of three arks, what were the A and C arks again? And what ark are we keeping here? Think about it, we outsourced production (c ark) and now the research is following (a ark)... that makes us the B ark... better start collecting those leaves.
Then kill offshoring already. (Score:3)
If it is indeed so, get rid of any means to facilitate it - offshoring being the primary offender. No different than stopping blood from a wound versus allowing someone to bleed to death.
This is one of the better cases for why we should train our own instead of everyone else. If there's any spare room after the least capable citizen has been trained, only then should the US consider friendly internationals - for which are not generally found in Asia.
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And if the government wants to kill offshoring, they need to make it easier to hire & do business locally. Bust bad union control, bust badly constraining regulation, lower employment taxes, complete education system overhaul, etc.
If all you do is ban offshoring, I'm not sure the current domestic climate is even capable of picking up the slack anymore.
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Basically what you said is, "Make the US like China."
No thanks.
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Basically what you said is, "I'm fine with the USA stepping out of R&D, manufacturing, and innovation in general." These things do not happen in clean, isolated, academic-only think-tank utopias, they happen where there are boots on the ground doing productive things and seeing what comes of it.
We do not need to become a China to pull this off, but we have way too many people with established interests preventing innovation for no other reason than their own entrenchment; ie, no environmental, human ri
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Reduce the unions' lock-in entitlements and anti-competitive control
And in the meantime, give even more power back to the employers. No thanks.
I shouldn't have to say that, but you don't seem to believe that there are any non-good regulations that can be separated out from those that should be kept.
No, there are. Its just that people like you who complain about regulation typically are hammering about the good regulation we have as well. For them, a regulation that causes a business to spend money is a bad one, regardless of whether it's effective or not. There are many who believe that safety regulations for coal mines (like the ones that were ignored in the Massey Energy mine collapse a few years ago) are "bad" regulation.
We still need complete education overhaul
I d
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You seriously think that'd achieve anything? All it'd do is that foreign companies would offshore production themselves and then import their products into the US at a fifth the price US companies charge.
Or are you proposing going full out protectionist and banning all foreign imports and products and devices and technology?
Re:Then kill offshoring already. (Score:5, Interesting)
In a weird twist, I'm working for a company in China as an engineer. They couldn't find the talent there. Chinese engineers are missing a critical talent: the ability to fail.
It works like this: in China, you are taught there is a correct answer for each problem. If A then B. If C then D. If E then F. Always deterministic. You never fail because there is always a tried and true path.
Works great for copying, but not in improving or creating products. That takes going down unexplored paths. And failing. And recovering. And failing. And recovering.
When starting a new project with my team, I was asked "What is the method for creating a new product?" They fully expected me to give them a recipe. Something deterministic.
I'm underwhelmed by their engineering skills too. They jump on the first method/equation/model they find and refuse to budge even when I present them with physical evidence that their model is flat out wrong.
Sorry for venting. I shouldn't complain. I'm getting very well paid to do something an entire department of 50 other engineers can't do: go out on a limb.
Reporters not losing their sensationalism edge (Score:2)
Who needs "intellectuals" anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Half the american public are against "intellectuals", against evolution, deny climate change and think that investing in science is against God or is far to great a burden on the economy and you're surprised at this?
americans don't care about this (Score:5, Informative)
The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking
Americans don't want to learn science and engineering, because it's hard. It takes years of extremely hard work.
I went through university with a business major. I saw the kind of work he did because he was asking me for tutoring help; the "hard" things he was learning were unbelievably trivial. I'd estimate his degree was a factor of 50 easier than mine; I could have taken all his classes, not studied for shit, and come out with straight A's, all with less effort than I was spending on a single difficult engineering class.
Of course, he now makes more than I do. So why on earth would anyone want to go through what I did, when you could go through the far, far easier thing HE did, and be more financially rewarded for it?
In the end American's lack of interest in science, technology, math, and engineering will sink the ship. You cannot compete in today's global world unless you (as a people) understand how that modern world works, and Americans don't wish to understand, because it's hard work. You reap what you sow. I've been saying this for the last 30 years, and now here we are, going down in flames to better educated countries. Surprise surprise. I used to give a shit, but then I learned there was nothing I could do to make people care, so I just gave up. No point in getting upset over it. I'm resigned to my country falling out of its former place as the world powerhouse of science and engineering. In the 50's, 60's, it was very much the USA, and everyone else a distant second. Now, that's reversing. So be it.
