Tim Cook: USA Doesn't Have The Skill Set To Build Electronics

[Sionyn]

no skill set to build electronics in usa let alone parts and other manufacturing processes. What dose he mean by skill set ? 

[Matje]

no skill set to build electronics in usa let alone parts and other manufacturing processes. What dose he mean by skill set ? 

Trivial. What everyone saying something like that means (also applies to Europe etc.).

Workers expect to be paid a decent wage, a wage they can actually pay their bills with. Now if that is not totally unreasonable I don't know what would be, hence it must be prevented from ever happening.

I personally hope this will someday bite them in the ass in a really big way. After all - who is going to buy their stuff once no normal person has any money left anymore...

[IanB]

Basically, companies are not willing to train people, and they are not willing to pay market rates for the skills they need. So they complain of a shortage of suitable workers. This article in the Wall Street Journal explains it well:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596630897409182.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

A few soundbites from the article:

The perceptions about a lack of skilled workers are pervasive. But the problem is an illusion.

Some of the complaints about skill shortages boil down to the fact that employers can't get candidates to accept jobs at the wages offered. That's an affordability problem, not a skill shortage.

And make no mistake: There are plenty of people out there who could step into jobs with just a bit of training—even recent graduates who don't have much job experience. Unfortunately, American companies don't seem to do training anymore.

[Sionyn]

so is he right then ?
i mean i understand from a technical stance but is just covering the fact its cheaper to build in china ?

[FenderBender]

More money in their pockets.

[bullet308]

The ethos among the MBA class seems to be, "give us all your money or we are going to Go Galt!"

Well, then...don’t let the door hit you in the ass, you egomaniacle pieces of shit.... 

[Sionyn]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-06/foxconn-plans-american-expansion-as-clients-seek-made-in-u-dot-s-dot-a-dot

[free_electron]

THe probnlem is assembling the damn things. it is very precise work requiring specialized knowledge.

making the logic board of an ipad , from an assembly perspective, is not chickenshit and there are very few companies that can pull it off. it requires specialized equipment and trained operators that can hanle these machines. unfortunately all that stuff sits in the far east. Simply becasue there is no us demand for this knowhow and it has evolved in china ( historically. the operators there are trained by US people and the machine manufacturers. the machines are never installed in the us so there is no need to train operators there , hence know how is not present in the us manufacturing pool )

Go around and talk to assembly houses and tell them you need a 16 mils board, flipc hip and bga top and bottom with underfills and 01005 parts. and you need them in volume... good luck finding one assembly house that will take on the job. they all will point to china. they don't have the machinery nor the experience. That's simply the nature of the beast.

We have been outsourcing so long and the stuff has evolved over there that it is now at the point that we don;t know how to do it anymore ourselves ...

[BravoV]

The real problem is there is a huge gap between the productive generation made decades ago vs current "spoiled" generation that only want and see their future either to be lawyer, wall street hot shot or Justin Bieber/Lady Gaga, nothing else. 


Let alone high tech skill, this one is a good example :


http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/10/business/china-uk-jobs/index.html?hpt=ibu_c2


Quoting above example :

"The company faces difficulties finding staff both in Britain and China, but for different reasons. "We have been very lucky in the UK as most of our staff have been here for more than 10 years", said Caldeira.

However, this workforce is much older than the Chinese employees due to a skills shortage.
"Most of the staff here in the UK are in their 50s or 60s, although they won't like me saying that! They were taught in apprenticeships in the 1970s and 1980s, but those skills aren't being taught now."

[Bored@Work]

The real problem is there is a huge gap between the productive generation made decades ago vs current "spoiled" generation that only want and see their future either to be lawyer, wall street hot shot or Justin Bieber/Lady Gaga, nothing else. 

Well, drug dealer is high on the popularity list, too. And modelling for the girls.

And on the other hand apprenticeship is indeed becoming very unpopular. But that is not a one-side thing. Companies no longer want to offer it, because it doesn't generate profit within three month, when the next quarterly report is due. Kids don't want to do it, because it really means putting some own effort in.

But the point is, when people talk about skill shortages they typically don't mean this kind of shortage, they mean a shortage of young, cheap workers who work for peanuts, but are as experienced, but not as old, as a 90 year old guru in his field. I.e. totally unreasonable expectations meet a spoiled generation.

[westfw]

THe probnlem is assembling the damn things. it is very precise work requiring specialized knowledge.

Yes, and no.  It is precise work of the sort that is no longer taught in all primary schools.  On the other hand, it more the sort of thing that requires some training and some practice, rather than "specialized knowledge" or rare skill.  If you meet a random person on the street, could they do the final soldering of TH components on one of today's electronics products?  No, probably not.   But you could probably train them to do so in a matter of days or weeks, and after six months you'd have a subset of people who were really good at it.

I keep thinking of the "ladies" who used to assemble Core memory.  And assorted physical laborers (gardeners, construction folk, etc.)  Do they have Skills?  Hell yes.  Do they have unique skills derived from years of study that would be impossible to replace?  I don't think so...

I suppose that it says something about society: the amount of time that a company is willing to spend training an employee to do what it wants.  It seems to be at a low point at the moment; perhaps a symptom of depressed economies where the chances of finding someone out-of-work who already has the skills you want is higher.  (OTOH, you had/have professions that are artificially restricted by demanding that would-be employees do lengthy apprenticeships, even when it's probably not strictly necessary.  That's not so great either.  IMO.)