At Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) we talked to a 55-year-old MIT graduate who’d been fired from his engineering job (he mentioned this in the context of a multi-week cross-country trip with kids in a light airplane; he said that he was glad that he didn’t cancel the trip after he’d been fired). His camp site was organized as well as a typical Hilton hotel.
Another member of our merry band works at one of the world’s largest HR consulting firms. Asked “How could someone so qualified and so obviously competent be fired?” the HR expert responded “stale, pale, and male.”
Happy Labor Day to all of the young replacements!
I work at Intel and in the “stale, pale and male” demographic… We’re not just being replaced by younger, we’re being replaced by younger people from another country…
You’re not selling the engineering major nor an investment in MIT education, Phil. I think it’s good as a basis to get started, but a lifelong career as a non-management engineer has a lot of challenges, compared to working in medicine, for example. You’re always vulnerable to competition from newly educated, cheaper, single workers. This competition doesn’t start at 50, it starts at 22. And the competition from immigrants and outsourcing makes this, which has always been the case, even more true.
The problem is the total lack of quantifying output of engineers. The choice between expensive and asks tough questions and cheap and just says “yeah” is obvious. If you add in some additional differences – like none or her rockets blow up versus all of her rockets blow up, it is not such an obvious question. It is another Fred Taylor paradigm shift happening now – those who can measure will greatly succeed, those who can’t will die.
Where would we be if there wasn’t a social order? Maybe we’d traveling to other stars by now, we’d have fully autonomous air traffic control. Instead, we all have to die of cancer so the tomography algorithm can be designed by 25 year olds.
What is so surprising? This a part of “normal” risk management in corporations. I thought of this for a while after it happened to me.
Say, you are one of the most skilled engineers in your firm who knows how to handle the most critical problems.
– Your bus count is close to 1.
– If the company gets into trouble and people start jumping ship, think of who leaves first (hint: those who can find a new job quickly)
– You are opinionated and are bad for morale. Remember, there can be only one boss. Foreign-trained engineers often respect hierarchy much more, while your values stand in the way. Hence you are not helping to build a team, especially not a cost-effective team.
– You decided not to go into management, and that was your choice. As a technical lead, you are riskier than a manager $ for $: the manager can be replaced with not much harm. Moreover, once 75% or more of your staff is foreign it only makes sense to have the manager of the same ethnic group.
– The reason managers are not fired as often as the top technical people is not conspiracy: they have less impact on the firm, they are easier to manage, they are more disposable (their boss can afford to wait before letting them go)
– You are expensive, you can be replaced with 4 or more foreign-trained engineers, and for many tasks 4 beats 1. (Want to dispute the number? I was replaced by a team of 11; think of it.)
– You may think that once you are gone, your project is going to die and the business will suffer. You are probably right! but the firm is likely to survive. Remember that risk management always costs money: it’s rather bad for short-term profit yet absolutely necessary.
To conclude, unless high risks is part of your firm’s business model (as may be the case with some startups), you will likely viewed as an unacceptably high risk and disposed of proactively. Your options are:
– join a startup: but startups are often cash-strapped, so you will have to accept a risk of a deferred comp even if you are getting closer to your retirement age
– become a consultant: same risk plus income irregularities
– start your own business: even higher risks, plus you are extremely unlikely to stay technical
– retire early and move to Central America
There is the Uber/Lyft type job (Pilot) that the over the 50 crowd can move into…
I saw even the older Indian engineers laid off from the Intel. I don’t know anybody that made it to 65.
@JW: The chip design is moving overseas. Why keep those engineers around if, e.g., all Intel’s flagship CPUs are designed in Israel? The US worker productivity is not very high when measured per person per hour, and the only reason those numbers grow at all is due to (1) automation and (ii) the staff churn/augmentation (what you observed). That is why the gig economy is thriving.
Anything that can be physically produced in the US can now be produced cheaper (and often better) overseas. Anything at all, and now that the universities such as Tsinghua got better at educating scientists and engineers, you just wait. This is partly why the US saw no demand-driven economic recovery from the last two recessions: it’s easier to just ramp up production in Asia where economy is already booming.
The only competitive advantages that we have left are abundance of capital (unfortunately not evenly distributed), oil and gas, and international(!) management and consulting services. Our agriculture sector is doing OK due to huge subsidies. The mass culture products (pop music, fashion, movies, and even popular drinks) in Asia are mostly Korean.
Northwest Florida is a lot like Central America.
Upon finishing my MBA almost 20 years ago, Intel flew me out to San Diego from the east coast three times for a series of interviews. I was well-qualified for the job, thought every thing went exceptionally well, and got excellent feedback, but no job offer was forthcoming. Back then, my interviewers were exclusively White males and White females, well under 40, impressive and likable. I think I regret not getting a job offer more so I could have gotten in (somewhat) early on San Diego real estate rather than not getting the job itself.
One attractive benefit of working for Intel, back then, was a paid 6-month sabbatical after every 7 years of full-time employment.
Prole #10:
So you blew it. Fine: Russians (or other East Europeans, or Indians, or Chinese, or Orthodox Jews) took you job. What else is new? You do understand you can’t have it back. Where is your throwing brick?
I like ponies. I never had a pony as a child. I think a pony is a good idea. And it’s my birthright. Do I hate little brown people who went to Caltech and took my job? Because they didn’t want to go back to their Sh*ttystan and to give me the pony I deserve? Welcome to Reagan’s America where companies work for profit and don’t care about you: news at 11; send your complaints to lord@heaven.org.