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Agreed, though there were a good few European nations in the 50s and 60s that weren't quite so distant -- at least, in very specialized fields. Britain's luxury goods and highly customized products were, at that time, still a force to be reckoned with. Germany had lost a lot of infrastructure, but was doing some very reasonable work in mechanical engineering, as were the Swedes. France had a wine industry that was a class (and glass) or three above anyone else.
These specialized niches have been worn down fo
Re:americans don't care about this (Score:5, Interesting)
For the most part, I don't think American students shy away from engineering degrees because it's hard. The students are just going to where the jobs are. When they hear about companies outsourcing engineering jobs to Asia and bringing in H1B visa holders by the boatload, it's no wonder they persue a different career path. Look at all the women going into nursing. There's a big demand for nurses and it pays very well. Nursing school isn't easy, either. But they're in demand, and that's the key.
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Lucky for me I have some tech skills and grew up around computers so I really didn't need the degree to get into engineering. I already had most of the skills before I graduated high school and have learned eve
No surprise (Score:5, Informative)
I have a relative who works as a researcher for a major drug company. She had to move laterally in the company after they announced they were moving all new drug discovery work to China.
As a senior Computer Science PhD student, this has me worried. I also know of a few recent American CS graduates that have gone to China to work as researchers for a particular American software company because that company's US research offices weren't hiring. I still know plenty of other graduates who had no difficulty finding research positions in the US, but it seems that a few major players are shifting their work to Asia. Hopefully the rest won't follow.
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U.S. Companies? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need a new standard for what a company has to be like to call itself a U.S. company and be eligible for any the benefits of such title. Multinationals with little U.S. corporate responsibility need not apply. If corporations are people, then let them take a citizenship test.
We have to many people in college tech apprentices (Score:3)
We have to many people in college and a lot of the tech fled needs apprentices systems AS CS IS NOT IT. So colleges are being dumped down to fit in people who are not college material but can do good a apprentices system. Also lot's of jobs don't need college and alot of people don't belong there.
I say have more tech schools / apprentices systems and for IT you need to people at all levels but CS for all does not work CS is to long and to much high level for most IT jobs when a apprentices / tech school is a much better fit.
Yeah, but we are leading in lawyers (Score:2)
China is good at copying stuff BUT then cheap out (Score:2)
Look at China high speed rail systems it's a cheaper but unsafe ripoff of the japanese system that has no passenger fatalities due to derailments or collisions.
Of course (Score:2)
Of course the US is losing R&D ground to Asia. R&D takes money, but in the US huge salaries are paid out to executives and the rest tends to go out as dividends. R&D implies a company's management and owners have the ability to defer gratification. Something that is sorely lacking nowadays.
Degrees are meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
In my recent (and extensive) experience with interviewing people who are recent graduates, I am finding a very large percentage of people with bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science who can't write even the most simple scripts in any language... people with "expert in TCP/IP networking" in their qualifications, or who have three years testing routers and switches listed as experience who don't know what NAT means or what a MAC address is... people who don't know how to list running processes on any platform. These are people who are graduates. They have their degree. And those degrees are worthless. We've had half a dozen positions open where I work for a long while, the bar just isn't set that high, but we're not finding qualified applicants.
It doesn't matter what nationality the school or the "graduate" is. Poorly-prepared graduates are a world-wide phenomenon. Sure, Asia is producing a large number of graduates, but the majority of them aren't going to be very useful. The U.S. is producing fewer engineering graduates, but they're just as useless.
Yes, the universities are to blame. I don't know what they're teaching but it has little to do with reality and doesn't prepare the students to be employable. But the students are also to blame. Surveys show that between 75 and 98% of students admit to cheating, and don't feel particularly bad about it [glass-castle.com]; the universities also don't seem to think that cheating is anything to get worked up over either. No wonder nobody is learning anything.
All of this is why I don't think that it's a big deal that the US produces only 4% of engineering degrees; 4% of "nothing useful" is no worse than "35% of nothing useful". If those degrees actually meant something, or correlated in any meaningful way to success (both for the individual and for the employer), I'd be more concerned. My real worry is that Westerners aren't even interested in engineering any more; they all want to be in sales and marketing and other nontechnical fields (or "soft" majors like political science or humanities, followed by whining about how nobody will pay six figure salaries for their chosen field). I'm not sure why this is,,, given how little tech work someone with a tech degree seems to actually be required to do, it can't be because of academic workload. Mind you, the profound anti-intellectualism that is still the rule in Western society may have something to do with it.
