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Designing a New Image for Engineering

2008-07-03T00:40:58Z

The good news: Only 15 percent of students view engineers as “nerdish and boring.” But the bad news, at least for those trying to boost enrollments, is that engineering is viewed as a solitary and sedentary profession requiring superior math and science smarts. The findings, contained in “Changing the Conversation,” an 18-month National Academy of Engineering committee study, confirm the stereotypes that the field has been battling for years. Most students interviewed understood that engineers designed and built things, but their sense of what engineers actually do was limited. And many students didn’t feel they were smart enough to become engineers. Luckily for the engineering field, parents have long viewed engineering as a stable and well-paying profession.

Engineering is viewed as less prestigious than medicine, nursing, science, or teaching. Furthermore, engineers are perceived as being less involved with societal concerns. The report noted that providing a better understanding of engineering would attract more young people to the field, improve the public’s technological literary, and educate policymakers on the importance of sustaining technological innovation. The project was funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the SD Bechtel Jr. Foundation. Among its tasks, the committee positioned engineering as a creative and emotionally satisfying calling that improves lives with real-world applications.

A 2002 NAE study revealed that the engineering community’s expenditures to promote engineering have had little effect on audiences. According to the NAE, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year in the US to improve the public’s understanding of engineering. However, K-12 teachers and students still have a poor understanding of what engineers do.

Chinese Patent Filings Explode

2008-07-03T00:38:48Z

The Chinese patent office last year processed a mountain of parents, as the country grew to become the third-most-prolific for patents, behind the United States and Japan. Evalueserve, a global intellectual property research consultancy, said that the State Intellectual Property Office of China received 245,161 20-year patent applications in 2007, up 20 percent from the previous year. Patent filings also experienced a 20-percent growth rate in India, where the Indian Patent Office handled 35,000 20-year patent applications during the 2007-08 fiscal year. Evalueserve noted that China handled that number of patent applications a decade ago. In China, domestic applicants were responsible for nearly two-thirds of the filings, up 25 percent from a year ago. Only 20 percent of Indian patent applications were filed by domestic applicants last year, and only about 11 percent were domestic between 2005 and 2007. That was in line with an Evalueserve study that found that large Indian companies, such as TCs and Infosys, had a disproportionately low number of patent filings, while non-Indian companies such as Qualcomm, Microsoft, Samsung, and Honda were among the most prolific filers. The study concluded that low patenting activity in domestic Indian companies will hurt their long-term global competitiveness in the long run.

Java, C, and C++ Still Reign

2008-07-03T00:36:58Z

Java, C, and C++ retain their hold as the three most popular programming languages, according to Tiobe Software’s June index, which registered declines for (Visual) Basic and C#, but popularity surges for PHP and Python. Java, C, and C++ also occupied the three top positions in June 2007. Also in the top 10 was Perl, the sixth-most-popular programming language, and JavaScript and Ruby, which rank ninth- and 10th-most-popular, respectively. The TIOBE Programming Community index ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers using each language worldwide, as well as the number of courses and third-party vendors specializing in each language. Tiobe uses Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. The index is intended to help programmers decide which new language to learn or which language to use in building a new system.

Capital Crisis for Startups

2008-07-03T00:35:12Z

Not a single startup managed to launch an initial public offering in the second quarter of this year, and only five managed to squeak through during the first quarter. According to the National Venture Capital Assn., last quarter marked the first since 1979 that no venture-backed IPOs have taken place. By comparison, 47 IPOs took place during the first half of 2007, said the association and Thomson Reuters, which together conduct a quarterly exit poll of venture-backed IPOs. NVCA President Mark Heesen said the IPO-less quarter should be viewed as a warning to regulators, legislators, and the private sector, since venture-backed IPOs represent an important job-creation engine. With few IPOs so far this year, he said, “that engine has completely shut down.” He further characterized the situation as “a capital markets crisis for the startup community.” And according to an NVCA survey, few in the venture capital community expect the IPO window to reopen this year. They chalked that up primarily to skittish investors, the mortgage crisis credit crunch, and Sarbanes Oxley regulations, which some view as excessively onerous.

Smaller Cities Better for Wealth-Building

2008-07-03T00:33:29Z

If getting rich is your goal, stay out of the big cities. Salary.com’s annual Salary Value Index listed New York; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Honolulu; and San Francisco as the top five worst cities for building personal wealth. At the top of the wealth-building list were Plano, Texas; followed by Aurora, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; Minneapolis; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Salary.com developed the index to quantify relative salary differences in US cities with populations of 250,000 or more. Local salaries, cost of living, and unemployment rates were considered in determining cities’ rankings. Starting this year, Salary.com also began factoring in “livability” criteria such as industry diversity, residents’ education levels, proximity to colleges and universities, poverty, and commute times. “The end result of this analysis is a list in which the most favorable cities offer the largest difference between pay and costs,” stated Bill Coleman, Salary.Com chief compensation officer for Salary.com. Although large metro areas ranked high for livability, their high cost of living made them disadvantageous for wealth-building.

