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The STEM Crisis Is a Myth (2013)

112 points by discombobulate 10y ago

acchow 10y ago
On a related topic, most of the unfilled "STEM" jobs can't be filled by pushing college students into STEM fields. Usually a scientist, programmer, engineer, or mathematician is made in elementary school.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  The approach Harvey Mudd took to get more women into Computer Science could (and should) probably be applied across all STEM fields, and to all student types. https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bias-and-now-more-than-half-its-computer-science-majors-are-women/ https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bia... The overhaul of the computer science curriculum to make it more inclusive began the year before Klawe arrived from Princeton, where she was the dean of engineering. The school had redesigned its introductory course, required for all first-year students, to emphasize practical uses for programming and team based-projects, and switched from the Java programming language to Python, which more closely mimics the way humans communicate. The course is broken into three tracks, including one for students with no programming background. To make everyone feel at ease, professors urge know-it-all students who always have their hand in the air to talk during office hours, instead of in class.”Too often, people with experience are taking up all the air time,” Klawe says. As a result of the changes, women who take the introductory course are more likely to leave with a positive impression of programming, and often sign up for the second class in the sequence. Many go on to internships or research projects in the field after their first year, and by then, they’re hooked.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    >Many go on to internships or research projects in the field after their first year, and by then, they’re hooked. // Are these the same people who are leaving the industry after a few years? Seems like if you hoodwink people in to something that's not really their vocation then that's the sort of effect you'd expect?
    - WillPostForFood 10y ago
      If they are going on to internships and research projects, it is likely they have discovered their vocation, just a few years late. Perhaps the hoodwinking is that it creates a false perception that the workplace which is ~85% male will be as welcoming as the educational environment, which for Harvey Mudd is 50/50. This HBR report is pretty brutal and eye opening on how women engineers are treated in the workplace. Not so much blatant rude sexual discrimination (though there some of that), but persistent pernicious subtle degradation and diminution. https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engin... We found that these work sites echoed the gender stereotyping experienced in school projects: men were assigned interesting problem-solving tasks where they could develop their analytic and technical skills, while women were often assigned jobs sorting papers, copying, collecting equipment, writing notes, and coordinating—tasks they felt did not value or cultivate their skills. This second round of gender stereotyping in the workplace, coupled with unchallenging projects, blatant sexual harassment, and greater isolation from supportive networks, leads many female students to revisit their ambitions.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      I don't think people really have "vocations" built-in at some biological or personal level. Lots of people train for one thing, retrain for another, and work in a third.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        I've the feeling it's more common to move industries nowadays but some stats that show "lots" of people move between sectors would be good support for your assertion. Anyone know of pertinent info?
  - TwiztidK 10y ago
    > professors urge know-it-all students who always have their hand in the air to talk during office hours This was unbelievably annoying when I was in school, since the questions those kids asked were always completely off-topic and added nothing to the class. I didn't major in CS so I only took a few classes in that department, but I almost never noticed the same behavior in any other subject despite it being a daily occurrence in my CS classes (until around 3rd year courses).
  - candiodari 10y ago
    This just sounds like it's drastically lowering the difficulty because then people don't quit so easily. And I'm sure that's true ... but makes the situation worse by making it hard for even people who would make the higher difficulty level to find the knowledge in the first place.
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  Paying market wages to STEM workers may sway them away from going to work at hedge funds and other industries. Paying sub-market wages and expecting to find top talent will lead to shortages, much like trying to purchase a new BMW for $500.
NTDF9 10y ago
Even as an immigrant to the US, I agree with this. A large part of the shortage is self-inflicted. Did we see a shortage of American workers who could do the job right away? YES. Not many people work in the same area of technology. There really aren't many people working in some areas of tech. Did the employer try to compromise on their requirement of "rockstar coder with 1000 wpm typing speed, PhD in app programming, merge k-sorted arrays in 15 mins with good syntax and no compiler?" NO. And this is why there is no shortage. It's their demand for rockstars when reality is most companies are mediocre (at best). It's not shortage, your company sucks, interviews suck and nobody wants to work there.
