Unix system administration bulletin, 2014

For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20141008 : IMF warns period of ultra-low interest rates poses fresh financial crisis threat ( The Guardian )
• 20140912 : 5 questions to ask before you take a tech job by Mary K. Pratt ( Sep 11, 2014 , computerworld.com )
• 20140817 : Engineers are the lifeblood of a country – and the UK doesn't have enough by James Dyson ( August 16, 2014 , theguardian.com, , Jump to comments (857) )
• 20140812 : A Good IT Person Needs To Be Half Technologist, Half Psychologist All Tech Considered NPR by Laura Sydell ( August 11, 2014 , npr.org )
• 20140408 : The Unix sysadmins guide to getting along with co-workers by Sandra Henry-Stocker ( ITworld )
• 20140408 : 7 habits of highly successful Unix admins by Sandra Henry-Stocker ( April 05, 2014 , itworld.com )

Old News ;-)

[Oct 08, 2014] IMF warns period of ultra-low interest rates poses fresh financial crisis threat

Quote: "loose monetary policies also prompted investment in high-yield but risky assets and for investors to take bigger bets."... From comments: "I think there are a couple of problems with British Business from my observation. Firstly a lot of senior management lack technical experience in the business sector their business is involved in. When I was at university I worked freelance as a web developer and I noticed that a lot of the MDs of these web development firms had no background in web design or development. Whilst i'd concede that it's not necessary to be an expert web developer to own web development firm i'd say it is necessary to have some technical competency otherwise how do you make appropriate decisions, you end up reliant on other people and usually those people have their own interests at heart not the interest of the business.

The other problem is again senior management not being able to accept responsibility or criticism. They pretend they're open to constructive criticism but as soon as somebody sticks their neck out the axe swings even if the criticism is valid. This is part of the reason I struck out on my own and tried to run my business differently, I got pissed off with not being able to challenge stupid decisions. Being a CEO or MD doesn't mean one is better than anyone else, nor are they infallible and the sooner people realise this the better. "

The Guardian

...José Viñals, the IMF's financial counsellor, said:

"Policymakers are facing a new global imbalance: not enough economic risk-taking in support of growth, but increasing excesses in financial risk-taking posing stability challenges."

He added that traditional banks were safer after the injection of additional capital but not strong enough to support economic recovery.

Viñals said the IMF had analysed 300 large banks in advanced economies, making up the bulk of their banking system. It found that institutions representing almost 40% of total assets lacked the financial muscle to supply adequate credit in support of the recovery. In the eurozone, this proportion rose to about 70%.

"And risks are shifting to the shadow banking system in the form of rising market and liquidity risks," Viñals said. "If left unaddressed, these risks could compromise global financial stability."

The stability report said low interest rates were "critical" in supporting the economy because they encouraged consumers to spend, and businesses to hire and invest. But it noted that loose monetary policies also prompted investment in high-yield but risky assets and for investors to take bigger bets. One concern is that much of the high-risk investment has taken place in emerging markets, leaving them vulnerable to rising US interest rates.

"Accommodative policies aimed at supporting the recovery and promoting economic risk taking have facilitated greater financial risk taking," the IMF said. As evidence it pointed to rising asset prices, smaller premiums on riskier investments and the lack of volatility in financial markets. In many cases, the IMF said the behaviour of investors was at odds with the state of the global economy.

"What is unusual about these developments is their synchronicity: they have occurred simultaneously across broad asset classes and across countries in a way that is unprecedented."

tomsixty1, 08 October 2014 2:30pm

So why do they now recognise that the policies they supported are making what remains of the global economy unstable and unsustainable?

They are preparing us for more bail outs and austerity.

"The primary beneficiaries of these central bank money creation policies have been global very high net worth investors, their financial institutions, and global corporations in general. According to a study in 2013 by Capgemini, a global business consultancy, Very High Net Worth Investors increased their invest-able wealth by $4 trillion in 2012 alone, with projected further asset growth of $4 trillion a year in the coming decade. The primary financial institutions which invest on their behalf, what are called 'shadow banks' (i.e. hedge funds, private equity firms, asset management companies, and dozens of other globally unregulated financial institutions) more than doubled their total assets from 2008 to 2013, and now hold more than $71 trillion in invest-able assets globally.

This massive accrual of wealth by global finance capitalists and their institutions occurred in speculating and investing in offshore financial and emerging market opportunities-made possible in the final analysis by the trillions of dollars, pounds, Euros, and Yen provided at little or no cost by central banks' policies since 2008. That is, until 2014.
That massive tens of trillions of dollars, diverted from the US, Europe and Japan to the so-called 'Emerging Markets' and China is now beginning to flow back from the emerging markets to the 'west'.

