Note the problem isn't that there aren't engineers out there, but that the employer wants to be able to pay $35,000 for them.

The competition has led to a dramatic jump in the software engineering
pay scale. Some Internet companies pay as much as $55,000 to $60,000 a
year to new college graduates. And competitors are luring experienced
software engineers with signing bonuses. "How can an ATE company that
pays $35,000 a year compete with that?" Rassa asked. "Aerospace
companies can't pay those kinds of salaries and ATE companies pay even
less."

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20000921S0011

Engineer shortage called danger to military readiness


By Charles J. Murray
EE Times
(09/21/00, 12:32 p.m. EST)

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The military and its contractors sounded an
alert this week, saying they face a potentially dangerous shortage of
software engineers that could affect the military readiness of the
United States.

"We have a shortfall of about 10 percent and that means we can't do
the work that needs to get done," said Major General Richard V.
Reynolds, commander of the U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center at
Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Speaking to engineers at Autotestcon 2000, a test equipment conference
devoted to the defense industry, Reynolds was joined by private
contractors who stated that the shortage is close to reaching crisis
proportions. "We want to warn people that there's a storm coming,"
said Bob Rassa, director of systems supportability at Raytheon Systems
Co. (Los Angeles). "There's going to be an exodus of software
engineers who design test equipment and aerospace systems. And if
defense companies don't have the quality of software engineers they
need, then they'll deliver their products late, and that will be
detrimental to our military readiness."

Speakers at the technical conference sessions said that the exodus is
especially difficult for the automated test equipment (ATE) community,
where the real value of a system is in its software. Such software is
critical for the military, too, because it allows defense engineers to
operate, maintain, test, and develop defense systems. "Ninety percent
of ATE content is software," Rassa said. "The hardware is just a
host."

Adding to the problem is the fact that ATE systems require specialized
expertise, which is lost when software engineers leave for other
industries. "A software engineer who makes switches for Nortel can't
create an automated test program, or write mission avionics software,"
Rassa said. "We need people who understand the test market."

Fierce competition

Engineers from the defense community and the ATE industry agreed that
several factors are working together to draw software engineers away.
The biggest one is a proliferation of dot-coms and other startups in
industries ranging from telecommunications to banking to
entertainment. "I've lost more software engineers to the entertainment
industry than I'd care to think about," said Reynolds. Edwards Air
Force Base is located in the California desert about 90 minutes
northeast of Los Angeles' entertainment industry, he noted.

The competition for engineering talent is exacerbated by the fact that
universities aren't turning out enough computer scientists and
electrical engineers to meet the fast-growing needs of Internet-based
companies. Some universities have reportedly combined their electrical
engineering programs and computer science departments as a means of
keeping up their enrollments. Such moves, however, don't help address
the shortage of graduates. "It's like using a garden hose to put out a
forest fire," said Marsh Faber, higher education marketing manager for
Agilent Technologies Inc. "There's so much demand for software
engineers and so little supply."

The explosion of Internet companies has fostered a form of competition
that the defense industries and ATE community have never seen before.
In years past, defense industry giants battled one another for the
best talent, but now they must compete in a larger arena. "This isn't
like the computer industry vying for electrical engineers," said Rick
Robinson, director of technology for Agilent's Measurement Components
Technology Center (Loveland, Colo.). "It's a matter of the whole world
pursuing software engineers."

The competition has led to a dramatic jump in the software engineering
pay scale. Some Internet companies pay as much as $55,000 to $60,000 a
year to new college graduates. And competitors are luring experienced
software engineers with signing bonuses. "How can an ATE company that
pays $35,000 a year compete with that?" Rassa asked. "Aerospace
companies can't pay those kinds of salaries and ATE companies pay even
less."

Aerospace firms have been particularly hard hit by the competition.
Rassa said that one unnamed "aerospace giant" has an attrition level
of 37 percent annually among its software engineers. And a study by
the U.S. Department of Labor shows little hope for an immediate
solution. The study revealed that the shortage of software engineers
has reached 300,000 nationwide, Rassa said.

Search for solutions

Despite efforts to solve it, the defense industry and test community
admit they are still baffled by the problem. The National Defense
Industrial Association, a Pentagon-based group that has studied the
situation, examined the possibility of using subcontractors for
software engineering. But such measures wouldn't work, the committee
reportedly learned, because subcontracting wouldn't allow for the
build-up of proprietary expertise among engineers.

For the test community, experts say that part of the problem lies in
the fact that university-trained engineers receive no exposure to the
subject while in school. "We went to 900 universities looking for
papers on automated test and found zero," Rassa said. "How can we
expect to hire engineers out of school when they haven't heard of us
and we offer them less money?"

Some industry insiders have discussed the possibility of seeking
government support to help match salaries during negotiations and to
aid in relocation of potential new employees.

The U.S. Air Force has tried to deal with the shortage by launching
the Acquisition Workforce Demonstration Project, a program that allows
it to pay more up front to software engineers, to advance the best
performers more quickly, and to alter the government rating systems
for civilian engineers. The program is being implemented at Edwards
Air Force Base and at the Pentagon.

Experts say that many defense-related programs need to find solutions
in a relatively short time. Edwards Air Force Base, for example, faces
the potential loss of 40 percent of its workforce between now and
2003. At the same time, Edwards has begun testing the X-32, as well as
other new entries in the line of fabled X-planes.

All of those programs could be affected by the shortage, engineers
said. "This situation is going to get worse before it gets better,"
Rassa said. "When you look at the attrition rate and the salary
problems, you realize that it's a serious, serious problem."