- frozenport 10y ago
  What you described is exactly how a labor shortage feels. When unemployment is low employees can be extremely picky. If you compare this to other fields with a glut, for example English literature majors, you'd see that they only hire rockstars.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    A shortage, by definition, requires a situation where the price cannot rise. Of course, if the price is rising, then the poorer businesses are priced out of the market and no longer need developers. As long as price can rise, a shortage is impossible. Even if there was only one developer in the entire world, the services would eventually go to the highest bidder and everyone else would be priced out of the market, leaving no demand for other developers. That leaves me wondering what force is preventing price from rising in the case of developer talent?
    - pravda 10y ago
      >That leaves me wondering what force is preventing price from rising in the case of developer talent? Well, it's not Steve Jobs. Not anymore.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
RachelF 10y ago
There is not a shortage of STEM graduates. However, from an employer's point of view, there is a shortage of cheap STEM graduates. Hence the recent tech company uproar over the skilled visa changes.
- trendia 10y ago
  The companies should just admit: "There is a shortage of STEM graduates at the price I want to pay."
- swuecho 10y ago
  no shortage of stem graduate, but shortage of CS graduates or people with programming skills. You can say there is not shortage of anything if you want to pay a good price. Then ignore what I said or remove the word 'shortage' for your world.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    You say there's a shortage, yet all software development jobs available require a Bachelor's degree plus 3-5 years of experience. That doesn't seem like much of a shortage to me.
    - swuecho 10y ago
      I get a MS degree in biology, which is STEM. I happen to know programming. I do not even seek job in biology, because i know the field is oversupplied. instead, get a decent software engineer job instead, without degree, without any real world experience. If the market is the same in biology and programming related jobs. I would get job related to my degree. It is obvious there is a shortage in people who have programming skills. I manage to get above average productivity compared to my coworkers. I realized that even more shortage for productive software engineer. sure, any adjective is relative.
      - grainsout 10y ago
        I have a friend who graduated with a PhD in Chemistry a few years ago. He went down the research path, but eventually didn't like the pay. He had a good amount of programming experience and was primarily building simulation frameworks for chemical-environment interactions. I told him he could triple his salary if he applied for non-research positions. He's now a research developer at a pharma company making three times as much. Many hard science STEM graduates don't realize that their programming skills (even if they're not totally honed) will make them more valuable on the market. If you can find a position that uses both your degree skills and programming, then you'll be a unicorn to that company.
jamesmp98 10y ago
In relation to programming specifically, I once saw someone on Quora put it perfectly. It effecticly stated that we don't need more programmers. We need more senior developers with 10+ years of experience.
- techterrier 10y ago
  Chimes with anecdotal experience hiring in London. Glut of really well educated, keen and passionate juniors but tumbleweed when trying to hire seniors, even at higher salaries.
  - darkmarmot 10y ago
    When I've looked at salaries in London they seem relatively low compared to the States. Perhaps higher isn't high enough?
  - explainthisth 10y ago
    Have you tried offering internationally competitive salaries?
    - ScalaFan 10y ago
      Then there is also the issue of the ease or difficulty of getting someone from a foreign country to work in the UK. Are work permits required? How much paperwork? etc If I were an American, what would it take to work in London?
      - Swizec 10y ago
        > If I were an American, what would it take to work in London? A good internet connection and some perseverance in getting remote jobs. Also strong work habits. I have many friends back home in Slovenia who stay in Slovenia but work for San Francisco. Sure they don't make 100k, but they don't have to. At 80k they're socking away 40k+ per year. And the SF startup is super stoked because they get good engineers for peanuts.
  - 10y ago
draw_down 10y ago
Well, it's a shortage in the sense that there is a shortage of brand-new Ferraris for $15,000.