Consequently in turn, the locus of the global crisis that first erupted in 2008 in the U.S., then shifted to Europe between 2010-early 2013, is now shifting again, a third time. Financial and economic instability is now emerging and deepening in offshore markets and economies-and growing increasingly likely in China as well." Jack Rasmus February 2014.

Fendercombo -> Elbowpatch , 08 October 2014 11:43pm

Speaking as somebody who actually owns a small manufacturing business I can't say I blame you for not investing in a manufacturing start-up. It's not a safe investment. I was pretty lucky in that i've been building guitar amplifiers and effect pedals since about 14 as a hobby and I kind of grew that hobby into a business. The only investment i've ever taken was a startup loan in 2002 and I paid that back in 2010.

I think there are a couple of problems with British Business from my observation. Firstly a lot of senior management lack technical experience in the business sector their business is involved in. When I was at university I worked freelance as a web developer and I noticed that a lot of the MDs of these web development firms had no background in web design or development. Whilst i'd concede that it's not necessary to be an expert web developer to own web development firm i'd say it is necessary to have some technical competency otherwise how do you make appropriate decisions, you end up reliant on other people and usually those people have their own interests at heart not the interest of the business.

The other problem is again senior management not being able to accept responsibility or criticism. They pretend they're open to constructive criticism but as soon as somebody sticks their neck out the axe swings even if the criticism is valid. This is part of the reason I struck out on my own and tried to run my business differently, I got pissed off with not being able to challenge stupid decisions. Being a CEO or MD doesn't mean one is better than anyone else, nor are they infallible and the sooner people realise this the better.

[Sep 12, 2014] 5 questions to ask before you take a tech job By Mary K. Pratt

Sep 11, 2014 | computerworld.com

Anthony Artois, 1 day ago

This is a "print-and-keep" for the job search folder.

Some interview questions one may ask:

1. Will I be expected to falsify records ?
2. Has the person who will be my direct supervisor ever been sued for sexual harassment?
3. Can you provide any additional details on why the person who held this position last abruptly quit?
4. Have you ever considered abruptly quitting yourself? What were the associated circumstances?
5. Has anyone at this company ever attempted suicide while on-premises?

WARNING: Only ask these questions if you are reasonably certain you don't want the job anyway.

[Aug 17, 2014] Engineers are the lifeblood of a country – and the UK doesn't have enough by James Dyson

August 16, 2014 | theguardian.com, | Jump to comments (857)

The number of people taking science and maths A-levels is up for the fifth year running. Good, because I need some engineers. Rather a lot, in fact.

Unfazed by complex data and comfortable with technical theory and practice, engineers are a rarefied breed of problem-solvers. Or at least they are here in Britain. In the next six years, nearly 3m engineering jobs will be unfilled. With a shortage of supply, and growing demand, we certainly can't afford for the brightest minds to be snared by the City's big bucks.

Today, Dyson has a shortfall of 100 engineers. Next year we begin our £300m expansion, creating thousands of research and development roles in Wiltshire. I like our laboratories to be busy, creative hives buzzing with brain power – rather like a school. I don't like clinical white-coated silence. And so we need more "brains". Dyson needs them. Britain needs them. Otherwise we will lose out to China and India – countries that revere engineers – when it comes to developing, patenting and exporting new technology.

Twelve years ago, Dyson stopped assembling vacuums in the UK. One major reason was a failure to secure planning permission for a second factory adjacent to our existing one. Ironically, the factory we mothballed is now the R&D space we are outgrowing. The ironies continue: our new laboratories will rise on the very spot of our never-built second factory.

The closure of our assembly lines was painful, but it meant focusing on developing technology here in the UK. For example, our ultra-high-speed digital motors are conceived and engineered here. We've been developing them now for more than 15 years. They use new technology which makes them much smaller and more efficient – a revolution in motor design. I can say that, because I'm not clever enough to invent a motor. But I am lucky enough to work with people who are.

Every six seconds one of these motors rolls off the line. Actually it's more of a very accurate placing, and it's all totally automated, in Singapore – close to the lines that make the Airblade hand-dryers and cordless vacuums they are to propel, and close to Singapore's rapidly growing engineering talent pool.

Somewhere in that tale is a warning. Britain fell out of love with manufacturing, and emerging economies picked up the tools we'd downed. If the encouraging renaissance of science and engineering in schools is a dead cat bounce, we will fall out of love with invention too.

When you crunch the numbers, just 4% of this year's A-levels were in physics – an essential subject for most engineering courses. A problem. But the problems start even earlier. Research by the Royal Academy of Engineering shows that only half of 16-year-olds in England pass both GCSE maths and at least two sciences, meaning half of our young people are disadvantaged if they wish to pursue engineering.

