> it's considered lower level to be a software engineer than to be a mechanical or electrical engineer, so the smartest kids do not study computer science (this might have changed since).
Which is very interesting, because in US it is completely opposite (and frankly it is not good either). Is it because US deindustrialized itself last 40 years?
It was not the opposite in the US 30 years ago, when I chose EE over CS, because EE was clearly more respected as being the more intellectually demanding. This had a lot to do with the capabilities of hardware at the time and the locus of value. IBM sold its hardware for millions. It gave away the software. The hardware was the differentiator; software was generic. EEs who could improve the expensive hardware were a lot more valuable than programmers who could improve the free software. In fact, since doubling a hardware resource such as RAM far more than doubles what you can then build with software, the hardware guys were more important than the software guys--even to the software.
As hardware limits were relaxed over the years, what you could accomplish in software, even with cheap hardware, grew so enormously that the primary value was increasingly in the software. This was such a rapid transition in the computer industry that it nearly destroyed IBM, it propelled Microsoft to power, and I ended up with a career in software.
Toyota and other Asian "hardware" vendors are in some sense where IBM was. They sell prize-winning hardware and whatever software that comes with it is essentially free. (Apple is a lot like this, which is why their hardware keeps getting better and their software--well, did I mention the hardware is thinner?)
The Toyota "platform" still can't do much in software, but it's growing exponentially. Eventually the software in a car might matter more than the (commodity?) hardware, but that's not the world in which Toyota managers were formed. They are obsessive about hardware, but software is an afterthought. It's for guys who couldn't cut it as "real engineers", as was the case in the American "computer industry" until the 1980s.
I also lived and worked in Japan. I was a strategy consultant, and I was told by some big Japanese and Korean companies (whom everyone has heard of) to emphasize my hardware background and not be seen spending too much time hanging out with the software guys if I valued my reputation.
Apple is not like that at all. Their software is excellent. My guess is that a large percentage of their customers keep buying their hardware because of iOS or OS X not because it's thinner.
Did you mean "Deindustrialization or deindustrialisation is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially heavy industry or manufacturing industry."
?
That doesn't sound applicable to the USA, which currently produces more goods than ever before, and more than any other nation except China.
Which is very interesting, because in US it is completely opposite (and frankly it is not good either). Is it because US deindustrialized itself last 40 years?