-sigh- Kids these days.
Re:Degrees are meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or better yet, don't. Getting a degree doesn't show you have a better work ethic or any other abilities than the general public... It just shows that you're bad at math... Get deep into debt by spending obscene amounts of money for years, rather than EARNING money full time for that same period.
If you look at job listings, what do they always say? "BS in com
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-Study up on the particular technologies they use at the job you are applying for - By this I mean, do more than read a wikipedia article. Go out and actually deploy something on your home network. Really get in there and mess with it.Figure out if it is something you are truly interested in or are just doing it to get a job.
-Re-write you resume for that particular posit
Re:Degrees are meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)
Be able to solve practical problems. More and more frequently, employers (like my company) are using quizzes as a filter. I can't speak to other industries; I'm in QA at a networking products company.
Don't claim to be an expert in something you can't back up. If your resume says "Expert in TCP/IP networking", I'm going to be asking for more than just "describe the handshake at the start of a TCP session". If you claim to know Python, I'm going to ask you to write some code on the whiteboard that will involve process management, recursion and exception-handling. If you claim to know regular expressions, you're going to need to know how to extract phone numbers. If you say you know Linux, be prepared to tell me what the /proc filesystem is. And no matter what, I'm going to ask about the implications of the GPL in coding.
Know what the company does and what its main products/services are. When I ask someone if they're familiar with what we do, there's little that is going to be more off-putting than "I didn't bother to find out".
If you have a serious mad-on against Apple, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, or whatever, leave it at home. All operating systems suck. All phone suck. All database servers All business practices suck. They just suck in different ways, and I don't want to have doubts raised about whether someone is going to be disruptive, argumentative, or less than enthusiastic when they're asked to work on a particular port of a product. The more opinionated someone is, the less they actually know.
For the love of Celestia, please spell-check your resume. Communication is important, and if someone can't be bothered to get it right on their application/resume, I'm pretty sure they're going to be even worse on the job. Resumes loaded with errors go straight into the trash can.
In short, be able to demonstrate coding skills, initiative, and enough platform skills to convince folks of your basic competence. You do that and you're above about 80% of the folks out there right away.
Ask questions. Remember, you're interviewing us right back! There are quite a few companies out there that you want no part of (stress-monkey coworkers,
Lots of math/bscs majors cannot find jobs (Score:3)
I could not help but notice how many posts from seeker.dice.com forums, and elsewhere, are of the same nature. Below are just a few recent examples:
(btw: dice did a relaunch of their message boards yesterday, so I am not sure if the links will work. But I promise you, these are all from 100% real posts).
“Recently I graduated from the Network Engineering program at Trios College in Ontario, Canada in September of 2008.”
“It's a shame that I spent $18,000 on this college program that should h
Silly Question! Of Course the US is Failing! (Score:3)
In over twenty years working in prototype development, I saved for being laid off instead of retirement. Anytime there was a hiccup in the economy, the first thing that management would cut from was R&D and product development. The mentality of a business focused management -- as opposed to a product focused management -- was since they were already manufacturing product, they could delay the release of new product for a while. As any idiot with half a brain can figure out, when you stop or delay developing new products or improvements to existing products, your company can quickly fall behind the competition and become irrelevant.
As a testament to that, most of the companies I used to work for no longer exist. One was bought out by their primary competitor. Another still struggles to exist.
Hand-in-hand with this was the fact that the moment they put someone with an MBA in the role of CEO, the company was doomed. Because these people had no concept of what it took to develop and manufacture product, they would start making cuts indiscriminately in order to increase the profit margin -- not profit -- of the company. They would cut a few thousand workers from the payroll in order to "save" $3 million and then pay the CEO a bonus of $5 million for saving the $3 million by putting a few thousand people out of work. Immediately after, the CEO would pull on his golden parachute and jump the company, leaving it to fail.
Anyone in doubt of a business-focused CEO vs. a product-focused CEO need only look at the most perfect textbook example company: Apple Inc. After they ousted the product-focused Jobs from being CEO, they stuck business-focused men at the helm. Apple all but failed until product-focused Jobs retook command of the company. The first thing Jobs did when he returned was immediately put a stop to the financial dealings and focused the company on producing product again. The rest is history.