Yes, science is perceived as hard. But a bigger problem is that young people don't know what a career in science or engineering offers. An engineer is not a man in greasy overalls or a harebrained oddball (though I have a soft spot for the latter). They are technologists, developing ideas to shape our future. That's why my foundation works with young people from primary school age to dispel the myths and help them discover what a career in engineering is like.

Science and design and technology in schools must highlight the excitement of developing ideas and experimenting with new materials – carbon fibre, not just cardboard. Learning by doing, failing in the process, and trying again. The classroom must equip young people with the skills to bring these ideas to life, and most importantly the enthusiasm to embark on further study.

We have seen exactly this. For the past two years we have been working with five schools in Bath encouraging students as young as 13 to discover the world of engineering – high-tech equipment working alongside an industry-relevant curriculum. Uptake in design and technology has increased by 200%, and crucially more girls are taking it up too.

I want the biggest discoveries of the future to take place on our soil. We must build on the reputation of our world-class universities. That starts by feeding in the best young people from our schools. If we get it right we will fill our pipeline with highly skilled inventors, develop patentable technology and export it around the world.

patrick111, 16 August 2014 11:07am

Working in City of London is more paying, attractive and respectable than to be an Engineer in Britain. Surely the brightest would go for financial services.

bluejay2011 -> patrick111, 16 August 2014 11:29am

Surely there's an element of satisfaction that could lure "the brightest" back to engineering: being involved in a creative process that changes technology and the the way humans interact with the world.

In the city you may make some temporary money to spend on things others have made, but as an engineer you can (occasionally) change human destiny.

RedLaup -> patrick111, 16 August 2014 11:38am

You do not need to be "bright" to work in the city, let's nail that myth!!!

Billyandbenny, 16 August 2014 11:13am

Well, what do you expect? We allowed the unions to be destroyed, which allowed corporations to offshore most of our industrial production - and our engineering skills. Yes, we need more engineers but there will be no point in training more unless we take concrete steps to reinstate domestic production capacity.

This is a political 'hot potato' - donations - and the tragic irony of it is that the very people who cheered on the decimation of our working class now say that, rather than train our own engineers, we should import them as and when needed. It's all quite treasonous.

bailliegillies -> niko91, 16 August 2014 11:54am

In most cases it was not a matter of the production being placed offshore. It was more a matter that the UK industries could not produce goods as well and as cheaply as other countries.

Yet Germany doesn't have a problem, their goods are expensive and they pay their workers four times as much as British workers get. So no it's not simply about producing goods cheaper and quicker, there's something else at play and it's about profit as there is more money to be made manufacturing the goods in China and Korea than there is in the UK.

mugclass -> Billyandbenny, 16 August 2014 2:15pm

You are contradicting what Dyson is saying. He is stating that his company in the UK does not have a sufficient pool of young engineers, whereas you are saying there's no point training them without jobs available. I work in a manufacturing industry and we are on a continual hunt for young people with potential for engineering, but we also need university graduate engineers - of which there's a massive shortage - civil engineers, mechanical, bio mechanical etc. we've just taken on a 26 year old graduate Mechanical Engineer from Madrid, having failed to find a UK candidate.

He, on the other hand, couldn't find a well paid post in Spain so came to the UK. Remember there's a massive difference between an 'engineer' who mends your washing machine, and a professionally qualified graduate.

ID7776906 -> niko91, 16 August 2014 3:19pm

Yes between that and industrial spying and just improving upon the British and American inventions already in existence. Paying your work force in bags of rice and adding a few basic electric improvements for vanity it was simple for foreign nations to produce manufactured goods more cheaply and ship across the world. Who invented the steam engine ?Who invented the internal combustion engine,Who discovered vulcanized rubber and plastic and injection molding machines?

Michael Faraday and his development of the electric motor?The 1830`s steam carriages that pioneered automobiles? The triple expansion steam engine? I have yet to see any substantial earth shaking development from the Hondas, Toyotas, and Nissans and Tesas and the Korean car firms, it`s all been simple convenient basic tuning of what has already been established by the West, and they took over the market without research and development costs and paying their workers a pittance starvation wages.

NomadEngineer -> bailliegillies, 16 August 2014 6:14pm

German 'workers' earn about the same as UK workers if you are referring to production line workers and technicians.

But Germany values its engineers, and their pay is excellent. A 'Diploma Engineer' has a higher status than lawyers, medics, financiers. That is the reason Germany's manufacturing is so successful.

This problem in the UK is two generations old. As a graduate engineer I worked in Germany around 1970, and could not believe how valued and supported I was, my productivity was three times that in the UK. I had beens seconded by my UK company, but found out I could earn twice my UK salary if I shifted employers.

For personal reasons I returned to the UK, but wish I could have stayed in Germany. It also explains why such a large percentage of scientists and engineers, graduating from our good universities, quit the UK, many for good.