51 Cities Add Tech Jobs

2008-06-26T23:26:47Z

Seattle led the US in adding tech jobs in 2006, followed by Washington, DC, and New York, according to the AeA’s Cybercities report. The trade group AeA found that 51 of 60 US cities added jobs in 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available. The report, available at the AeA website, includes information on high-tech employment, wages, businesses, payroll, employment concentration, and wage differentials. Seattle added 7,800 jobs between 2005 and 2006, while the New York metropolitan area added more than 6,400 and Washington, DC added more than 6,100. Southern California’s Riverside-San Bernardino area, however, saw the fastest job growth, with a 12 percent increase in positions. The trade group stopped publishing its annual Cybercities report when the tech bubble burst, but recent job growth prompted them to revive it. “With the industry experiencing three consecutive years of job growth, we decided it was time again to drill down to see which cybercities are growing the fastest and across which sectors,” stated Christopher Hansen, president and CEO, adding that tech jobs make a strong economic contribution, since average tech industry wages are 87 percent higher than average private-sector wages. Differentials higher than 100 percent were noted for three cities included in the report: Austin, Texas; and San Diego and Sacramento, California. Cities with the most high-tech jobs were: New York (316,500), Washington, DC (295,800), the Silicon Valley (225,300), Boston (191,700), and Dallas-Fort Worth (176,000). The Silicon Valley had the highest concentration of high-tech workers, with 286 per 1,000 private-sector workers, followed by Boulder, Colorado, which had 230 for every 1,000 private sector workers.

Yahoo! to Embrace Cloud Computing

2008-06-26T23:22:56Z

As part of US Internet company Yahoo!’s realignment, the company will build a cloud computing and storage infrastructure, place Yahoo! on common platforms, and create a stronger partnership between product and engineering teams. The company is also creating an audience products group, a US go-to-market group, and a strategy team, all reporting to President Sue Decker, to improve its consumer product development efforts. In the technology arena, the Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group will be charged with developing a computing infrastructure that balances scalability with cost-effectiveness. Prabhakar Raghavan has been named to direct search strategy and Tuoc Luong made interim leader of the search product team. In addition, Prabhakar and Tuoc will continue to lead Yahoo! Research and Search Engineering respectively. The reorganization comes amid rumors that Microsoft hasn’t given up on acquiring the Sunnyvale, Calif., company, even though Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang rebuffed the software giant’s overtures. With the changes it is making, Yahoo! hopes to become the starting point for users and platform of choice for developers, company officials said.

Google Funds Scholarships

2008-06-26T23:20:49Z

Google will fund more than 50 scholarships for women to attend the 8th Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. The scholarships cover conference registration and travel and hotel expenses. Google has scholarships for women of color, for international computer-science students studying outside the US, and for technical women from emerging countries. The $10,000 scholarships that Google awards to its Anita Borg Scholars also includes registration and travel to the Grace Hopper celebration. According to the Anita Borg Foundation, such scholarships help draw more women and underrepresented groups to computer science. This is the third year Google has funded the scholarships. The Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing will be held 1-4 Oct. at the Keystone Resort in Colorado.

SoCal Beats NoCal in Startups

2008-06-26T23:18:51Z

If you’d thought that Northern California’s Silicon Valley led the state in high-tech startups, you’d be wrong, at least according to a Southern California survey that proclaims the southern region as the real leader. A San Diego group called Connect has established a new quarterly survey that independently tracks the launch of California companies in the biotech, communications, computer and electronics, environmental technology, defense and transportation, recreational goods, and software sectors. The survey is being conducted in partnership with the San Diego Institute for Policy Research. In 2007, the state saw the establishment of 3,227 new tech companies, including 1,852 in Southern California and 1,087 in Northern California. Los Angeles County accounted for one-quarter of the new high-tech companies, Santa Clara and San Diego counties each accounted for about 12 percent, and Alameda and Orange counties for about 10 percent. Software startups proved the most popular (32.3 percent), followed by biotech (21.5 percent), and computer and electronics (21.4 percent). Two-thirds of the new startups were launched during the last half of the year.

Intuit to Lay Off 575 Workers

2008-06-26T23:16:43Z

Silicon Valley financial software maker Intuit is realigning its operations and laying off 575 employees, or 7 percent of its workforce. Company officials say the changes are part of its “Connected Services” strategy, which will attempt to sell services on top its desktop products. In addition, Intuit plans to expand into social networking and mobile technology. The company will take a $22 million charge to account for the layoffs.

