i've heard from managers, engineers and scientists in new york, los angeles, austin, and san francisco that the quality of american engineers & scientists was severely lacking.

i took the fact that they would only say this in private to a friendly group of people in a non-professional setting and, even then, never in english to be nothing more than anecdotal; but i hearing it for the first time in chicago this past weekend and reading this article is making me see that there's truth to it.