It's better now, but the general public still can't differentiate between a highly qualified engineer and a mechanic.

Putting it briefly, an engineer uses maths where an accounant uses arithmetic, an engineer uses logic where a lawyer uses precedent, and I won't comment on the guesswork that financiers use.

I have since spent a good part of my life working outside the UK, though unlike many of my university compatriots, I have not quit the UK entirely.

bodrules -> theindyisbetter, 16 August 2014 7:29pm

The rot in R&D started waaay before the 80's - look at the machine tool industry (where Germany makes big bucks), that was effectively killed off by the early 70's in the UK - thanks to poor R&D (which UK companies are still poor at) plus they lacked investment into modern capital equipment etc

Just one example, then there's the advent of the petro-pound in the early 90's, the all round R&D debacle, poor industrial relations, poor levels of investment in training, UK consumers being willing to purchase cheap foreign imports, our very open markets, short term rent seeking and profit boosting etc all combine to make today.

thedavegray watersdeep, 16 August 2014 9:16pm

Wrong. Some German companies pay a 13th pay packet but certainly not all of them. Tax is and the cost of living are higher in Germany too.

Happytravelling Billyandbenny, 16 August 2014 11:38pm

You're obviously not an engineer and you're talking rubbish. Mismanagement and Destructive employee-employer relations led to the decline in UK mass manufacturing. And that was in part due to unions as well as poor management. You obviously don't remember red Robbo?

But small scale, high end manufacturing is very healthy in the UK. The reality is, for high volume, low margin manufacturing to be viable in a high wage economy, high productivity and efficiency is essential.

watersdeep thedavegray, 17 August 2014 2:40pm

Wrong. Some German companies pay a 13th pay packet but certainly not all of them.

Tax is and the cost of living are higher in Germany too.

No, tax was about the same (i.e. no lower in the UK, even though the standard of living is lower). Housing is the major outgoing, Germans have a system where they save for a house. but most Germans rent (and the rental market is strictly controlled), and although not all companies may be paying a 13th month salary, most do.

We also received between 2,000 - 3,500€ in bonus once a year shared in the company, which was family run, and a small number of free shares at Christmas time. Now show me the UK company that does the same.

MohammedS chalkandcheese, 16 August 2014 11:53am

I don't think this is world wide. For instance many developing world universities have excellent engineering programmes and the likes of the USA strives to attract and retain engineers as it understands the importance of the sector. Here in the UK we live in a service sector reliant economy and production and design has taken not only a back seat but a space under the spare wheel! Until we have significant shifts in the way we think about our economy we will never attract or retain good engineers. And so fall behind everyone else year upon year.

bailliegillies chalkandcheese, 16 August 2014 12:01pm

No it isn't worldwide, very much a UK problem. When I left the oil industry they were throwing money at the few engineers and experienced people around and bringing in people from abroad. On one of my last contracts I had some from Australia who I had to instruct on the systems. Go take a look at what they're paying engineers offshore now compared to what they paid when I was working. Even taking into account inflation the rates for offshore have risen exponentially.

zeke2u MohammedS, 17 August 2014 11:44am

I think you'll find that the UK is more like the US than differs from it. The US economy is also highly financialised. This statistic says a lot: in Japan, engineers outnumber lawyers 10 to 1. In the US, there's 10 lawyers for every engineer. The steel industry in Japan was financed by US banks in the '60's, while the US was still in a monopoly position. GM, which employs ~300,000 people worldwide, use to employ that many in Detroit alone. The attack against industry in the US was motivated by the same reasons in both countries: that's where union concentration was the highest.

Williamlarge , 16 August 2014 11:32am

James Dyson is a right wing Tory. He off shores employment because it makes him more money not because he has an inherent love for English workers (which is the real reason why we lose out to India and China. Not because they have thousands of engineers, but their labour is cheap). He's always going on and on about engineers every time A level results come out, but you can't force someone to be one can you? I always find it strange how these right wing business men love the idea of social engineering when it comes to their own business, but shout 'socialism' if when there is a whiff of egalitarian politics.

exiledlondoner , 16 August 2014 11:32am

The closure of our assembly lines was painful, but it meant focusing on developing technology here in the UK. For example, our ultra-high-speed digital motors are conceived and engineered here.

"Conceived and engineered here" means "built somewhere else". For all his bollocks about 'pain', James Dyson moved production abroad because it was cheaper - assembly lines do not need hoards of engineering and physics graduates to work on them.

Meanwhile, his rival vacuum cleaner maker, Numatic, continue to make their excellent products in the UK (no gadgets, no gizmos - just really good machines), and actually do contribute to the UK economy, instead of just wrapping themselves in a far-eastern made union jack, and pretending to....

