Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, and is slowly losing them

Re:Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, an... by kootling on Saturday May 02, 2020 @06:38PM (#23055453)

Main point of the article (quoted):

> In 2017, Tim Cook came as close as he ever has to publicly addressing the issue. "In the US," he said, "you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure you could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields."

One possible reason for this is that US education is generally broad compared to other countries. No one in America majors in "tool engineering" but a mechanical engineer could certainly be trained for the job. In other countries such as Germany and China you're more likely to follow a more narrow path (for better or worse).

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Re:Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, an... by api on Saturday May 02, 2020 @07:24PM (#23055680)

Isn't there an obvious reason? The US outsourced everything physical to other countries. You can fill stadiums in the US with finance, marketing, software, and business experts.

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Re:Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, an... by Rury on Saturday May 02, 2020 @10:18PM (#23056373)

Exactly, the problem is outsourcing.

Whatever you decide to outsource you gradually lose expertise in. Which should be obvious, as if I paid someone to fix my car for me all the time, I probably wouldn't come to be an expert in knowing how to fix it myself.

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Re:Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, an... by marcoseliziario on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @09:13AM (#23079640)

Heck, you could probably fill all the major cities in the US just with marketing people.

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Re:Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, an... by av_engr on Sunday May 03, 2020 @03:50AM (#23057556)

Also consider that most Mechanical Engineers desire making flashy products that are consumer facing than boring machines or parts that sits in a factory. This is also reflected in salary, mechanical design engineers are generally paid better than a manufacturing engineer.

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Re:Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, an... by unishark on Saturday May 02, 2020 @10:47PM (#23056521)

Another possible reason is they give "engineering" jobs and degrees to almost anyone with a pulse. Much easier to pull off what you're paying the $50 per day or whatever it is to operate a machine as a technician.

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