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The article considers the growing number of Chinese electronics engineers looking toward management and entrepreneurial opportunities. The growth of China's electronics industry is a key factor that drives many young Chinese choose electronics engineering as their occupation. These young Chinese electronic-design engineers receive more job opportunities, better salaries and grand social status than engineers in other industries. There are two reasons why mid-career electronics engineers stir away from engineering. First, research and development is an arduous job. Second, opportunity drives engineers to other jobs.

The article considers how some Japanese companies responded to warnings in the business and trade media for engineers in the U.S. and Europe that well-educated, relatively low-paid Chinese engineers present a seemingly insurmountable threat to their U.S. and European livelihoods. A Japanese power-supply vendor, such as Lambda/TDK, supports three digital-power research and development efforts in three divisions. The company assumes that within three years, digital-power technology will play a significant role in the company's products. Bellnix, a relatively small Japanese vendor of point-of-load converters, a notoriously cutthroat market, is selling digital-power-technology based converters. These companies realize that their futures lies in high-end designs for the noncommodity markets.

This article discusses the results of the study "Mind of the Engineer," which is conducted by this periodical every two years, for 2006. It explains that the study covered North America, Europe, China, Japan and other parts of Asia. Around 50 percent respondents are design-and-development engineers. The respondents identified keeping up with the latest technologies as their primary concern. 10 and 11 are the average number of projects per year handled by the respondents. The study also reveals an increase in the number of engineers who work in teams and increase in the number of cancelled projects.

The article discusses the impact of globalization on the engineering profession. Companies that compete in the global market hire technologists from Asia because of engineers. China produces 220, 000 basic engineering graduates a year. Manufacturing output is growing at 8% in emerging markets but only 3% in the U.S. As multinational businesses compete to increase their manufacturing and marketing presence in developing countries, they look to native engineers to take on design and research tasks. Globalization is causing a shift in the location of research, design and development. With the introduction of the Internet, technical jobs can literally be shipped overseas. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the number of jobs that shifted to lower-wage countries in the first quarter of 2004 was 4,633. One reason for the situation is that the outsourcing concept does not match the global economy at present. Outsourcing assumes that the company is located in the U.S. or Europe and subcontracts its technology service to an independent overseas subcontractor that supplies low-wage service workers to replace workers in higher-wage countries requiring the service. India's economy will grow by close to 75% in 2004 due to outsourcing operations.