Larry,
There was a guy posting this data on the Compaq thread for some time. Consistent strong buying interest indicated by this tool, yet the price was flat or down. I don't place much stock in it. On another note, this is from today's WSJ, thought it germain... Also, a negative article on Boeing in the current issue of Worth magazine, I have not checked the website but it may be readable there. The basic thrust of the article was that Boeing doesn't have too many places to obtain any appreciable growth from, and that their R & D budget has been falling sharply as a percentage of revenues, especially in comparison with Airbus...
Regards,
John
Defense Companies Are Mobilizing
To Win the Hearts of Young Engineers
By ANNE MARIE SQUEO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BURTONSVILLE, Md. -- Beneath posters featuring Albert Einstein and the Earth's surface, and a directive not to chew gum, defense-industry engineer Carl Hood assigns a task to two dozen eighth-graders at the Benjamin Banneker Middle School here. The challenge: to lash paper, tape and straws into any kind of structure that can withstand a test in his make-shift earthquake simulator.
Mr. Hood has his own challenge: Dispatched here by defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp., he is assigned to get these children interested in engineering and, perhaps, a job at his company some day.
Northrop, the maker of the B-2 Bomber, is among other aerospace and defense concerns that are reaching out to the nation's youth and stretching the boundaries of their traditional recruiting practices in other ways. The aim is to solve one of the industry's most vexing long-term problems -- an engineering brain drain.
Attracting top engineering talent hasn't been a problem until recently. For decades, young would-be engineers dreamed of designing fighter planes that could knock a Soviet MiG from the skies, or rockets to put mankind on Mars. But government spending on sweeping space and defense innovations has dried up, and aerospace and defense firms reliant on those funds no longer provide the job security they once did. Nowadays, the Internet economy is minting millionaires out of those barely old enough to vote, and computer and software firms have a seemingly insatiable appetite for bright young engineers.
"Venture-capital-supported companies are tearing away people," says Fred Culick, professor of mechanical engineering and jet propulsion at the California Institute of Technology, one of the country's foremost producers of top aerospace-defense talent. Recently, one of Mr. Culick's students turned in his thesis on astrophysics and accepted a job at a Wall Street investment bank the next day. Another one rejected a job offer from defense contractor TRW Inc. to join an Internet start-up.
"There's such a growth in the financial rewards you can hardly blame them," Mr. Culick concedes.
So defense companies are on the offensive. Raytheon Co., the world's largest maker of missiles, is sending its women engineers to promote their profession and company at Girl Scout meetings. It is also dispatching other engineers to judge high-school science fairs.
Companies are also beefing up their presence on university campuses around the country. Lockheed Martin Corp., the nation's largest military contractor, has considerably broadened the list of colleges it targets for recruitment, and now holds its own career days at schools known for engineering curriculum. Recruiters at Raytheon's missile plant in Tucson, Ariz., are flying in a hundred seniors at a time from the University of Puerto Rico for job interviews and a chance to test-drive the desert life.
Northrop's defense-electronics business is mentoring underprivileged Maryland high schoolers in a program that includes free college tuition. While there are no strings attached to the program, company officials say they hope the youngsters will join their ranks after graduation.
After Mr. Hood and a handful of Northrop colleagues spend the day at the middle school in Burtonsville, there are early signs of success.
Among the dozens of thank-you notes Mr. Hood receives from the students is one from a student named Harriet with the phrase "Thank U!" colored on the front of a white card. Inside, Harriet explains she always thought engineering "was a man's job" but now realizes "both can do it."
Another student, Pierre, sent a formally typed letter saying he started out "skeptical." But Mr. Hood's demonstration of the opposing effects of magnetic poles transformed Pierre's minimal interest "into a raging fire," as the boy put it in his letter.
There is a logic to targeting 13-year-olds, says Mr. Hood, who is 60 years old and has logged 39 years as an engineer. He explains: "They're still impressionable at this age."
Lawrence Bricker, head of the science department at the school, adds that "there are going to be some kids today who never thought of engineering as a career, and this puts that seed in their minds."
The school officials make no secret of the fact that the seed is being planted by an arms maker. Mr. Brickman says many of the kids "already knew Northrop was the company that made the B-2 bomber used in Kosovo."
Aerospace-industry leaders say the campaign to reignite youthful fancy is serious business. "This is a problem the whole industry has to work on together," says Raytheon Chairman Dan Burnham.
Last year, Raytheon attributed part of its earnings shortfall to an inability to fill 1,000 engineering positions. In a recent issue of Northrop's weekly job listings, 13 of 35 pages are filled with engineering-related jobs.
The dearth of new engineering talent in the defense industry is made worse by the fact that many defense engineers hired during the industry's go-go years, the 1960s and the 1970s, are retiring now. That leaves a generation gap in the ranks, just as companies are becoming more reliant on state-of-the-art computers and software for their new weapons systems.
And given the industry's lagging stock prices and struggle to improve profit margins, the companies can't afford to offer big signing bonuses, mounds of stock options, or the perks provided by many tech firms.
The problem is most severe in the information-technology units that have been established by old-line aerospace companies, which also are trying to capitalize on the high-tech boom.
Aerospace giant Boeing Co.'s quest to restore profit in its commercial-jet business was a central factor driving the company's negotiating posture in the recent 40-day strike by 16,000 engineering-related workers. While the company sought to contain medical costs and a merit-based salary system, dozens of strikers quit to take nonaerospace jobs. Defense and aerospace engineers frequently earn $45,000 or more, without overtime or other perks -- roughly a half to a third the salaries of other high-tech and consulting jobs.
Still, top company executives insist that a mitigating factor is that their companies offer more exciting intellectual challenges. Even so, some Boeing officials note that it's difficult to attract and keep defense-related engineers when there are fewer big design-development projects flowing from the Pentagon to keep engineers interested.
It's a tough sell for the defense companies, but not impossible. Brian Ippolito, 29, a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a master's degree in software engineering, spent the last seven months listening to defense companies suggest the technology outweighs the need for a six-figure salary. "But I wasn't going to take a $60,000 pay cut [just] because I love the technology," Mr. Ippolito says.
Ultimately, Mr. Ippolito did accept a job at Northrop -- but only after the company met his salary demands and created a new job for him.
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