- hibikir 10y ago
  But looking at individual salaries is just not the right idea though: to measure shortages in an industry, we have to look at total supply. Yes, I can get all the engineers I want if I pay a million dollars a year. But if they are also employed as engineers somewhere else, the lack of engineering talent just moves to those other companies. Say there is only a car in the entire world. I could buy it for more no more money, but ultimately there is still a shortage, in the sense that even if we had 5 people willing to pY 5 billion for the only car I. The world, they would all not be able to get it. In cars, this is fixed by the fact that we can build cars easily: It doesn't take that long to make another car, and eventually you can build thousands a day. So if we look at the system overall, we have to consider unemployment in the profession, and how many people just don't want to go I to stem because it doesn't pay enough. They say I see it, pay in CS specifically is pretty darned good, compared to alternatives in the US. Any lack of developers we have today doesn't come from them choosing other occupations because programming doesn't pay the bills: We just have way too many people getting paid a lot less, or unemployed altogether, that either can't afford the retraining to be programmers, or just. can't do it altogether. So it's not, IMO, as if the shortage of good pay is the problem: Remember the dot com boom, when a lot of borderline incompetent people were getting a ton of money and achieving very little? That,s the best we'd get if we just multiplied all tech salaries by 10x. Our real problems are far more complicated.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Any lack of developers we have today doesn't come from them choosing other occupations because programming doesn't pay the bills I dunno, I hear a lot about people who are qualified and experienced software developers moving to other fields, particularly finance and non-technical management, because they can get paid better, or leaving work entirely because no o e is offering enough to make it worthwhile for them not to just live off their savings (and not just hear about, I know people in the last category.) The idea that there isn't potential talent in the field that could be accessed by paying more is false. Obviously, employers prefer not to do that, because every dollar paid to an employee is a dollar the employer doesn't keep. > We just have way too many people getting paid a lot less, or unemployed altogether, that either can't afford the retraining to be programmers, or just. can't do it altogether. To the extent that there is a "can't afford" problem here, and this really is an undesirable situation demanding a public policy response, the solution is obvious from the statement of the problem, and it's not "import foreign workers".
st3v3r 10y ago
Every time someone mentions that they have a hard time finding qualified workers, or saying that qualified people don't apply to their company, they tend to ignore a very important question: Why would those qualified people want to apply at your company in the first place? A lot of people like to say they're paying "market wages", but most qualified people are already making that or more.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > A lot of people like to say they're paying "market wages", but most qualified people are already making that or more. The other thing to consider is that current market price of something is the price at which everyone willing to sell at or below that price has already sold. The next person to buy is going to have to pay incrementally more. If you define a "shortage" as " no more for sale without paying more than the current market price", then the normal shape of supply curves would mean that markets are usually in "shortage".
- aub3bhat 10y ago
  Because the money for salaries is not generated out of thin air. It gets determined by the profit-margin provided by the market. Your competitors are paying market wages in China to "qualified people", or have depreciated the high salaries in employees via higher-productivity and thus pricing you out.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    "Because the money for salaries is not generated out of thin air. It gets determined by the profit-margin provided by the market." While this is true, it's also very much not my problem. If your company is offering X, and another company is offering 1.25X, then most of the good people are going to go to the other company first. And it would be quite dishonest of you to say that there's a "shortage" when it turns out you just don't want to pay as much as the competition for your talent.
grizzles 10y ago
If you run a small business, it's a real thing. On wages, it's nearly impossible to compete with the big corporations. That leaves you with one choice - outsource your engineering to China or India. Or they could just come here (wherever here is) and contribute to the local economy by buying stuff, driving down the per capita crime rate (immigrants have a far lower crime rate), etc.
- runT1ME 10y ago
  If a small business needs lower salaries to thrive, then that means their only real benefit they provide their customers is the fact that they can exploit some employees ignorance of market rate.
- earthtolazlo 10y ago
  Or, God forbid, they could pay their employees more.
- whenwillitstop 10y ago
  This means the business isnt feasible.
  - TuringNYC 10y ago
    This is a very important point, let me expand a bit. If your business/product requires a supply of sub-market waged talent, then you have not found true product-market fit or your product just does not provide sufficient value to sustain a real business (real meaning one that can operate on market wages.)
    - grizzles 10y ago
      Why do you say sub-market? When Disney or any other huge corporation outsources their IT dept to India / China, that's the MARKET. Good Luck putting an import tax on virtual goods / services.
      - 10y ago
ryanSrich 10y ago
So is the engineering crisis and the talent shortage and the diversity gap. You think Facebook wants more H1Bs because it wants to promote diversity? You think it's because of a shortage? That's not how these things work. It just so happens that what's currently en vogue aligns with the business interests of the largest tech companies in the world.
