Manufacturing vs telecom in the USA - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 11:30:15 am
content: Hi guys, I was discussing this with some friends the other day. What do you think about working in manufacturing vs. working in telecommunications in the USA? Here are some things we thought about, let's see what you think about them:* Manufacturing is more limited in terms of where you can work. Industries tend to be away from the city so if you're married it can be tough. Telecom work (except for field technicians and engineers) tends to happen in an office.* Manufacturing has the potential to pay more.* Telecom has a better presence in more states? Manufacturing is concentrated on some spots?* We have no idea which one is harder to get into. For example, in my region the telecom market seems to be saturated which makes it hard to get something that pays as much as manufacturing.Let me know what you think. There's probably a lot misconceptions up here ^ so don't get too mad.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 05, 2019, 05:37:06 pm
content: I'm in telecom, and I think it really depends where exactly in telecom you are. A lot of older telecom stuff is slowly going to be phased out which will mean you will be out of a job if your position happens to work only with that stuff, but if you get into the newer stuff like FTTH and 5G etc you're probably safe.I'm unfortunately on the more legacy side. DMS100 etc and any time they bring anything new, we don't get to manage it, it's all done down south. Like when they brought FTTH I was hoping we'd be the ones managing it given the equipment is literally like 10 feet from where we work, but nope, we have zero visibility of it.As for manufacturing, almost every day on the news you hear of a plant somewhere being shut down and everything being moved to China or Mexico, so it's not exactly a secure place to be unfortunately. Telecom is probably a bit more secure as there are certain regulations for security etc that limit how much outsourcing they can do. That said you're not out of the woods there either. My company does outsource a lot of stuff. Even the internal phone IVR system is outsourced! We're a phone company! You'd think we could manage our own phones.

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2019, 10:33:16 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on September 05, 2019, 05:37:06 pmThat answers a lot! Thanks!I feel you, Nortel was a major loss for North America. I understand why you'd want to have the new stuff assigned to you. I hope you get to work on new projects soon!

author: MosherIV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2019, 11:13:10 am
content: 'Telecoms' and 'manufacturing' are huge generalisations.Yes, if manufacturing is making things anyone can make then, yes, it is moving to countries where the labour is cheaper.Most manufacturing companies need to adapt or die. By adapt, they have to move up the technology curve or go bust competing with cheap imports.For example, I use to work for Xerox. They choose to stop manufacture of their own machines because it was cheaper to out source it. If they kept it in house, their machines would not be competitive.In fact Xerox no longer develop office machines because the development costs are no longer value add.They have kept some development of higher end machines.Much of technology sector has been like this, so what use to be a vibrant businese sector in USA and Europe has faded away, it is cheaper to develop in countries like India and China.For example, medical instruments, eg heart/breath monitors. It use to be common for this to be developed in the west now much of it is designed and built elsewhere. Companies have moved into higher end stuff like MRI where the value add is still worth while in the west.You cannot blame China or other countries. It is due to capitalism and gobalisation. Capitalism drives costs down through compitition. Globalisation means that all companies and sectors have to compete globally. Combine the 2 as we have and companies foolishly out source (teach) countries where labour is cheap to build. They then learn how to develop and now the company faces competition from the very country it invested in