Has anyone seen a builder using a Dyson? In my experience, they all use Numatic 'Henry' machines....

spatterfest -> exiledlondoner, 16 August 2014 11:52am

Indeed.

Dyson's much trumpeted adoration of British engineers is largely garbage.

He likes British engineers in the areas where he can't find cheaper engineers elsewhere.

exiledlondoner theindyisbetter , 16 August 2014 12:23pm

I'm not sure why Dyson gets so much stick in the Guardian comments section.

Because he likes to present himself as something he's not - a patriot who cares about British manufacturing. In reality he's just another corporate suit making more profits by taking advantage of the low-wage, unregulated labour markets in Asia.

As far as I can tell it seems that Dyson employs roughly twice the number of people in the UK than Numatic do, and on better wages presumably (since according a Guardian report a few years ago the majority of Numatic employees are on a basic shop floor wage).

Dyson is a much bigger company - that's to be expected. The difference is that Dyson talks about British manufacturing, while Numatic actually make things here....

I know it does you no good if you were a factory shop floor worker, but as far as I can see Dyson now employs more people in the UK than they did when the factory was here - just doing different things.

He may have finally got back to the employment levels he reached before he sacked his workers and exported their jobs, but this is a south east Asian success story - not a British one. Most of Dyson's employees and his profits are not here.

Dyson are hardly the only company to do this, so why the animosity?

Other foreign companies don't lecture me about how the UK should be run, and how much they care for all the people here they've made redundant to increase their profits.

Dyson is to all intents and purposes a foreign company. James Dyson should lecture the Malaysians and the people of Singapore - not us.

NotForTurning jusi , 16 August 2014 2:48pm

"Engineers are the lifeblood of a country"

Typical case of tunnel vision.

A teacher would say the same of teachers. A politician of politicians. A banker of bankers. But a nurse wouldn't. Really, this is just silly stuff and is the product of a narrowed mind.

And the irony is that in consideration of the heavy, expensive, cumbersome, fragile vaccuum cleaners, he should really be saying that marketing men

RedLaup, 16 August 2014 11:37am

Students perception of engineering is a very valid point. Engineering needs to sell itself! Too many students are bowled over by hyped up media, finance and law careers. Glamorous films and tv series are not set in engineering environments. The whole engineering community needs to get together and present a coordinated PR and educational campaign. I would love my son to go into engineering.

OffensiveUnsuitable RedLaup, 16 August 2014 3:04pm

Too many children are put off maths & science subjects by the curriculums and the way they are taught. Make them more accessible for those who cannot see the point. When I was in graduate school, we had an eminent professor of structural engineering, Mario Salvadori who, twice a week, used to teach teenagers in Harlem an evening class in statics and strengths of structures. He used props: for instance, he had a long piece of foam rubber that he used to demonstrate tension & compression in simply supported beams vs fixed beams and cantilevered beams - oh, and he taught it using no mathematics, because so many people are intimidated by maths.

Maurice Walshe RedLaup, 16 August 2014 4:52pm

As the drifters said its "money honey"

BeastNeedsMoreTorque RedLaup, 16 August 2014 8:20pm

There's a lot of Physics PhD's working in finance.

The astronomical wages in finance have sucked in brains from many fields.

There are and will be consequences from that.

This article is very poor. It trots out the old cliches about why there are shortages of engineers. Yet never mentions the wages of the finance sector as a factor.

WilliamAshbless -> RedLaup, 17 August 2014 9:32am

Glamorous films and tv series are not set in engineering environments.

Who makes these tv series? Arts graduates of course.
Do Arts graduates think engineering glamorous? Clearly not.
But this is, no doubt, the same the world over. Yet Germany and Switzerland they have high wage economies with significant exports and a positive balance of trade. How come? It's not as if their media are engineering propagandists. Likewise the UK, Switzerland has a big finance sector.

I, personally, put it down to the culture of the elites. The elites decide pay grades; and they pay themselves most. UK elite culture goes back decades; if not centuries. How many engineers are MPs? 1, 2, 0? Every single member of the Chinese politburo are engineering PhDs.

WilliamAshbless RedLaup , 17 August 2014 10:39am

Have a look at the Guardian's news front page today:

Interview with Liv Tyler: actress
Interview with Sofie Gråbøl: actress
Interview with Kim Dotcom: hardly an engineer
Interview with Mo Farah: sportsman
Interview with Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike: actors
Interview with Jackie Chan: actor
Tribute to Lauren Bacall: actress

These are the people we want to read about - engineering is, indeed, not glamorous and no amount of propaganda is going to get Guardian journalists to change that. Yet these glamorised people are, by and large, actors. Guardian writers aren't glamorizing lawyers, bankers, dentists, accountants and salespeople. There's quite a lot of media portrayal of police; especially detectives but I don't necessarily see that as glamorizing crime fighting. Accountancy must be just about the most unglamourous job going. Does that explain the status of accounts in the UK w.r.t. engineers? No.

