Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> steven smith writes:
>
>  > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/business/worldbusiness/17engineers.html?ref=business
>
> *chortle* I read that article in about 1978, I guess they just dusted
> it off and did s/US/Japan/.

Agreed.  Hamamatsu in 1979.  I recall several long evenings of massive 
quantities of stuff on sticks, lubricated with shochu, listening our 
design team bucho bemoan the dearth of good Japanese engineers even 
then.  In front of twelve Japanese and four roundeyes.

At that time, my employer hired its engineers almost exclusively from 
the original Satsuma and Choshu engineering schools -- in Kagoshima and 
Yamaguchi.  There was a huge ongoing debate over whether to allow 
Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese engineers (we were working on a tieup 
with an Indian company already) to work at the headquarters as it was 
feared that they'd copy everything and do it cheaper when they went home.

--
CL