- mavelikara 10y ago
  Specifically, Mark Zuckerberg is a co-founder of FWD.us which "is mobilizing the tech community in support of policies that keep the American Dream achievable in the 21st century, starting with commonsense immigration reform" according to their website [1]. The major issues they lobby for are (1) increase in H-1Bs (2) illegal immigrants. The one thing they don't talk about is legal immigration paths for people on H-1Bs. People on H-1B from India and China have long backlogs for Green Cards, which causes them to stick with one employer for long, with reduced negotiation leverage, and there by depressing wages for the entire industry. But FWD.us does not have a care for that aspect of immigration - presumably because this helps the bottom line of everyone involved in FWD.us. Meanwhile they don't miss any opportunity to shed crocodile tears for the plight of DREAMers. Sigh! [1]: https://www.fwd.us/ https://www.fwd.us/
  - arjie 10y ago
    Do you know any Indian or Chinese people in the Bay? They switch all the time. Getting your H-1B transferred isn't hard.
    - mavelikara 10y ago
      I am one. When you switch jobs on H-1B, your GC application has to be redone from the first step. This is an uncertain process that can get stuck in red tape for indeterminate amounts of time. Your place in line stays intact in many cases though. So, switching jobs is possible, but is no way easy. While you wait decade+ for your GC, you freedoms are severely restricted as an alien.
thedevil 10y ago
So theoretically, without pricing controls, there's no such thing as a shortage because prices will rise until demand == supply. So the arguments that there's no shortage of STEM workers (only a shortage of below-market-price STEM workers) makes sense. But let me pitch a different angle: there are a lot of people who could do their job better if they had certain specific STEM skills (e.g. business analysts who were better at statistics, spreadsheets, and maybe SQL). It's true that you can get these skills if you pay more. However, the cost of hiring someone with these skills might be >= the business value, even though the business value might be >= the cost of the education for these skills. So I would argue that we're underinvesting in certain STEM skills.
- arjie 10y ago
  Wait a minute, your premise is easily susceptible to a counterexample. Take a 2-employer world with 1 candidate. Let's say both employers have the same desire for the candidate, i.e. no matter what salary one employer offers, the other will offer the same and if one employer believes a salary is too high so will the other. This system will perpetually be in a shortage. No matter what rate is offered, at least one employer will go without an employee.
  - thedevil 10y ago
    Wikipedia: "a shortage occurs when for some reason the price does not rise to reach equilibrium" In your example, the price is at equilibrium, even though one buyer cannot buy at market price. Thus there is no shortage. If we define shortage as one buyer not being able to buy at market price, then you are technically correct.
    - arjie 10y ago
      That's just a problem with Wikipedia being Wikipedia. That's not a definition. If you read the actual source that's used in that section§, you'll see that what he uses as a definition is the following: > A shortage is a market condition existing at any price where the quantity supplied is less than the quantity demanded. He then goes on to talk about how the shortage provides a signal to sellers to move the price closer to equilibrium (upwards, in this case) but that doesn't make it not a shortage. In questions of definitions, it's also informative to try an alternative source. I propose the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (simply because they have a convenient online glossary): https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/glossary https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/glossary > Shortage: When the quantity demanded of a good or service exceeds the quantity supplied at a particular price. I'm not going to update the Wikipedia page because the Definition section needs quite some rewording and citation to make it authoritative and if I just add this in, it will make that part incoherent. § Tucker's Economics for Today, which is also wrongly named in that section as Economics Today. In the 7th edition, this is on Page 80
dclowd9901 10y ago
When will the curve of demand start to drop precipitously as we replace STEM workers with AI? (Right now, for instance, we have no QA team, as we can machine test changes and use program flow analysis to test)
- a-saleh 10y ago
  Bit off topic, but how did you manage that? I currently work in QE, but our team is miniscule compared to the devs, so we would rather just automate ourselves away and then hop over to the other side :-)
  - dclowd9901 10y ago
    We still QA, but since we have a pretty sturdy code review process where we check out changes and double check them, alongside requiring debts to write test plans and then using Flowtype to limit side effecty changes.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
CJefferson 10y ago
I don't buy this. In my university, we constantly have companies trying to get our computing graduates, offer them internships, try to persuade them to come for interview. We need to teach our students how to negotiate well. In most other departments, staff instead have to teach students how to go out and find jobs, put lots of work into applying, etc. There is certainly a shortage of good graduates, compared to most degree programs.
