The other week EETimes.com released several snippets from their annual salary and opinion survey. At first it seems that electrical engineers in the United States do rather well compared to their European and Japanese counterparts, with median earnings of $108k, $61k, and $65k, respectively. Now where it gets a little bit confusing is that the median earnings for American engineers include benefits. What is not exactly clear is what benefits are taken into consideration? Medical, 401k, ESPP, bonuses, or maybe all of the above? It is also not clear what benefits, if any, are included for European and Japanese engineers. Sure engineers in many European countries might earn less money wise, but healthcare and other benefits might be provided by the government instead. Some clarification of these points would be very much appreciated. There are also a few other points of concern. Why is it that the survey had 1,600 respondents from the United States and 1,900 from Japan, but only 164 from Europe? Either someone did not do their job very well, or it has to be concluded that the electrical engineering profession has all but disappeared from the European continent. To be fair, 164 respondents are more than EETimes obtained last year, but the number is still rather pathetically small.

Salaries aside, it is clear the engineers in the United States are highly concerned about foreign competition due to outsourcing and H1-B visa levels, as these were the predominantly cited issues of concern. A more detailed breakdown of the immigration issue can be found over here, where a whopping 37% of American engineers support a limit on the number and time that foreign workers may work in the U.S. Furthermore, a staggering 44% believe that foreign nationals that earned engineering degrees in the U.S. ought to be able to work in the U.S. only for a limited amount of time after graduation. This attitude is absolutely contrary to what many economic scholars suggest as the proper course of action for the U.S. in order to stay competitive with other countries over the next few decades. As discussed in a previous post, the Kauffman Foundation for example recommends a disbanding of the H1-B visa cap altogether. Others have suggested for the U.S. to institute programs that would enable students of advanced degrees to obtain citizenship upon successful completion of these degrees. Clearly, what American engineers believe is best for their career in the engineering field at this point does not align with what many policy makers and economic pundits believe to be best for the country in the long-term. Then again, maybe foreign workers don’t exactly want to stick around in the U.S. anyhow. Plenty of developing countries offer very good opportunities for skilled workers nowadays, and most of them offer significantly more vacation time that gets fully utilized by the workforce – translation: no more feeling bad about taking off two or three weeks at a time.

You won’t find detailed information on stealth startup Black Sand Technologies from their web-site. About the only things you will find is that they are a fabless semiconductor company based out of Austin, TX developing solutions for the wireless industry. Additionally, the company recently successfully completed raising $8.2 Million in Series A Financing from Austin Ventures and North Bridge Partners. Lucky for us, the Austin American-Statesman recently found out a few more details about the startup and was nice enough to share them with us in an editorial. A short summery of the findings: The company, currently employs just a dozen people and expects the initial funding to last about two years, or just long enough to design chips that revolutionaize how wireless devices amplify data and voice signals. It seems that most of the current staff previously worked at Silicon Laboratories, which by the way was also funded by Austin Ventures. The company mission at this point is to come up with a technique to implement power amplifiers using conventional silicon chip technology, thus making them much easier to integrate with a wide range of wireless devices. Keep in mind that what conventional silicon technology actually means is left to the reader’s interpretation. While I don’t know any of the founders personally, it seems that most people who do, consider them to be top notch, and it will be wise to keep an eye on the company in the near future. Chip samples are expected to become available at the end of 2008. In the mean time, if you are really interested and want to find out some more details or even partake in the adventure, Black Sand Technologies is currently looking for some experienced and talented mixed-signal and RF engineers.

If you are serious about entrepreneurship, startups, or venture-capital and you don’t know about the Kaufmann Foundation, you should take a few minutes to visit their web-site and most likely bookmark it. From insightful essays on entrepreneurship and education, to a dedicated Kauffman Fellows program that aims to identify and educate future leaders in the venture capital industry, their site is simply awash in useful information and interesting perspectives. Recently, they published Version 2.0 of their research and policy guide, titled On the Road to an Entrepreneurial Economy. This paper is not a short read by any means, coming in at a nice and healthy forty pages, but don’t let this scare you away for the paper is well written and covers a wealth of topics. In a nutshell, it concentrates on policy measures that the federal government ought to follow in order to promote innovative entrepreneurship. While this paper mainly focuses on the current state of affairs in the United States, the outlined policies are general in nature and can be implemented in other countries as well.

Here are a few key takeaways. For the economy to continue firing on all cylinders, it is in the government’s best interest to ensure that individuals that enter the workforce not only have twenty-first century skills and knowledge, but also have the ability to overcome the fear of using these skills to generate and commercialize new ideas, products and services. In the same sense, individuals need to be encouraged to view themselves as their own firms, who are selling their labor to others or to themselves, should they want to start their own businesses. For this to happen on a large scale, entrepreneurship needs to be instilled in individuals at an early age, and not be relegated to MBA courses at universities. Additionally, the paper argues for the disbanding of the H1B visa cap, based on an analysis of the amount of businesses that have been started by foreign workers over the last several decades. While this is a good point, I think it needs further study as recently there has been an increasing trend for foreign nationals to obtain an education in the United States, but to return home afterwards to start their new enterprises in their homeland. This of course, can be countered with the fact that several of the companies started abroad have since expanded and have a significant presence in the United States hiring workers over here as well.  Another interesting point that the paper makes is a call for healthcare to be decoupled from employment. The argument being that startups, because they lack critical mass in terms of employees, are unable to provide affordable healthcare, and are thus at a disadvantage compared to large companies. This in turn limits the number of individuals that are willing to take a risk of starting or joining a startup. But fostering startups and innovation is key to ensuring the future prosperity for the United States – for example, did you know that firms with fewer than 500 employees generate thirteen to fourteen times more patents per employee than larger firms? And to add insult to injury, these patents are usually twice as likely to be cited by other patents and papers.

I could go on for pages discussing all the info contained in the policy guide, but you are probably better off reading the actual paper yourself so that you can draw your own conclusions. In any case, whether you agree with the points in the policy guide or not, the Kauffman Foundation web-site is a very good resource for entrepreneurial information.