CEOs Foresee Hiring Declines

2008-06-19T00:22:06Z

CEOs of large US companies are tempering their economic optimism amid continued high energy costs and housing declines. In the Business Roundtable CEO Economic Outlook Index for the second quarter, the executives still expect flat or increasing sales and capital expenditures. However, they foresee a drop in future employment. Of the 110 large-company CEOs who completed the Business Roundtable’s quarterly survey, 42 percent predicted no change in their company’s US employment over the next six months. Nearly one-third expect employment to decline during that time period, and 28 percent believe employment will increase. Some 68 percent see sales increases in their company’s near-term future, and about one-half expect capital spending to remain flat over the next six months. The Business Roundtable combines the respondents’ answers into a diffusion index centered on 50. If the index is above 50, an expansion is underway, while anything below 50 signals a contraction. The index for the second quarter declined to 74.5, down from 79.5 in the first quarter and 81.9 in the second quarter of last year.

Citrix Establishes Bangalore R&D Center

2008-06-19T00:19:58Z

US application delivery infrastructure provider Citrix Systems has committed to investing US $200 million over the next five years to build a second research and development facility in Bangalore, India. The facility is slated to employ 500 engineers and house teams working on development of products in Citrix’s Delivery Center line. The new facility will handle all aspects of research, including design, coding, functional testing, documentation, engineering, management, and escalation. The company said the center is being located in Bangalore in order to tap into India’s growing pool of engineering talent. “Our India development teams have a great track record in delivering technology innovations for our customers,” said Gordon Payne, senior vice president and general manager of Citrix’s Delivery Systems Division. The center will focus on products in the areas of application networking, desktop and application virtualization, 3D graphics, multimedia, and voice-over-IP technologies. Some sales and technical support, market analysis, testing, and quality assurance will also be conducted there. Citrix already operates research and development facilities in the US, United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.

China’s Neusoft Opens New Park

2008-06-19T00:17:38Z

Neusoft, China’s largest offshore software and service outsourcing provider, has opened another park in the Dalian High-tech Industrial Zone. Neusoft Chairman and CEO Liu Jiren said the new software park is designed to meet the growing demand for outsourced software and services in Asia. Within the next five years, half of Neusoft’s revenue is expected to come from international business, up from its current 30 percent. The facility, Neusoft’s second in Dalian, could house 10,000 engineers working on software and services for Neusoft’s offshore-outsourcing operations. According to the site, the center will offer IT outsourcing and business-process outsourcing services to Europe, America, Japan, and Korea.

RAND: Foreign Students Essential

2008-06-19T00:15:08Z

A recent RAND Corp. study notes that foreign students enrolling in American science programs, as well as scientists and engineers moving to the US from overseas, have helped the US build and maintain its worldwide technology lead. According to the study, continuing the flow of foreign-born talent is critical to helping the United States maintain its lead in the technology field. The RAND Corp. found that the US accounts for 40 percent of global spending on scientific research and development, employs 70 percent of the world’s Nobel Prize winners, and is where three-quarters of the world’s top 40 universities are located. “Much of the concern about the United States losing its edge as the world’s leader in science and technology appears to be unfounded,” stated Titus Galama, co-author of the report and a management scientist at the nonprofit research organization. Researchers contend that US investment in research and development is growing at similar rates as other countries, and exceeding Europe and Japan. China is currently investing heavily in research and development, but hasn’t yet caught up to the US, Europe, and Japan. The European Union and China haven’t only caught up to the US in producing science and engineering university graduates, but have exceeded it. The RAND Corp. report recommended that the US analyze its science and engineering workforce, make it easier for foreign-born graduating science and engineering students to stay in the US, loosen immigration rules for highly skilled labor, improve US science and technology education, and increase cooperation with science centers in Europe, Japan, China, India, and other countries. About 70 percent of foreign scientists and engineers choose to stay in the US after receiving their PhDs, however the RAND report notes that the rate could decline if salaries and research conditions improve elsewhere.

New Revision for ‘Outsourcing America’

2008-06-19T00:13:00Z

Brothers Ron and Anil Hira have revised their 2005 book, “Outsourcing America: The True Cost of Shipping Jobs Overseas and What Can Be Done about It,” and still contend that outsourcing is good for corporations but bad for American workers and the economy in the long run. Ron Hira, assistant professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Anil Hira, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, trace how outsourcing has changed since their book came out three years ago. They evaluate outsourcing trends in Europe, Canada, Australia, and other developed countries. The authors argue that instead of American companies competing against overseas companies, they are now pitting American workers against overseas workers. In addition, the Hiras note that white-collar workers have no representation in the outsourcing debate.