WilliamAshbless WilliamAshbless , 17 August 2014 10:41am

Does that explain the status of accountants in the UK w.r.t. engineers? No.

Arhhh. When will we get an edit button on CiF? It need only last 4 minutes.

PeterS378 , 16 August 2014 11:37am

Engineers are the lifeblood of a country – and the UK doesn't have enough

Engineering degrees are demanding, and at the end, pay relatively poorly, even at graduate level, let alone after a few years:

Average graduate starting salary, by sector:

Investment Banking £45,000
Law £38,000
Oil and Energy £32,500
Media £32,000
Consulting £31,500
Dentistry £31,000
Banking and Finance £30,000
IT and Telecommunications £30,000
Armed Forces £29,500
Medicine £29,000
Accounting and Professional Services £28,000
Chemical and Pharmaceutical £27,500
Engineering and Industrial £26,500
Retail £24,000
Public Sector £23,000

If you want more engineers, pay them more

PacoFleyas 16 August 2014 11:41am

An engineer is not a man in greasy overalls or a harebrained oddball

Problem is that our political leaders believe just the opposite - and why wouldn't they? Davo's a jumped up PR man and Milbo's a political policy wonk. Ultimate irony though is that the person who destroyed manufacturing in the country was actually a qualified Chemist!

No chance of Engineers being as respected and valued as much here as they are in Germany until we get someone in government who is one. Government advisors on Science & Technology have been completely anonymous - can you even name one?? - and if you can, tell us one thing that

Freeport PacoFleyas 16 August 2014 11:55am

No chance of Engineers being as respected and valued as much here as they are in Germany until we get someone in government who is one.

You mean Dennis Healey, Major in the Royal Engineers and in charge of the landings at Anzio. He realised that wasting time and money keeping dead engineering companies going was a total non-starter, even before Thatcher. The left hated him for telling them the reality.

theindyisbetter PacoFleyas, 16 August 2014 11:59am

the person who destroyed manufacturing in the country was actually a qualified Chemist

Blaming Thatch for everything again. If you actually look at the facts, Brown/Blair were much worse.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/24/can-manufacturing-fill-british-economic-vacuum

Never mind Thatcherism. As McFadden confessed, the former Labour government "came late to the game". Only after the financial collapse did it remember there were still these buildings called factories with owners and workers who deserved to be helped and encouraged. Under Blair and Brown, manufacturing jobs shrank from 4.1m to 2.6m, and manufacturing's share of GDP from 18% to 13%.

ID1298062 , 16 August 2014 1:11pm

In Germany, engineers are respected as much as doctor's and lawyers, it's not the same in the UK. I met a German business graduate and told him I had an engineering degree, he said he wasn't smart enough to be an engineer. Here, business graduates are put on a pedestal above engineers, which puts engineers off. Bean counters are rewarded a lot more than those that produce tangible products.

semyorka, 16 August 2014 1:19pm

I have to say that a part of this is the English maths A level structure. In most countries your maths final year is 1\6th of what you need to learn in England it is 1/3rd or 2/3rds. Too many people are put off maths by it being a difficult subject that you have to immerse yourself in at high school level.

This runs contrary to the mantra from certain universities that we are not educating our school leavers to be good enough for their undergrad maths courses.

But to turn high school maths into little more than a preparatory system for the most elite maths specialists means we are putting off the huge number of mid level grads who have decent maths skills but will not need to be competing for Fields Medals.

pretendname, 16 August 2014 1:25pm

The UK has plenty of engineers. It's just that they end up having to go into other careers because being an Engineer doesn't pay enough.

Corozin, 16 August 2014 1:30pm

I am frankly getting quick sick of reading articles by Dyson bemoning the lack of engineering talent in the UK.

This is, after all, the man who shafted a vast proportion of his workforce only a few years ago when he moved his factory production offshore. The way he bangs the patriotic drum makes me puke.

1789wasAgoodYear, 16 August 2014 1:30pm

How can you say this? Everyone is an engineer these days. We've got Sanitation Engineers, Domestic Engineers, etc..