- nsgi 10y ago
  What university do you go to?
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    I teach at St Andrews University, in Scotland.
niftich 10y ago
Lumping 'IT' in with STEM is a historical mistake from the days when IT was not a mass-market phenomenon, but firmly the territory of academia, government ventures, defense contractors, safety-critical systems, and research. Today its placement increasingly serves to muddy facts and justify various views and policies on H1-Bs and the like, either in favor or against. In truth, IT should be split into its own category with distinct analyses and approaches, addressed independently from S, E, M, and the leftovers of T.
tdicola 10y ago
This article is over 3 years old, is there something more recent? Not that I discount what it's saying but what made this article relevant again?
stale2002 10y ago
If the stem crisis is a myth, then why do I get paid so much? I'm not the top of my class. I'm just an average web developer doing easy stuff.
- Vendan 10y ago
  Probably cause you are in a good area? My last programming job was $38k a year, and considered great pay.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    And... In this good area, there is a shortage, correct?
    - Vendan 10y ago
      What good area? It wasn't good pay... and they replaced me before I had even finished my 2 weeks... Sounds like the opposite of a "shortage"
  - tevyt 10y ago
    Well if you considered it great pay that would mean that it was a high salary for the area, right?
    - Vendan 10y ago
      Nah, it was barely enough to cover cost of living, and I got a 136% raise by switching to another field. I didn't think it was great pay, that was the employer when they refused to give me a raise after 2 years...
- hajile 10y ago
  At my current position, there are several hundred devs, but only a dozen or so senior web devs. They look for more, but it's taking time for the glut of new people pouring into the field to learn all the old while keeping up with all the new stuff every year. I started off in the back-end a number of years ago, but quickly found myself being shoved to the front-end because I knew what to do and didn't complain loudly enough. I'd love to do more than just the occasional back-end job. I'd love to have a break from the constant headaches of making stuff work across dozens of incompatible browsers developed over the past decade, but moving to the backend full-time would cut my pay significantly. Supply, demand, and being forced into the undesirable job are paying off for me at the moment, but that doesn't mean that every other part of the market is dying for people.
pyrophane 10y ago
I think another factor contributing to this is a need to answer the question of how we can replace all of the jobs that we are losing due, primarily, to automation. Because our society is built on the idea that work is the means to justify one's existence, we depend on the possibility of full employment. Therefore, when jobs go away, we have to make them up somewhere. As manufacturing shrinks and automation starts to chip at the large base of service jobs once thought safe, it is necessary that there be something to replace it. Enter STEM. Instead of assembly-line workers, customer service reps, and bank tellers, we will soon all be the scientists and engineers designing and servicing the grandiose machinery that now does most of the actual work.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Enter STEM. Instead of assembly-line workers, customer service reps, and bank tellers, we will soon all be the scientists and engineers designing and servicing the grandiose machinery that now does most of the actual work. With the problem that the "automated" infrastructure has incredibly high initial capital costs and incredibly specific skills requirements. Just think how many software frameworks are used for a typical complex product that really does something useful: call that N. Now, where do you find 100 engineers trained and experienced in all of N different things?
nfbush 10y ago
add a (2013) ?
kartan 10y ago
A friend of mine studied bioengineering , but she is working out of the field. Low salaries and temporal jobs moved here to another different field. She doesn't repents her choice, as it was an incredible experience. And she would like to work in her field of choice. But the market pays more her time and capabilities elsewhere.
- digler999 10y ago
  > But the market pays more her time and capabilities elsewhere. or the market has somehow succeeded in depressing wages to the lowest possible rate. I've heard you have to have a minimum of a BS degree to break into the field of bio/chem. And then you're just a lab monkey following orders from a superior. yet "biotech firms" generate enormous profits, whether its in genetic engineering, healthcare, pharma, etc. It makes me sick.
leroman 10y ago
These days its easy for companies to remain mediocre and stay in business, thanks to FOSS and a competitive market lowering their tooling price. Some time ago I realized that the only way to get the real worth out of value I create (as a highly skilled developer) I need to be building products / services and selling them to these mediocre corporations, I could not see a way I could survive in these companies in the long term. (weather they provided me with a growth path or not)
oDot 10y ago
The question is not how many engineers are there, but how many _good engineers_ are there.
