Cities get reputations, both good and bad. For example, my home town of Boston routinely ranks high on the list of America's best places for singles. More specifically, singles that are looking to hook up with other singles and therefore not be single anymore.
Although it boasts three Starbucks shops and a new Trader Joes, Palmdale, CA, isn't even close to having that kind of cachet with young people. Despite looking to fill some of the coolest engineering jobs on the planet at its Skunk Works operation based in this desert city 60 miles from Los Angeles, Lockheed Martin says that it is difficult to recruit college graduates to work there. Of the extremely competitive job offers that the aerospace company says it has extended recently to new grads, only about one in ten students has accepted.
One theory is that Lockeed is competing with Boeing and others for the same small pool of extremely talented engineering graduates. But Lockheed says that it sees much higher acceptance rates for positions in places like Atlanta and Fort Worth, where the nightlife is certainly hotter.
"There is a social life in Palmdale?" quipped one new-hire, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with an EE degree and hired on at Lockheed in January 2004. "It's terrible," says a mechanical engineering graduate who transferred to LM Aero in June 2002. "Despite having a great group of new hires that live locally, the city is seriously lacking in any type of respectable and creative social scene."
But although these young people have opted to live in a place that isn't exactly happening on the social front, they are going to be the ones who ultimately go places. That's because they valued the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology more than a specific zip code. "As a new engineer, I wanted to work for a company that offered a challenging career path and that made products that I felt proud to say I had a small part in making. So when you put that all together, LM Aero-Palmdale Skunk Works was the logical choice," says a new hire with a BSME from Berkeley.
Plus, they're finding ways to make the most of the situation. They've formed a club, called the Lments, which sponsors a host of activities from rock climbing, to desert bike rides, to checking out Sunset Boulevard. Some simply bite the bullet and commute from as far away as L.A., which did make the top ten list for singles. And others say they don't need even a single Starbucks to be happy. Just proves location doesn't always matter most.
For the first time, the unemployment level of college grads has surpassed that of high-school dropouts. That's according to the Economic Policy Institute, which provides weekly snapshots of charts that illustrate key economic issues at its website www.epinet.org.
The government/nonprofit employers plan to cut hiring by as much as 10.1 percent in 2004, according to the website www.jobweb.com. The website has information on who is hiring and who is not.
The National Society of Professional Engineers reports that the median salary for engineers of all disciplines fell from $72,842 in 1999 to $70,200 in 2004. Results are from the Engineering Income and Salary Report.
JUNE 26TH WEBCAST: Collaborative Requirements Engineering
Speed your innovation. Capture the "voice of the customer" and translate customer requests into user requirements that define new products. Find out why the new ENOVIA Requirements Management solution enables organizations to improve their overall global requirements management process. Read More
Mechatronics in action
Successful synergistic integration of controls, electronics, computers and mechanical systems is key to the 21st century design process. Unlock the secrets at the Mechatronics Zone!
Webcast: Sensor Know-How Now
Join our moderator Randy Frank and John Keating from Cognex and explore Solving Industrial Inspection Problems. Read More
Engineering Concept Conduit
Engineering Concept Conduit looks at new products and the components that make them exceptional. Each month we’ll look at a new electronic product and see what makes it tick from an engineering point of view. We’ll explore the design and engineering challenges for the product and examine the components that solved those challenges.
Light Matters: Systems Level Approach to HBLED illumination applications
Its good practice to apply a systems-level approach to high-brightness LED (HBLED) illumination applications. Minimally, the system includes the optical, thermal and electrical characteristics of the of the HBLED, the lens (if any) which is built-in to its package, secondary optics such as external plastic lenses/reflectors to direct the light as your application requires and power driver electronics. Read More
Design News RSS News Feeds
Webcast: Sensor Know-How Now
