Now: Shaping the Future of Microwave Engineering Jobs, Shaping the Future Economy
The RF/microwave engineering community is relatively safe these days. Demand for skilled RF engineers far exceeds the supply and people's jobs are safe... for now.
Looking at the big picture, it is inevitable to realize that the short supply of microwave engineers endangers the existence of those vacant positions and also of those currently staffed. RF engineering and other science jobs can disappear in an offshoring process, as has occurred with production, service and software jobs. Those fields allow cheap labor, R&D and science centers to migrate to wherever technology talent is available. Every microwave engineer job not filled in this country will eventually be filled somewhere else. Every lost engineering job takes away from demand for other positions as well. Unlike the past millennium, the United States is not self-sufficient anymore. It pays hard cash for foreign labor through import of products and services, which it cannot produce domestically. When science and research centers migrate offshore as well, this country will have nothing to base its economy on.
Microwave engineering is core technology and is already essential infrastructure in many industry sectors (communications, defense, medical, automotive, transportation, retail, etc.). We are now in the midst of a race for next generation technologies laying microwave infrastructure in all those markets and more. Extensive R&D efforts occurring now across the globe are also drawing a new map of global technology powers.
Losing technology leadership in the international arena will result in a long-term impact on the country's economy and hence security and stability.
The goal is to ensure the availability of science and engineering resources needed to sustain leadership in technology and innovation. Microwave engineering is our agenda. The same approach should be adopted in other science and technology sectors in order to protect all strategic technology and education assets while we still have them.
Isaac Mendelson
ElectroMagneticCareers.com
Isaac@ElectroMagneticCareers.com
RF/Microwave Candidate Pool
The shameful state of the RF/microwave candidate pool has again raised its ugly head. This reminds me of the recession from the early 1970s when we had very few universities, colleges and trade schools turning out graduates with skills in the electromagnetic field.
Our industry suffers when corporations are not supporting the educational systems to ensure a healthy crop of new technologists every year.
Now that we are in a recession, we still have thousands of career opportunities that we have no candidates to apply. The result is that contracts are late on delivery and our future through innovation is stalled.
It is up to industry and the educational system to keep the RF/microwave industry strong; they have to work together to support studies in this sector.
In the '70s, corporations like Raytheon, M/A-COM and many others supported several universities to develop microwave/RF studies. That solved the problem for a few years, but now we are back to square one.
If you are working with a company in this sector speak with your management and speak with your university, college, or trade school to promote education in the RF/microwave field.
I've seen similar times of shortage in engineering power and there is much to learn from what was done then.
Dave Germond
Founder, Cleared Executive Search
dave@clearedsearch.com
(813) 425-3100