The problem is many Engineers of the variety you're speaking of have had their jobs and pay downgraded by everyone being an engineer.

ian barton, 16 August 2014 1:38pm

I am an ex toolmaker who had to do a six year apprenticeship, got fed up of getting dirty everyday and of other people who look down on you because you get your hands dirty,

I now work in IT, I get paid more but I still get emails asking if I want a toolmaker contract for about £10 an hour, why? I can stack shelves for this and have no responsibility, and go home at night no thinking what might happen the the cnc machine that I have progrmmed. This counrty was built on manufacturing like Germany,look where Germany is now,they still manufacture and make profit.

all we have are low paid unskilled jobs or highly skilled jobs the uk company's wan't
people for but won't pay to train these youg people incase they leave for more money,why not have a transfer fee like football,if someone whant's to leave for anther company fine but the must pay a fee to the company who paid to train them.

slapmatt ian barton, 16 August 2014 3:02pm

Germany GDP by sector
Agriculture: 0.8%,
Manufacturing: 28%,
services: 71.2%

UK GDP by sector
Agriculture: 0.7%
Manufacturing: 21.5%
Services: 77.8%

Hardly a massive difference between the contributions made by manufacturing in Germany and the UK, despite all the myths.

felixzacat, 16 August 2014 1:42pm

As a software engineer you can build automatic trading software, which will mean city traders will lose their jobs. I think that's a good thing :)

JBigglesworth, 16 August 2014 1:44pm

James, as a Tory fanboy, how do you think Gove and his party and their media cronies' persistent denigration of vocational education in favour of such vital subjects as Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew (EBacc subjects that "count"!) promote the development of engineers?

If only so many entry-level engineering jobs hadn't been farmed out to India and China....James, are you listening??

What we need is proper vocational education that is considered as "enabling" as academic subjects, proper career pathways and respect for engineers with appropriate salary levels and an industrial base that means that the few engineers we have don't have to move to India, China and Korea to earn a living.

But that will require putting a brake on off-shoring (I'm sure it truly was the permissive planning regime and absolutely not the ability to make enormous margins that encouraged you to move!), investment in State schools, and the kind of long term plan that costs serious money; all of which are anathema to the Tory-loving, short-termist, quick-buck spivvery that dominates this country. You never know, you might get fewer Chinese copyright infringements then too James!

heringgull, 16 August 2014 1:50pm

PAY IN UK
BROKER 98 000
LAWYER 71 000
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL 70 000

Physicist 49 000
ELECTR. Enginer 43 000
Engineer 40 000 ----- from this is mones 1/2013

any question why there is a shortage of technical experts or researchers ?

epidavros heringgull, 16 August 2014 1:56pm

I left semiconductor physics research because it was woefully paid and had dreadful job security. We do almost none of it now in the UK, and having invented the programmable computer have absolutely no leading companies in the field.

jgharston epidavros, 16 August 2014 3:34pm

ARM?

[Aug 12, 2014] A Good IT Person Needs To Be Half Technologist, Half Psychologist All Tech Considered NPR by Laura Sydell

August 11, 2014 | npr.org

Your doctor and your lawyer may know a lot about you. But in a time when we are using computers to socialize, keep track of finances, do work and store family photos, your IT person probably knows more.

So when computers go down, it can cause intense feelings. There's an entire meme of online videos of frustrated people destroying their computers. Some psychologists have even coined the term "computer rage" to describe these outbursts.

When you're feeling that way, you can pick up a hammer or you can call an IT guy at a firm like Mann Consulting in downtown San Francisco. This is command central for customers in the midst of a crisis.

Co-founder Harold Mann says his office can be like a hospital emergency room. "We have the same challenges where we have to counsel people and comfort them during stressful times while also practicing our craft, which is getting their machines to work," he says.

Getting machines to work is an essential part of the job, but so is making the customer feel better. And tech geeks are famous for not being very good at that.

The British comedy series The IT Crowd gets laughs because it nails that modern-day trope. Two of its main characters, Maurice Moss and Roy Trenneman, answer phone calls from distressed computer users and treat them with disdain or give incoherent technical explanations.

Mann, who has a staff of 16, says those are the kinds of people he doesn't want to hire. "There's no question that pure engineering talents does not make for a great IT person," he says. "We have to do a lot of vetting when we hire people to find people who are kind, not just brilliant."

Many of Mann's clients say they find him kind.

Fred Goldberg, a retired advertising executive, has been working with Mann for two decades. "I always kid him," Goldberg says. "I say, 'What'd you take a lesson on human behavior this morning?' But it's good. I'm sure it gives comfort to a lot of people."

[Apr 08, 2014] The Unix sysadmin's guide to getting along with co-workers By Sandra Henry-Stocker

ITworld

One of the top strategies for managing relationships at work is to always maintain an appropriate level of humor. It doesn't pay to be goofy, but a few running jokes and inside humor can lighten those hard days when you'd otherwise be inclined to beat your head against the wall or cry out in frustration. Keep your sense of humor, even when the going gets rough. Spend a little time away from the office together if you can. Share some personal events. Don't base your entire relationship on trouble tickets and backups.

