Maybe it's time for engineers to start their own small side companies or, maybe it's time to encourage a tradesman program where experienced EE's show new EE's how things are done, and train the skills needed to do the job.
Engineering was once upon a time a profession, like Law, or Medicine. Then engineers sold their souls to the business folk, watered down their legal protections and right to certifiy work - specifically applicable to software and electrical engineers, who never really had that right codified in law. Oops.
From there, the MBAs do what MBAs do, and the skill has been commoditized. There is nothing special about what has been done to engineers; it could be done to Law or Medicine; both are under pressure, but both fields manage their legal and legislative footing and credentialling much more effectively.
My advice to anyone who is an engineer; you're obviously smart, learn how business works very, very fast, use your skills to start or move up the corporate ladder, or frankly, get out. Leverage your skills to get into the medical space.
If you're in the top tier you will never have a problem finding work. This is true of the top tier in ANY profession, though! Maintaining that top tier is something you do because of an overwhelming passion or working very, very hard. There is no shortage of firms who will hire people with solid FPGA and embedded skills. I am not sure why TFA broke that out; being able to code is critical to hardware design, even just for scripting synthesis, and you just can't do embedded design without C. If you want to learn, the tools are all there, and cheap, cheap, cheap.
You need to network. You need to hustle. If nobody will give you experience, go work at McDonalds and buy a GNU Radio setup and a FPGA kit and make something cool.
The easy days are over, and sadly, IMO, engineers have nobody to blame but themselves.
Disclaimer: I am an EE with ~15 or so years of experience, most of it hands on, in the trenches.
