4 ms·

> No, the shortage is only in from a much smaller subset of primarily programming related skills. Heh? Have you tried hiring quants, materials scientists, flui

by shas3 11y ago

> No, the shortage is only in from a much smaller subset of primarily programming related skills. Heh? Have you tried hiring quants, materials scientists, fluid mechanics experts, RF engineers, supply chain experts, etc.? I have, and know friends who have been on both sides of the job hunt in these areas. It is often quite likely that you can only find international people for a job opening. Then, given how shitty H1B and green card systems are, you come up against the same problem: you invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the person and put yourself at the mercy of an arbitrary visa. Given any specialized skill with enough demand in the job market, there will likely be shortages because there are so few specialists. Also, if 10 people apply for a job, you interview 3 of them, 1 of them is an international and that international performs better than the other 2, as a company looking for talent, wouldn't you want to necessarily hire the best candidate? The immigration system is full of unfair and arbitrary roadblocks to hiring international candidates for legitimate jobs, while enabling semi-legitimate gaming of the system by mass-recruiters such as Indian software services companies. The market is not as elastic as you think as say, for a commodity like steel, to talk so naively and inexactly about supply, demand, and shortage. Supply-demand-shortage dynamics is more like specialized drugs, luxury items, and so on: where you have very specific needs on the demand side (i.e., hiring companies) and very specific issues affecting the supply side (candidates with specialized training and skills)

dalke 11y ago
Do you think that "STEM" is a meaningful term for setting national policy? I don't. Rather, I don't see it as any more useful than saying there's a "PhD shortage." It can take a while to hire someone for a history department position. If a department wants to hire someone with expertise in, say, Bhutan history during Jigme Dorji, and it takes two years to fill that position, and the best candidate is from Argentina, would you say there is a general shortage of history majors and we need to change immigration policy because of it? No, I don't think you would, because you realize that "Given any specialized skill with enough demand in the job market, there will likely be shortages because there are so few specialists". "The immigration system is full of unfair and arbitrary roadblocks" Totally agree. But I still say that "STEM" is a nonsense term which should not drive the change to that policy. What's worse is that "STEM" means two different things. I think you'll agree that a paleontologist who studies whale evolution is solidly part of the "S" in STEM. There's one group of people who look at STEM broadly, as a way to encourage others to enter a complex and challenging field. They might say, "you should study whale evolution because STEM is important." This comes out the liberal arts and humanist tradition. I am more a member of this group, except I don't limit myself to STEM appreciation. There's another group which sees STEM more in terms of the subset that can be applied to business problems, like quant, materials science, and fluid mechanics, and be very confused about why someone would want to travel to India to dig up whale fossils, much less why the government should pay for it. I believe most policy makers are in the latter group, and more concerned about STEM helps business. This leaves out most of the "S" fields in STEM, and likely most of the "M" fields.

by shas3 11y ago

dalke 11y ago

Do you think that "STEM" is a meaningful term for setting national policy? I don't. Rather, I don't see it as any more useful than saying there's a "PhD shortage." It can take a while to hire someone for a history department position. If a department wants to hire someone with expertise in, say, Bhutan history during Jigme Dorji, and it takes two years to fill that position, and the best candidate is from Argentina, would you say there is a general shortage of history majors and we need to change immigration policy because of it? No, I don't think you would, because you realize that "Given any specialized skill with enough demand in the job market, there will likely be shortages because there are so few specialists". "The immigration system is full of unfair and arbitrary roadblocks" Totally agree. But I still say that "STEM" is a nonsense term which should not drive the change to that policy. What's worse is that "STEM" means two different things. I think you'll agree that a paleontologist who studies whale evolution is solidly part of the "S" in STEM. There's one group of people who look at STEM broadly, as a way to encourage others to enter a complex and challenging field. They might say, "you should study whale evolution because STEM is important." This comes out the liberal arts and humanist tradition. I am more a member of this group, except I don't limit myself to STEM appreciation. There's another group which sees STEM more in terms of the subset that can be applied to business problems, like quant, materials science, and fluid mechanics, and be very confused about why someone would want to travel to India to dig up whale fossils, much less why the government should pay for it. I believe most policy makers are in the latter group, and more concerned about STEM helps business. This leaves out most of the "S" fields in STEM, and likely most of the "M" fields.