IEEE Spectrum November, 2013 - 8

11.13

The New Global Hiring Hall
The free flow of STEM labor around the world
is the wave of the future

n the annual debate over how many foreign engineers should be permitted
to work in the United States, one idea is predictably absent: reciprocity.
Top engineers from around the world often find appealing jobs
and pay in the United States, but the reverse isn't necessarily true
for equally talented U.S. workers seeking engineering jobs abroad.
To ensure an even playing field, why not promote a new global ethos
of employing U.S. engineers, scientists, and software programmers
anywhere in the world?
Promoting a single global employment standard for engineers would help
defuse the tense debate over how many foreign engineers should be permitted to work in the United States. Linking work visas for foreign engineers in
the United States reciprocally with work visas for U.S. engineers abroad would
also reflect the new cosmopolitan reality. Around the world, engineers share
common practices, values, and modes of expression-far more than do physicians, lawyers, or teachers. Walling in each nation's engineers is unwise, especially when the walls arise mainly to please domestic political constituencies.
To be sure, many U.S. engineers will never want employment outside
the country. It would be hard to imagine them working in South Korea, for
instance, where promotions are few and de rigueur camaraderie means
long hours with colleagues both on and off the job. India, most flagrantly,
makes the hiring of foreign engineers virtually impossible. And when
German companies advertise for engineers in the United States-which they
do frequently-they insist on fluency in German as well as English, even
though as an everyday matter in most engineering environments, German
is no longer essential.
Nevertheless, despite the cultural barriers-and in some cases much
lower pay-some U.S. engineers would welcome the chance to work in
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Australia, China, Southeast Asia, the
Middle East, thriving parts of Africa, or
Western Europe, particularly if the alternative is unemployment. In those places,
critical labor shortages in some technology sectors are exacerbated by rigid restrictions against qualified U.S. workers.
Things may be changing, though. "In
China and Malaysia, they are dying for foreigners to show up and 'dump their brains'
into the local ecosystem," says Michael
Zielenziger, an Asia expert with Oxford
Economics, a London consulting firm.
Five factors are behind what may one
day become an unstoppable worldwide
desire for American engineers:
1) The hegemony of English in engineering workplaces means that a U.S. worker
might have a significant advantage in
Shanghai or Munich.
2) Wage convergence means engineers'
salaries are rising in some parts of the
world and stagnating in others. Because
of lower living costs in some emerging
cities-and the tax holiday for Americans on much
of the income they earn abroad-the actual value of
a foreign paycheck may be higher than expected.
3) Half of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the
world are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the availability of homegrown engineers is small and the pay for
foreigners is surprisingly competitive. This year, some
U.S. citizens joined an IBM research unit in Nairobi.
4) Under pressure from the U.S. government, some
countries, including China, Germany, and Singapore,
are lowering their barriers to imported engineers.
5) Engineers worldwide are becoming more able to
compete. Many engineers in China, Germany, India,
and elsewhere have some U.S. education and work
experience. If there ever was a need to protect local
engineers from U.S. rivals, the need is diminishing.
For engineers around the world, competition with
their counterparts in the United States is intensifying in unexpected ways. While the conversation is
mainly about what happens when the world's best
engineers go to the United States, the odds are growing that the ultimate showdown will occur, face-toface, in faraway places-between footloose Yanks and
local engineering heroes. -G. Pasca l Zach a ry
G. Pascal Zachary is the author of Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush,
Engineer of the American Century (Free Press, 1997). He teaches at
Arizona State University.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2013