analogwzrd 10y ago
From my experience job searching, it seems that companies are looking for someone to fit the job description exactly instead of being willing to hire and to train someone. And when they can't find anyone, they complain about a shortage of eligible workers. It's really difficult to find a job the traditional way (submit resume/cover letter, interview, etc.) in this economy. The article makes a good point that if there was a shortage of STEM talent, companies would be drooling over everyone with a B.S. degree, but I haven't really seen that. I do agree with the article that there is a STEM literacy problem...I have friends in grad school constantly complaining about people gaming the peer review system, students getting by on shoddy research, etc. I've had co-workers that I've been really disappointed with in terms of having solid engineering fundamentals. If the article is right, and there's not a STEM shortage, what would you tell a high schooler applying to college? What field should they study so that there's a better chance of them having jobs?
booleandilemma 10y ago
I feel like the industry treats software development as a race to the bottom. The goal seems to be to pump out as many STEM grads as possible so they can pay them barista wages. Are other industries like this? Why do I not see bootcamps for electricians and plumbers?
- hajile 10y ago
  Electricians and plumbers have the same kind of issues. I have a relative who worked for a company that did the electrical contracting for a huge amount of [huge retail company] stores. Ultimately, [huge retail company] started bringing in large groups of cheap Mexican labor who were mostly inexperienced in the trade. These groups would screw up the job, so they'd bump the opening date a bit and bring in experienced crew to patch everything up. The end result was a much worse job, but [huge retail company] didn't care because the overall cost was a lot lower. The places where this does not happen are places where the electrical union is strong and laws make sure workers are certified journeymen/masters (or in an apprenticeship). I've thought quite often that the world would view programmers much differently if there were a viable programmer's union.
- runT1ME 10y ago
  I feel like the industry treats software development as a race to the bottom Why have programming salaries skyrocketed the last five years then???
HillaryBriss 10y ago
SV Tech Companies remind me of contractors who want to build a giant mansion on a hilltop. But instead of hiring workers with years of experience building houses they hire the best athletes from US university sports programs. Fantastically talented athletes. Then they give these great athletes a bunch of shovels, cement mixers, hammers and nails and say: "Build the best mansion the world has ever seen." Somehow it doesn't work out. They get a large house, but it isn't really any better than other large houses. Some of the workers decide to leave. I wonder if management really knew what it was doing in the first place. Maybe they figured they could just hire "the best" and everything would take care of itself?
th3rooki3 10y ago
I think it's likely that both sides of the argument are correct. There are a large amount of STEM jobs that are not being filled, while at the same time there is a surplus of STEM graduates. The takeaway is that businesses don't just need people that have STEM degrees, they need people that will add value to their company. Just because you have a STEM degree does not mean that you'll be a net positive for the company. It seems to me that incentives for colleges right now are way out of wack. They're not doing a good enough job at preparing students for actual industry roles (elite institutions being the exception), yet their enrollment rates and the cost of their tuition keeps going up.
- matwood 10y ago
  > The takeaway is that businesses don't just need people that have STEM degrees, they need people that will add value to their company. Just because you have a STEM degree does not mean that you'll be a net positive for the company. I agree. I graduated a long time ago with a CS degree and almost a minor in business. The CS foundation helped with all the learning I have done since then, but if I think about the most valuable classes I had in college they were economics, accounting, finance and management. Of course some jobs need PhD level CS without any other skill, but the majority of positions need someone who knows how to program plus <insert skill here>.
- spyspy 10y ago
  > elite institutions being the exception Having worked with a lot of people with "elite" degrees, I disagree with this a lot. I walked out of school with much more relevant experience than I feel they have (through both school and co-ops). Don't get me wrong, they're all smart people, but knowing how to write merge sort in haskell is different than knowing how to comfortably use git.
