5 ms·

If engineering isn't near the factory, it's not as effective. Here's one of the most generic electronic components - a 1K resistor.[1] These sell for about US$

If engineering isn't near the factory, it's not as effective. Here's one of the most generic electronic components - a 1K resistor.[1] These sell for about US$0.0015 each. DigiKey has a list of many suppliers. There are a few old-line US resistor makers in there, including Bourns and Ohmite. They're price competitive with Chinese companies. But when you look up their engineering job locations, none are in the US or UK.[2] Plants are in Mexico, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hungary. To get prices down, engineers have to be very familiar with what goes on in manufacturing. If you separate engineering from manufacturing, you get overpriced designs. Not that many people who went to a good engineering school in a first-world country today want to spend their lives inside a big factory in a low-wage country. But that's what it takes to make stuff. [1] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/chip-resistor-surface-mount/52?s=N4IgjCBcoExaBjKAzAhgGwM4FMA0IB7KAbRAHYBWGAFhHwA4AGeiu8l2hgZnvrbGqMAbLQC6%2BAA4AXKCADKUgE4BLAHYBzEAF98YAJz098EEkhoseQiRCMQonSBjNW0ENNkBVVcqkB5ZACy2KiYAK6K2GyhsgDWvgAWALaYbIlqshD4iagAHhna%2BAC0Rq6mSqGWRJCkEPZFLogoGDj4VTV2Wg5w1SARmMqYUgSKdvhCxsoAJrKFYIyZbjKQIGwAjlIAnhmMO7b4mxKRyyFInUA https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/chip-resistor-sur... [2] https://jobs.bourns.com/go/Engineering/9254400/ https://jobs.bourns.com/go/Engineering/9254400/

