I have to give the usual disclaimer that that these are my own personal views and not those of the ESE Editor and publisher. They are also those of my employer. I am working for myself! www.phaedsys.com

There is a major problem with UK Electronics that will affect all of us. Some it has hit now but it will affect all of use over the next decade or so.

My view of ESS was that it was bigger and busier than last year. Others confirm that the larger conference, PhD thesis conferences and workshops were well attended. People I have spoken to also say the show was better than last year. Several went as far to say it was the only UK embedded systems show worth visiting. So all is right with the world? No it is not!

One of the stands, RayMarine, was not selling anything, in fact the reverse. They were buying…. Engineers.

My immediate reaction was that something had happened to make a lot of staff leave but no, all the people I know are still there. The company has new business and are trying to expand. I don’t usually do adverts but it seems such a shame that a good company cannot find UK engineers. Not just the odd one or two but they need a whole raft of people.

They are looking for Group, Project and Team leaders, Engineers Hw, SW, test and mechanical. The information can be found at http://www.raymarine.com

The problem, especially with multinational companies, is that when there is a shortage of expertise in one place the work moves to where the expertise is. It is one thing work being outsourced abroad because it is “cheaper” or run of the mill (see previous columns on that can of worms) but very different because they can’t find experienced embedded expertise in the UK.

At ESS I was approached by an IT recruitment “consultant’… he was looking to see who needed any “IT programmers”. After all it was an “IT/software” show he told me! He didn’t understand the difference between IT and embedded (he does now!). The problem is that most agencies don’t understand.

What is needed, when you use any agency is to not only explain what you want, but is to also explain what you don’t want. Educate them, I know it takes time but it will be cost effective in the long run…. You won’t have to wade though masses of useless Cv’s. However the other problem is that they probably are sending you the best of the wrong bunch. They only have .net programmers.

Last week I had an email I had from a client. He too was looking for embedded Engineers and like Ray-Marine, could only find IT programmers, computer science graduates and windows programmers. Did I know any one, he asked. I did ask around and got 4 replies from the UK, 4 from Poland and 6 from India. One was from a team who weren’t really sure want an MSP430 was but they would undercut anyone else (also for C++, C# and database programming) and another was from a programmer who was sure he could do the job if he had an invitation to work in the UK!

I mentioned this to another tools company I know and they also commented that of late they had also been getting many requests from customers for any “half-decent” embedded engineers, contract or permanent who could use the tools they were selling. In fact I have heard several companies comment that they were taking on computer science graduates and “re-training” them. However they weren’t sure they would stick is they really wanted to do Java and .net stuff.

Part of the problem, as any contractor will tell you, is down to the Inland Revenue. Just mention Section 660 and IR 35 to a contractor! Over the past five years those two Revenue clauses caused a large number of contractors (about a third I believe) to retire or go abroad. An equally large number went in to permanent employment so we did not actually loose the skills. Sometimes I wonder who’s side the government is on.

So we don’t have enough embedded engineers. The solution is obvious. Train more embedded Engineers!

Since the show I was talking to a University “somewhere on the south coast” far from producing more engineers the University was cutting the electronics department and making staff redundant. It appears that whilst computer games, mobile phone/pda java apps and some film & media areas are popular, embedded (unless it is WinCE or Linux on a 32 bit system) was not getting much interest.

The other problem was that a large minority of electronics graduates would not do anything connected to, no mater how vaguely, the military. Military related electronics is a large part of the UK electronics market. On top of that according to a poll of UK graduates in October 2005 (sample 198 on www.gradjobs.co.uk) 35% would reject “non-green” employers. Though this high figure may not be a surprise as these were graduates still looking for jobs in October. I think the less green graduates have probably already got work in places where the more green will not tread.

So thanks to the UK Revenue service we have fewer experienced engineers and a shortage of new graduates. To really make matters worse the new levels of tuition fees for university are now about 3 times higher than previously.

This year there has been a 20% decrease in the number of university applications from the UK I understand that this is not and even cut across the board as technical and science subjects have suffered more than most. However, this has been compensated for by more students from abroad. The rise is about 20%. Though my understanding is that this masks a very high take up of masters courses in technical subjects by over seas students. One university I know has about 90% foreign students on its electronics MSC courses.

This is alarming as the IEE now requires a Masters Degree for Chartered Engineer where previously a BSc. or B. Eng. was required. Now I am all for raising the standard but UK-Embedded-PLC has appeared to shoot itself in the foot, if not the head.

At the very time the UK is running short of highly trained and educated electronics and embedded engineers, in one of the worlds expanding markets the UK makes it far more difficult for it’s own students to be able to afford the very courses they need whilst at the same time training the students of the countries we are competing against!

Even if electronics, embedded engineering and the like ever do become fashionable again students will not be able to afford to take the required four or five year MSc/MEng courses. We are looking at a tripling of the tuition fees for a start. Then when they do qualify the status of an engineer is low and the money, whilst not exactly breadline is hardly the same as the earning potential as other professions. They are also saddled with crippling debts from student loans. Most graduates now leave university owing around 20,000GBP.

I used to think that as the shortage bit my hourly rate would go up. It will but only to a point. I have written many times about the shift of work to the cheaper Far East. This is a global market. If there is no talent in the UK then companies will move the R&D to where the talen, or at least people willing to do the work, are situated.

Ironically about the only thing of any size that will be left will be the military work that, for reasons of national security, they will not let out of… well, I was going to say the country but these days the majority of it is pan European or NATO. So even some of that may not stay in the UK.

So the problem is unless there is a shake up in the education system we will end up going below critical mass in our electronics in the UK. At this point we will loose all the big electronics companies, which as happened when Rover Cars went, will have a knock on effect to others.

There are isolated success stories of various programs for this and that but overall it does not look good. At ESS (notice it all happens at ESS) there were a couple of people from the DTI looking to sponsor MSC projects in technology. Great! It was restricted to EU students only… so whilst it will help UK students it will also help and European students who want to study here.

In previous columns I have mentioned the IEE Imageering and the SEA projects that try to generate interest in Engineering, science and maths, well now is the time, for the survival of your own industry to start getting the kids interested in electronics and embedded systems. The UK has (at the moment) quite a large robotics and space industry.

As this is the end of year issue I should wish you all a Happy Holiday, see the column Two Weeks In The Summer and take a break from work, and I hope next year holds a brighter future for us all. By way of a Christmas present I have the following two items.

Like Solaris itself, Sun Studio 11 (C/C++/Fortran compilers, debugger, IDE, performance analyzer) is free. You can download it at no charge and use it for any purpose, including development of commercial software. Documentation is also free for download from the Sun web site.

The compilers run on Solaris 8, 9, and 10, on sparc, x86, and amd64 platforms. The other tools also run on x86 and amd64 Linux from Red Hat and SuSE. Full details are here: http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/

While on the subject of free things. The C/C++ differences subsection of Derek Jones C book (http://www.knosof.co.uk/cbook/cbook.html) is available as a free download: http://www.coding-guidelines.com/cbook/c90c++.pdf

Well that should give you some thing to read over the break!