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State of the Union

megaladon

New member
I am starting this thread in hopes of it will occasionally be updated by you and your knowledge.

Date: 12-11-2014

My company (American) was sold to another company (Indian) recently. Over the last year we have seen mass layoffs from the AG & Construction companies out of the mid-west. Most of this was due to the fact that our bill rate is higher than other engineering services and our customers are and continue to fight back. What I have heard so far is that we plan to lower our bill rate by hiring younger talent but as of now it is dependent on sending work offshore so that we can meet our customers expectations.

I would love some input from the entire community on what you know and what you have experienced recently relating to your future and the future of CAD employment. There seems to be a feeling in the air lately that we all had better get ready for a change coming in the next 5-10 years.
 
I would start looking at other companies. Businesses that employ engineers are booming across the board. In fact there are complaints about engineer shortages because so many are set to retire in the next 5 - 10 years.
Also, a lot of people tell me since there was little entry level hiring from 2008 to 2012, now there's a shortage for the 3 - 5 year experience sweet spot for a mid level hire. They are looking to outsource more for that now, and they're howling to expand H1B visas to get qualified immigrants in. This is all self-correcting, and wages overseas are going up faster than you think.

I do think that if/when CAD goes onto the cloud, it will open it up to more people. That doesn't mean there will be some incredible change. We all know that we could pass out 3D CAD to everybody, but there would still be limited numbers of people who could or would use it because it takes a certain mindset to use it and use it well. The best thing to do is stay educated, informed and engaged. If you're taken by surprise then change seems like a revolutionary disruption, but if you stay in the driver's seat then it's just more twists and turns.
 
I'm not surprised to hear this. I saw the same thing happen with tool and die about 20 years ago. Tool and die is still around, but no where near what it used to be. I've seen tool and die makers that became nurses because it was a career with a future where they could make comparable money. I also personally know two tool and die makers that took their own lives because they couldn't cope with the fact that the bean counters stole their livelihood. When you do something that you LOVE to do and all of a sudden you can't do that anymore you have to keep your head.

The players that are left are still here because they have adapted. I now have a much more interesting job designing a wide variety of things for a small company. The money is no where near what I used to be accustom to but there are way more important things in life. The tool and die shops that are still around have totally changed the way they do things and are able to compete because they offer something the offshore parties can't. Things like more personalized service, innovative ideas, and the ability to stand behind your product and quickly deal with any problems.

It's troubling to hear the first line of defense is to hire younger talent (because they work cheap). That sounds like an oxymoron. Any person's talent is limited by the amount of time they have had to develop it. Younger talent doesn't have as much experience - and it's the experience that develops talent. The talents they have are just the basics - the ability to create a design in CAD. This is not the job. CAD is a tool, not the end result. The design is the end result. The ability to innovate, think outside the box - that's the real product here. The problem is the people that write the checks have no idea how to evaluate this. The only thing they can evaluate is dollars and cents. They are comparing apples to oranges.

Thanks for the soapbox.
 
Job Outlook

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expects that the employment of mechanical drafters will keep pace with the average rate of growth experienced by all occupations from 2010 to 2020, increasing by about 11% over the decade. The BLS published the median annual salary earned by mechanical drafters at $50,360 in May 2012. For details, please visit http://www.bls.gov/oco/
 
"inshoreing" We do a great deal of training for companies that forgot Creo or Pro/ENGINEER or what ever we are calling it now days..... We are doing quite a bit of training to companies that have forgotten Creo because of the offshoring efforts and found that they can catch mistakes more effectively if they stay involved more than 20 or 30 percent. Plus most companies now days do a minimal control drawing instead of fully detailed drawings. Learn something new like surfacing ;)
 

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