capRidiculous 10y ago
I can speak from my own anecdotal experience. I am an Indian immigrant with 2.5 yrs of industry experience and a masters degree from a decent school. Please note that I do not support the H1b abuse by the outsourcing firms. They are pure evil and I honestly hope they go bankrupt. I also believe H1b needs to be reformed to remove the loopholes but that is a topic for another day. I was recently in the job market and got three offers within a month. One from a big four tech firm Amazon/Facebook/MS/Google, one from a big four consulting firm Deloitte/E&Y/PWC/KPMG and the final one from a very promising startup in North Carolina. The first two paid above market rate but the startup paid 105k + equity because they cannot afford to pay more than that. Thing is, my specific skill set is in shortage ( Big Data and Analytics) and I am sure there are a few other specialized fields where there is a shortage. There may be a number of kick-ass local software engineers in the market but it is the specific skill set the companies need. Please do not tell me that companies can just hire local candidates and train them on the skill set they need. There simply isn't that much time and experience trumps(yea I know its ironic) training. When a company pays you N amount, they expect X amount of value from you where X is a multiple of N. Also, these companies are often competing with each other to get a product out to the market as fast as possible. Loosing precious time in training is not very optimal as your competitor might beat you. To be honest, I do not think I can be considered the best in my field and a good american developer can do my job if s/he has the necessary experience. Right now, demand for data engineers with big data skills far outstrips the supply. This won't be the case in say 4-5 years down the line. STEM in itself is a very broad term, Software development has many disciplines. Are you a Sr. Software Developer who wants to get paid that 200k salary in your local market outside of Silicon Valley? Make sure to cultivate a skill set that is in shortage. Simple macro economics. For those who are curious, I took up the consulting position and am getting paid 120k base + 10k signing bonus + 10-15% year end bonus + other benefits. Not bad for a person with 2.5 years of industry experience who lives in North Carolina. Is it?
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  By the way, $120k is nice for NC, but the banks in NC pay $180k for the same talent. There is no shortage in NC for Big Data and Analytics talent, the company cannot find the talent because they are simply not paying as much as Wells Fargo next door. If they pay $180k, they will find all the talent they need. They might even convince talent from NY/NJ to move down for that sum. AIG Investments recently convinced a dozen+ group of analytics workers to move down to NC for that salary range. The people would not have moved down for $120k. Also, $120k is pretty nice, until you have some kids and loads of medical co-pays, dental fees, school fees, and then it is simply too little. Dont believe me? Several years ago, my medical co-pays post insurance were over $20,000 for the year, which is more like $32,000 pre-tax. What happens is people move into non technical roles which pay commensurate to skillsets. There is no shortage of skillsets, there is simply a shortage of experienced people willing to take sub-market wages for strong resumes.
Animats 10y ago
Useful question: how many unfilled STEM jobs could be filled by hiring an available applicant and putting them through three months of training? If you want narrow expertise, create it. HR organizations need to be thinking that way. "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on my part."
- st3v3r 10y ago
  I think part of it is, there doesn't appear to be any penalty for sitting and waiting for that Unicorn candidate that checks all the boxes and works for peanuts. Most employers already feel empowered to have their existing employees do the work of 2 or 3 people, so not hiring someone for a couple months doesn't affect them.
aub3bhat 10y ago
All these articles start with an implicit assumption that talent in other countries is somehow automatically inferior and that USA will always remain a leader. The reality could not be further from the truth. Just take a look at what haappened to the EE / Chip-making industry. The cost difference has shifted all but very high end (intel processors) manufacturing and along with them jobs out of USA to Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan. While as an employee you might think you can ignore competition from other countries via protectionism, sooner or later the entire industry ends up suffering the effects. This is also what happened to Detroit car makers. Unionization & Protectionism guarantees salaries for half a decade until the market effect trickles down. The real existential threat to SV is not from Indians or Chinese immigrants as much as the post-Trump Anti H-1B wave might have you believe. Its from failing to remain competitive in an age where privacy corncerns and a hostile US government are causing a rethink worldwide.
eva1984 10y ago
But it is also very difficult to hire a qualified candidate. There is also data suggests that SDE's salary has been hiking for several years in a row and beyond inflation rate. If there is no shortage, how so? https://www.fastcompany.com/3051405/the-future-of-work/the-20-jobs-with-the-biggest-salary-increases-this-year https://www.fastcompany.com/3051405/the-future-of-work/the-2... I don't think paying 110k+ in Bay Area for a entry level is unfair, but from what I can tell, my company has a hard time finding one candidate and often the ones we like also get multiple offers and prefer big companies like Google/Facebook, etc. Yes, 'qualified' is very subjective standard, however, if you ask 5 experienced people, their opinion towards the same candidate barely changes dramatically from one and another, it is either unanimously yes/no, very rarely in between. So, I think yes, there is a lot of STEM students, but how many of them actually have actual engineering skills is question left for debate.
