Are most FEA jobs exported?

Seems to be the wave of the future for engineering services in general unfortunately. India seems to be the major benefactor of our (American) short-sightedness.

Finite Elephants?

Who's to blame? I think this is a very bad situation. Getting an advanced engineering degree (I have a M.S.M.E,) is difficult and a lot of work. And this is the reward one gets for hard work?

I will totally discourage my child to studying engineering. There are plenty of other usefull professions and I would not want my child to make the same mistake I made. It is very sad when you spend all of your professional life doing a job and then finally waking up one day to the fact that you waisted your time. FG

"Finite Guy" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Does it mean you wasted your time when you find out that other people can do similar things like you did. That would make life sad indeed for people in most professions: lawyers, doctors, you name them and I can assure you they exist as well in India, China or whatever other country.

I am still proud of all the structures I contributed to, and still are contributing to, even though I know that engineers in India do similar work. And though indeed more and more of the engineering work will shift over, there will always remain a local demand as long as there are companies left to absorb it. Need some engineers to man those companies however.

Timo de Beer (from Europe, but the situation is not that different here)

It is exteremely difficult to find work particularly when you are in your late 50's. There is a lot of age discrimination here. If you loose your job in the US at age 50 +, then you are screwed. Most companies won't even consider you even if you indicate that you will take a pay cut to work.

When I say that I wasted my time, perhaps I should clarify that. I feel that I wasted my time because I could have done something else that would be more in demand for someone who needs to work until retirement age (66 or so).

Also, a lot of the work that is "shipped" overseas is ulimately done wrong due to lack of experience. It gets done cheaper but needs to be scrutinized (but probably is not).

There are also a lot of unqualified paper pushers out there that manage and direct FEA jobs and this is frightening particluarly because there a saftey issues.

Don't get me wrong, I like doing FEA, I have done it for many years. I simply need to support my family and I have a feeling that I am not going to be able to do this work for much longer if things keep going the way they are.

I don't care how interesting the work is(or how proud you are of it), the bottom line is that one needs to work to survive.

One thing all US-based engineers can do is to fight the import of low-paid engineers into the country. The H1B (?) visa program is a farce. While thousands of US engineers sit idle, attempting to find jobs, industry is pushing Congress to increase the import of these low-paid engineers to take our jobs. Call your representatives and let them know how you feel. Make your feelings known to national groups such as ASME, and organize locally to make your voice heard. It may help.

That's it