Business people do not value their creative staff. I remember listening to a vice president complaining about the salary that a particular engineer was being paid, saying the guy brought in no business, didn't sell anything, didn't spend any time on the phone talking to customers and just sat quietly in a corner all day doing nothing. The VP felt that any engineer being paid more than $60K per year was being overpaid. The engineer in question was the very man who designed and developed the technology behind the product the company sold. The very reason the company existed! The VP made life very unpleasant for the engineer and eventually the engineer gave up and quit. Over a short period of time, most of the people who worked with him left as well. The VP reported to the Board of Directors that he had managed to save nearly $1 million in 'administrative costs' (the salaries of the people no longer there) and successfully campaigned this into a six-figure salary increase. What this VP actually did, without realizing it, was effectively scuttle the company. After I left the company, I learned from others it was well over a year before the CEO and board members of the company discovered what had happened. By then it was too late. Lack of improvements and enhancements to their product made them irrelevant in the market. Their competitors, on the other hand, suddenly exhibited a surge in improvements and enhancements to their products, as well as the introduction of new products.
This was not an isolated case! One of the best examples of management not understanding or appreciating the true assets in the company was the case of Motorola vs. Intel. The Motorola PowerPC processor was the first mass produced CPU chip to break the 1 GHz barrier. The PPC was making inroads against Intel's Pentium line of processors and was rapidly moving ahead as the microprocessor of choice for new computers. Intel's line, on the other hand, had reached its theoretical maximum speed and was not moving ahead. Then, just as it seemed the PPC was about to truly gain momentum, things ca
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Why should asia bother to trade for them when their government can just steal it through espionage anyway?
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Priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
Most American parents can't or can hardly afford to send their children to University anymore.
That's what college loans are for: so that you can start your working life far enough in the hole that you could have bought a house with the money. It saves you from buying a house, freeing you to pay rent on top of the loans until you can finally buy a house later for your grandchildren to visit you.
Or at least that seems to be the theory. Me, I paid for all of mine so they can start out clear. That's more important to me than retiring to a place within golf cart distance of the clubhouse.
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Loans also seem to be something against "SOCIALIZM!!!!1!!!". Many Scandinavian countries have free or extremely low cost tuition for their schools. Their populations are extremely educated as a result. But just mention the idea here, and you get branded a communist who wants to steal from the "job creators".
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Most American parents can't or can hardly afford to send their children to University anymore.
The educated ones can find a way .. there's such a thing as putting the money away for the pending college education, rather than buying an SUV, eating half your meals out and having a big screen TV, it's called Forward Planning.
Something else ... send kids to the local Community College for the first two years then they can complete their studies at a State University in two more years. Amazing how many people overlook this option in favor of $150/credit and sitting in a lecture theatre of 600 other stude
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Then it's time to get innovative and come up with stuff that will work regardless of who copies it. Innovation doesn't stop just because the rules of the game change or don't seem fair.
Just because math is hard doesn't mean we don't learn calculus because we got a few headaches trying to learn algebra.
And innovation doesn't have to stop with technology. We need innovations in law, business, finance, and culture as well.
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Re:What's the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Admiration is nice, but sadly it doesn't usually pay the bills. While I'd definitely be flattered if someone copied one of my designs and it got mega popular, if I don't get money from it, it doesn't really help me. I still have to eat.
Prison Jobs (Score:2)
We can be prison guards, drive armored vehicles to transport prisoners, work building more prisons, cook food for the prisoners. There'll be plenty of jobs. Relax.
they're easily outsourced, too (Score:4, Insightful)
If the production (now), design (mostly now), and basic R&D (very soon) are all done in some part of Asia, how long before the shareholders realize that they can temporarily bump the stock price even more by paying some Asians 10% of the compensation that the American executive team is getting?
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
Baloney. The US is still the world's largest manufacturing nation.
China assembles iPhones, athletic shoes and similar consumer knick-knacks. The US makes airliners, CPUs, pharmaceuticals, heavy mining and earth-movers and food.
http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/ [time.com]
Yes engineering has advantages when located close to manufacturing sites. That is not the same as R&D.
The US R&D spend rate is still very high. Even though it isn't as high as it should be it is still only barely exceeded by all of Asia combined as a percentage of the world, i.e. 31% vs 32%.
From: http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/finance/news/asian-countries-collectively-top-us-r-d-spend.html [scidev.net]
The total science spend of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam rose steadily between 1999 and 2009 to reach 32 per cent of the global share of spending on science, compared with 31 per cent in the US. Per capital the US spends 10x Asia.
The US needs to up it's game, certainly. But dig into the stats and the picture is not at all what it is painted to be in sensationalized news articles.