nine_k 2y ago
> spend their lives inside a big factory in a low-wage country Some gladly would if paid handsomely by the local standards, that is, adequately by the US standards. The bigger problem is raising children away from your native culture.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  You should probably recommend them to Apple recruiters, since they regularly have shortages of bilingual top tier talent willing to work full time at major factories. Even with extremely generous FAANG salaries in areas with cost of living less than a quarter of Cupertino.
- freddie_mercury 2y ago
  I spent a decade in a low-wage country and the number of people who were "glad" to spend even half that much time there -- paid handsomely! -- could probably be counted on one hand. Virtually the only people who stay longer than 3-5 years are ones who end up founding their own businesses there. Raising children away from your native culture isn't the deal breaker you imply. There are international schools (though, with eye-watering fees) and expat enclaves in most places I've been. But very few (effectively zero, though I did come across a handful of exceptions) companies treat these employees the same way as the ones back in the home country. If you don't rotate back to HQ in ~3 years then you're in a career dead-end. So you've got this situation where you need people who are ultra-ambitious -- willing to throw away all their existing social networks to go work in a foreign country for years on end! -- but that means those same people aren't going to want to stay past their expiration date. And companies know that, too. A lot of them make it an explicit part of the deal. I met one high-level guy (regional CTO I think?) at Coca-Cola who was Indian and the deal with corporate was he'd do 3-years in a low-income country (not India) but then he'd get transferred to the US. Met some people in the oil industry who had similar deals. Do 2 years in Vietnam then you get to go to Malaysia or whatever.
  - heraldgeezer 2y ago
    So everyone fully admits that these countries are in fact "worse" in every way?
    - namdnay 2y ago
      I’m not sure what “admission” you’re looking for? That life is generally better in wealthy countries? Wow big surprise
    - chronic7300690 2y ago
      > So everyone fully admits that these countries are in fact "worse" in every way? Considering money is the universal currency? Yes. Worse in every way. Churches ask for donations. Women marry rich men. You can buy politicians. You can buy more expensive healthcare treatments. Can you do that in a worse SEA country?
Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
Being an engineer means mastering your production tool. For everything to do with physical production, you need to be close to the means of production to gather essential information on quality, capacity, operator feedback (machine and quality operators are invaluable sources of information.), etc. Most information is not digital or hardly digitizable. I don't completely agree with the article's classification of ARM as a hardware company. ARM produces VHDL and resells licenses, but does not produce any chips. It's closer to a software company than a TSMC.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  I'd go one further and say you have to be at least a journeyman in whatever tools your process is using. The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day.
  - Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
    We could discuss this at length, but I completely share your point of view. Anyone can design a part that's impossible to produce. The real added value is knowing how something is actually going to be made, in how many stages, with what tools, what controls will be carried out, with what tools, what the acceptance and rejection criteria are, and how these criteria have been determined, are essential points.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day. I remember, in a CNC programming class, the instructor calling out one of the students on a lathe program: "One millimeter increments?! What material do you think you are using? Styrofoam?!". That class is where I feel in love with the ASR-33 teletype and its cadenced hum. It was punching the tapes we feed into the CNC machines. I wish I could have bought that machine when it was retired not too long after my class.
    - 2y ago
petra 2y ago
There are plenty of industries where product engineering is done at a different company or place than product manufacturing. For example, consumer electronics, industrial machines and robotics, telecom and medical devices.
- huijzer 2y ago
  The fact that it exists doesn’t mean it’s the best. You see it all the time that businesses do something just because everyone does it too. For example, the current AI investments, collatoral debt obligations in the 2000s, and conglomerates in the 1960s.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    >the current AI investments As someone whose done both hardware and AI, the current AI investments are at worst a repeat of the 2000 dot com boom. They aren't wrong, but they may be premature with how terrible our compute substrate is.
n144q 2y ago
Very weird comment. Article talks about hardware talent in UK. Your comment tries to prove "engineering jobs" are not in the US by providing the job listing of a single supplier, when everybody knows that there are a huge amount of hardware talent in the US working at great companies that deliver amazing products. Your comment seems to equate "manufacturing jobs" to "hardware engineering jobs" which apparently isn't correct.
DragonStrength 2y ago
Totally anecdotal but to your point, the engineering jobs in my hometown followed the manufacturing jobs in leaving town in the 1990s after NAFTA. Engineering seems to be returning as domestic manufacturing increases thanks to foreign auto companies setting up shop across the state, replacing what the US companies left behind.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
Taiwan is kinda nice though? And just a short hop to Japan for holidays or even long weekends.
- cap11235 2y ago
  Taiwan is the only Asian country that has western sensibilities. Gay? Who cares.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
Many of the legacy component vendors retain domestic US manufacturing to supply military parts. They come with a premium price and aren't usually worth using commercially but that is one of the last backstops preventing all knowledge from disappearing.
itissid 2y ago
I wonder this is also what doomed some, but not all, of meta's hardware efforts like its watch from 2023 (Portal was successful and a solid build but that was more pacakging than manufacturing and died for a different reason: Priorities). In general though it seems where design/code<->hardware feedback loop needs to be very fast in some cases, it is a non trivial separation of concerns.

nine_k 2y ago

> spend their lives inside a big factory in a low-wage country Some gladly would if paid handsomely by the local standards, that is, adequately by the US standards. The bigger problem is raising children away from your native culture.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
You should probably recommend them to Apple recruiters, since they regularly have shortages of bilingual top tier talent willing to work full time at major factories. Even with extremely generous FAANG salaries in areas with cost of living less than a quarter of Cupertino.
freddie_mercury 2y ago
I spent a decade in a low-wage country and the number of people who were "glad" to spend even half that much time there -- paid handsomely! -- could probably be counted on one hand. Virtually the only people who stay longer than 3-5 years are ones who end up founding their own businesses there. Raising children away from your native culture isn't the deal breaker you imply. There are international schools (though, with eye-watering fees) and expat enclaves in most places I've been. But very few (effectively zero, though I did come across a handful of exceptions) companies treat these employees the same way as the ones back in the home country. If you don't rotate back to HQ in ~3 years then you're in a career dead-end. So you've got this situation where you need people who are ultra-ambitious -- willing to throw away all their existing social networks to go work in a foreign country for years on end! -- but that means those same people aren't going to want to stay past their expiration date. And companies know that, too. A lot of them make it an explicit part of the deal. I met one high-level guy (regional CTO I think?) at Coca-Cola who was Indian and the deal with corporate was he'd do 3-years in a low-income country (not India) but then he'd get transferred to the US. Met some people in the oil industry who had similar deals. Do 2 years in Vietnam then you get to go to Malaysia or whatever.
- heraldgeezer 2y ago
  So everyone fully admits that these countries are in fact "worse" in every way?
  - namdnay 2y ago
    I’m not sure what “admission” you’re looking for? That life is generally better in wealthy countries? Wow big surprise
  - chronic7300690 2y ago
    > So everyone fully admits that these countries are in fact "worse" in every way? Considering money is the universal currency? Yes. Worse in every way. Churches ask for donations. Women marry rich men. You can buy politicians. You can buy more expensive healthcare treatments. Can you do that in a worse SEA country?