Firms Address Need for BPO Workers

2008-06-12T00:07:22Z

Indian business-process manager Genpact has teamed up with Indian information technology education provider NIIT to provide training in business processes, communications, and language skills. The NIIT Institute of Process Excellence is being formed to address the increasing demand for skilled workers in the business process outsourcing and technology services sectors. The joint venture was announced by Genpact CEO Pramod Bhasin, vice chairman of the National Association of Software and Services Cos. (NASSCOM); Rajendra Pawar, chairman of NIIT; and Vijay Thadani, CEO of NIIT. “Genpact and NIIT are committed to building a world-class training organization that will focus on developing talent and increasing employability to meet the growing demand for a skilled workforce in the countries where we operate,” Bhasin said in a statement. NASSCOM estimates that the Indian business process outsourcing, or BPO, industry employed more than 700,000 people last year and will generate an additional 1.4 million jobs by 2010. The training programs will be initially offered at learning centers in the Indian cities of Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune. They will be expanded to the Philippine capital of Manila and the Chinese cities of Dalian, Changchun, Shanghai, and Xian. More than 250 learning centers are expected by 2012.

Software Pros Remain in Demand

2008-06-12T00:06:22Z

Software designers and developers can write their own tickets. Jobfox’s latest list of most in-demand professionals placed software designers and developers at the top, up from second place last month. Software designers and developers earn annual salaries of $85,000-$95,000, according to Jobfox. Sixth on the list of most sought-after professionals were networking and systems administrators, who earn annual salaries of $65,000-75,000. Software implementation experts, who also make $85,000-$95,000, were the ninth most in demand. Database administrators placed 14th and electrical engineers 17th. Technology executives, which in May were the 11th most sought-after type of professional, in June plunged to 21st. Jobfox also reported that in May, median salary expectations decreased slightly for software designers and developers, network administrators, and product managers.

Innovation Now Going Global

2008-06-12T00:05:10Z

Manufacturing and clinical trials aren’t the only operations that Western pharmaceutical companies are shifting to China and India. According to a new Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation study, large companies such as Merck, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson are now locating advanced research and development in those countries as well. The study notes that Indian and Chinese scientists are developing the ability to innovate and create their own intellectual property as a result of the movement of high-value R&D to their countries. In 2006, 5.5 percent of global pharmaceutical patent applications included at least one inventor in India and 8.4 percent at least one inventor in China. That represents a fourfold increase over 1995. “Globalization is happening faster than people think. Having India and China conduct such sophisticated research and participate in drug discovery was unimaginable even five years ago,” said Vivek Wadhwa, executive in residence at Duke University and a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program of Harvard Law School, who led the team of researchers conducting the study. “The challenge is for America to understand this trend and realize the potential of globalization.”

Slight Rise in Planned Layoffs

2008-06-12T00:04:07Z

More CIOs are planning to reduce their staffs, according to Robert Half Technology’s June hiring index. Fourteen percent of CIOs expect to add information-technology staff in the third quarter of this year, the same proportion as in the second quarter. However, 4 percent of CIOs forecast staff reductions in the third quarter, twice the proportion as during the March-to-June timeframe. Last year at this time, 17 percent of CIOs expected to add IT staff and 2 percent forecast staff cutbacks. Those with certain skills remain in demand, however. Robert Half reports that demand for network administrators is experiencing high growth for the fourth quarter in a row, followed by help desk support and Internet and intranet developers. Nearly three-quarters of the CIOs agreed that Windows administration (Server 2000/2003), desktop support, and network administration are currently the most-sought-after skills. Robert Half has been tracking IT hiring trends since 1995. Its index is based on phone interviews of 1,400 CIOs at companies with 100 or more employees. “While the forecast remains strong overall, a more cautious hiring climate prevails,” stated Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of the staffing firm.

Report Cites Research Obstacles

2008-06-12T00:02:44Z

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in a new report recommends that the United States invest in early-career scientists and encourage high-risk, high-reward research in order to preserve its science and engineering leadership. The academy cites several obstacles facing young researchers, including a decline in access to grants. First-time recipients of primary research grants from the National Institutes of Health are 42 years old on average. In addition, now only 28 percent of first-time grant applicants are successful, compared with an 86-percent success rate for first-time grant applicants in 1980. The group also recommends that federal research agencies re-evaluate peer-review systems, invest in program officers, and more systematically track demographic data on investigators throughout government. A 2005 report on US competitiveness by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, urged reforms in K-12 math and science education and greater government investment in basic research.