I graduated with a BSME in 1997 and began to work in the Aerospace indsustry shortly after graduation.  Before graduating I worked for 3+ years on university space programs.  So I’ve been involved in the aerospace industry for about 13 years now.

Since 1997 I’ve been hearing talk in the media about the need for more engineers and scientists in this country.  After getting laid off for the second time in less than 2 years I began to realize that the talk in the news by CEOs and HR depts about the need for engineers and the reality of their actions didn’t line up.  I got laid off despite good reviews.  I got laid off despite more than enough work to go around.  I got laid off (with 100s of others) despite company profits in 9% or higher.

Why?  For that particular company it was the unreasonable demand of the CEO that profit grow by at least 15% year over year.  The company possessed an 85% market in a mature industry, where does 15% growth in profits come from?  Getting rid of employees.  But it was a game where they laid off people in Oct and hired just as many the following Jan or Feb.  Most of the time they were hiring the same people but into different positions where we usually had about 6 months of “getting up to speed” only to get laid off 9 months after being hired.

At the same time one company is laying off engineers another is asking Congress for more visas to allow foreign born engineers into the country.  Foreign born engineers work less – I’ve heard they work for about 75% of the native coutnerparts.  I’ll explain why this is a bad idea for the country in another post.