Beretta_Vexee 2y ago

Being an engineer means mastering your production tool. For everything to do with physical production, you need to be close to the means of production to gather essential information on quality, capacity, operator feedback (machine and quality operators are invaluable sources of information.), etc. Most information is not digital or hardly digitizable. I don't completely agree with the article's classification of ARM as a hardware company. ARM produces VHDL and resells licenses, but does not produce any chips. It's closer to a software company than a TSMC.

llm_trw 2y ago
I'd go one further and say you have to be at least a journeyman in whatever tools your process is using. The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day.
- Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
  We could discuss this at length, but I completely share your point of view. Anyone can design a part that's impossible to produce. The real added value is knowing how something is actually going to be made, in how many stages, with what tools, what controls will be carried out, with what tools, what the acceptance and rejection criteria are, and how these criteria have been determined, are essential points.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day. I remember, in a CNC programming class, the instructor calling out one of the students on a lathe program: "One millimeter increments?! What material do you think you are using? Styrofoam?!". That class is where I feel in love with the ASR-33 teletype and its cadenced hum. It was punching the tapes we feed into the CNC machines. I wish I could have bought that machine when it was retired not too long after my class.
  - 2y ago

petra 2y ago

There are plenty of industries where product engineering is done at a different company or place than product manufacturing. For example, consumer electronics, industrial machines and robotics, telecom and medical devices.

huijzer 2y ago
The fact that it exists doesn’t mean it’s the best. You see it all the time that businesses do something just because everyone does it too. For example, the current AI investments, collatoral debt obligations in the 2000s, and conglomerates in the 1960s.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  >the current AI investments As someone whose done both hardware and AI, the current AI investments are at worst a repeat of the 2000 dot com boom. They aren't wrong, but they may be premature with how terrible our compute substrate is.

n144q 2y ago

Very weird comment. Article talks about hardware talent in UK. Your comment tries to prove "engineering jobs" are not in the US by providing the job listing of a single supplier, when everybody knows that there are a huge amount of hardware talent in the US working at great companies that deliver amazing products. Your comment seems to equate "manufacturing jobs" to "hardware engineering jobs" which apparently isn't correct.

DragonStrength 2y ago

Totally anecdotal but to your point, the engineering jobs in my hometown followed the manufacturing jobs in leaving town in the 1990s after NAFTA. Engineering seems to be returning as domestic manufacturing increases thanks to foreign auto companies setting up shop across the state, replacing what the US companies left behind.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

Taiwan is kinda nice though? And just a short hop to Japan for holidays or even long weekends.

cap11235 2y ago
Taiwan is the only Asian country that has western sensibilities. Gay? Who cares.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

Many of the legacy component vendors retain domestic US manufacturing to supply military parts. They come with a premium price and aren't usually worth using commercially but that is one of the last backstops preventing all knowledge from disappearing.

itissid 2y ago

I wonder this is also what doomed some, but not all, of meta's hardware efforts like its watch from 2023 (Portal was successful and a solid build but that was more pacakging than manufacturing and died for a different reason: Priorities). In general though it seems where design/code<->hardware feedback loop needs to be very fast in some cases, it is a non trivial separation of concerns.