Another, perhaps related, tactic is to remember that you are not your job. I've had to remind myself of this time and time again. To a large degree, I often let my career become too big a part of my self-definition. One way around this -- other than having a deeply satisfying personal life (which hasn't always worked for me) -- is to base some part of your professional identity well beyond the walls of the building in which you work. Join professional organizations. Meet people at conferences and stay in touch. Develop and share tutorials on those things you're really good at. Find ways to use your skills that provide you with an independent sense of your worth. And don't lose track of the fact that your coworkers are not their jobs either.

Try to avoid becoming isolated, even when your work is primarily independent of the work of your coworkers. For several years, I worked for a guy who cut me off from everything else going on in our division. He'd drop by my office once a week to ask what I'd been working on and then disappear for a week while maintaining conspiracy theories about how his boss was intent on making everything we worked on fail. Having connections outside the company -- my writing and part-time teaching -- helped me deal with the isolation, but I don't ever want to work like that again. In retrospect, I should have found some way to better understand and deal with whatever politics were feeding this situation, but I survived and he didn't.

Another lesson -- behave professionally. Make peace with your big disappointments without allowing resentment to build up, leaving you bitter or impacting the quality of your work or your relationships with your coworkers.

[Apr 08, 2014] 7 habits of highly successful Unix admins By Sandra Henry-Stocker

April 05, 2014 | itworld.com

Unix admins generally work a lot of hours, juggle a large set of priorities, get little credit for their work, come across as arrogant by admins of other persuasions, tend to prefer elegant solutions to even the simplest of problems, take great pride in their ability to apply regular expressions to any challenge that comes their way....

You can spend 50-60 hours a week managing your Unix servers and responding to your users' problems and still feel as if you're not getting much done or you can adopt some good work habits that will both make you more successful and prepare you for the next round of problems.

1. Habit 1: Don't wait for problems to find you. One of the best ways to avoid emergencies that can throw your whole day out of kilter is to be on the alert for problems in their infancy. I have found that installing scripts on the servers that report unusual log entries, check performance and disk space statistics, report application failures or missing processes, and email me reports when anything looks "off" can be of considerable value. The risks are getting so much of this kind of email that you don't actually read it or failing to notice when these messages stop arriving or start landing in your spam folder. Noticing what messages *aren't* arriving is not unlike noticing who from your team of 12 or more people hasn't shown up for a meeting.

   Being proactive, you are likely to spot a number of problems long before they turn into outages and before you users notice the problems or find that they can no longer get their work done. It's also extremely beneficial if you have the resources needed to plan for disaster. Can you fail over a service if one of your primary servers goes down? Can you rely on your backups to rebuild a server environment quickly? Do you test your backups periodically to be sure they are complete and usable? ....
   

2. Habit 2: Know your tools and your systems. Probably the best way to recognize that one of your servers is in trouble is to know how that server looks under normal conditions. If a server typically uses 50% of its memory and starts using 99%, you're going to want to know what is different. What process is running now that wasn't before? What application is using more resources than usual?

   ... ... ...
   

3. Habit 3: Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Putting first things first is something of a no brainer when it comes to how you organize your work, but sometimes selecting which priority problem qualifies as "first" may be more difficult than it seems. ....
   
4. Habit 4: Perform post mortems, but don't get lost in them ...If you do figure out why something broke, not just what happened, it's a good idea to keep some kind of record that you or someone else can find if the same thing happens months or years from now. As much as I'd like to learn from the problems I have run into over the years, I have too many times found myself facing a problem and saying "I've seen this before ..." and yet not remembered the cause or what I had done to resolve the problem. Keeping good notes and putting them in a reliable place can save you hours of time somewhere down the line.
   
5. Habit 5: Document your work. In general, Unix admins don't like to document the things that they do, but some things really warrant the time and effort. I have built some complicated tools and enough of them that, without some good notes, I would have to retrace my steps just to remember how one of these processes works. ...In fact, I sometimes have to stop and ask myself "wait a minute; how does this one work?" Some of the best documentation that I have prepared for myself outlines the processes and where each piece is run, displays data samples at each stage in the process and includes details of how and when each process runs.
   
6. Habit 6: Fix the problem AND explain. Good Unix admins will always be responsive to the people they are supporting, acknowledge the problems that have been reported and let their users know when they're working on them. If you take the time to acknowledge a problem when it's reported, inform the person reporting the problem when you're actually working on the problem, and let the user know when the problem has been fixed, your users are likely to feel a lot less frustrated and will be more appreciative of the time you are spending helping them....
   
7. Habit 7: Make time for yourself. As I've said in other postings, you are not your job. Taking care of yourself is an important part of doing a good job. Don't chain yourself to your desk. Walk around now and then, take mental breaks, and keep learning -- especially things that interest you. If you look after your well being, renew your energy, and step away from your work load for brief periods, you're likely to be both happier and more successful in all aspects of your life.

   Read more of Sandra Henry-Stocker's Unix as a Second Language blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld, Twitter and Facebook.
   

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