[Electrical] Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

[mhardy6647]

Let’s cheer up, folks. People have been complaining about the decline of the world since Aristotle.

... and not without reason

 

[krabapple]

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”​

who said it first?

 

[valerianf]

"People have been complaining about the decline of the world since Aristotle"
There are still some period when the society is making progress and others when it is a full regression.
In the 60's, 70's, 80's there was engineering competition for new projects: nuclear power plans, supersonic jets...
At that time most of the semi-conductor plants were located in the US.
Young students were competing for EE engineering.
People were believing in a better world.

Nowadays, we are far from this world.
The founder of TSMC is complaining about the EE stafing of the new semiconductor plan located in the US.

 

[Shorty]

And isn’t the same thing happening to popular music? Why spend years learning to play an instrument if any halfwit with a laptop and some software can score big?

 

[BlackTalon]

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”​

Good for the children! Never blindly accept everything 'authority' throws your way. And true respect is earned by deserving it, not because someone didn't get knocked off by the plague in there 20s. And as a parent, I am not upset when my son contradicts me (which is 99.9% of the time) as long as he has good reasoning (which is 10% of the time ). On the flip side, you can get punished by 'authority' so you have to not be a total dumbass about how you show your contempt.

The best future leaders are the ones who question why things are the way they are now. In many cases they will find out there are good reasons, but other times they will find out it's 'just because' and no one really remembers why it started being that way.

Heck, at some point someone decided it would be nice if men wore dress suits all the time -- even construction and factory workers. Some people went along with it, and I eventually became pretty standard/ expected. It took 100+ years to break that one back down in the US. Thankfully many smart people knew that how you dress is not a reflection of how smart you are, or who good of a worker you are, and were in critical enough positions to give the finger to those still pressing the old standards.

 

[SIY]

Our university is just starting up an EE department. It should be interesting to see how that ends up being structured.

FWIW, my boss (the dean of the engineering college) is female. And very much NOT a "diversity" hire- she is absolutely awesome. Ditto for our section of the materials engineering department, where we have four tenured or tenure track professors, two of whom are female and quite brilliant. The students I work with are really well-grounded psychologically as well as being smart as whips. I am highly optimistic about engineering's future.

 

[jbattman1016]

Plenty of EE around when you go to a school that has an EE program. It just sounds like they are putting the jobs where the EEs don't want to live.

 

[JP]

Our university is just starting up an EE department. It should be interesting to see how that ends up being structured.

FWIW, my boss (the dean of the engineering college) is female. And very much NOT a "diversity" hire- she is absolutely awesome. Ditto for our section of the materials engineering department, where we have four tenured or tenure track professors, two of whom are female and quite brilliant. The students I work with are really well-grounded psychologically as well as being smart as whips. I am highly optimistic about engineering's future.

Selfishly, does that mean there's a window for micro donuts?

 

[preload]

Things were never the same after Radio Shack went bankrupt.

 

[SIY]

Selfishly, does that mean there's a window for micro donuts?

Maybe. No promises but if it can be done, I’ll also reap the benefits.

 

[DonR]

Heck, at some point someone decided it would be nice if men wore dress suits all the time -- even construction and factory workers. Some people went along with it, and I eventually became pretty standard/ expected. It took 100+ years to break that one back down in the US. Thankfully many smart people knew that how you dress is not a reflection of how smart you are, or who good of a worker you are, and were in critical enough positions to give the finger to those still pressing the old standards.

"Dress for success."
"Clothes make the man."
"To judge a man, look at his shoes."

I think cars now take up some of that stupidity.

"You are what you drive."

All of that just screams Used Car Salesman to me.

 

[JP]

I’ll also reap the benefits

Absolutely.

 

[kongwee]

Not already in my country where infrastructures are very important for us. Green energy, EVs, massive subways, Green AI buildings, Energy redistribution, zero human automation cargo ports......etc Other side of the earth is massive green industry, AI, automation, EV, HSR, dark room manufacturing, drones, space station......etc