Balgair 10y ago
There is a nasty little issue that is not very well communicated: cheating. There is a non-zero amount of grads from prestigious to lousy universities and boot-camps that cheated. Some cheated a little bit, some cheated the whole way. But this may be a factor in the STEM issue. Some non-zero amount of prospective hires may have the cred, but the company can identify them quickly as hacks. I'm going to go out on a long limb here and say that most grads from large research universities cheated their way through and know squat all.

112 points by discombobulate 10y ago

On a related topic, most of the unfilled "STEM" jobs can't be filled by pushing college students into STEM fields. Usually a scientist, programmer, engineer, or mathematician is made in elementary school.

WillPostForFood 10y ago
The approach Harvey Mudd took to get more women into Computer Science could (and should) probably be applied across all STEM fields, and to all student types. https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bias-and-now-more-than-half-its-computer-science-majors-are-women/ https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bia... The overhaul of the computer science curriculum to make it more inclusive began the year before Klawe arrived from Princeton, where she was the dean of engineering. The school had redesigned its introductory course, required for all first-year students, to emphasize practical uses for programming and team based-projects, and switched from the Java programming language to Python, which more closely mimics the way humans communicate. The course is broken into three tracks, including one for students with no programming background. To make everyone feel at ease, professors urge know-it-all students who always have their hand in the air to talk during office hours, instead of in class.”Too often, people with experience are taking up all the air time,” Klawe says. As a result of the changes, women who take the introductory course are more likely to leave with a positive impression of programming, and often sign up for the second class in the sequence. Many go on to internships or research projects in the field after their first year, and by then, they’re hooked.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >Many go on to internships or research projects in the field after their first year, and by then, they’re hooked. // Are these the same people who are leaving the industry after a few years? Seems like if you hoodwink people in to something that's not really their vocation then that's the sort of effect you'd expect?
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    If they are going on to internships and research projects, it is likely they have discovered their vocation, just a few years late. Perhaps the hoodwinking is that it creates a false perception that the workplace which is ~85% male will be as welcoming as the educational environment, which for Harvey Mudd is 50/50. This HBR report is pretty brutal and eye opening on how women engineers are treated in the workplace. Not so much blatant rude sexual discrimination (though there some of that), but persistent pernicious subtle degradation and diminution. https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engin... We found that these work sites echoed the gender stereotyping experienced in school projects: men were assigned interesting problem-solving tasks where they could develop their analytic and technical skills, while women were often assigned jobs sorting papers, copying, collecting equipment, writing notes, and coordinating—tasks they felt did not value or cultivate their skills. This second round of gender stereotyping in the workplace, coupled with unchallenging projects, blatant sexual harassment, and greater isolation from supportive networks, leads many female students to revisit their ambitions.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    I don't think people really have "vocations" built-in at some biological or personal level. Lots of people train for one thing, retrain for another, and work in a third.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      I've the feeling it's more common to move industries nowadays but some stats that show "lots" of people move between sectors would be good support for your assertion. Anyone know of pertinent info?
- TwiztidK 10y ago
  > professors urge know-it-all students who always have their hand in the air to talk during office hours This was unbelievably annoying when I was in school, since the questions those kids asked were always completely off-topic and added nothing to the class. I didn't major in CS so I only took a few classes in that department, but I almost never noticed the same behavior in any other subject despite it being a daily occurrence in my CS classes (until around 3rd year courses).
- candiodari 10y ago
  This just sounds like it's drastically lowering the difficulty because then people don't quit so easily. And I'm sure that's true ... but makes the situation worse by making it hard for even people who would make the higher difficulty level to find the knowledge in the first place.
TuringNYC 10y ago
Paying market wages to STEM workers may sway them away from going to work at hedge funds and other industries. Paying sub-market wages and expecting to find top talent will lead to shortages, much like trying to purchase a new BMW for $500.

NTDF9 10y ago

Even as an immigrant to the US, I agree with this. A large part of the shortage is self-inflicted. Did we see a shortage of American workers who could do the job right away? YES. Not many people work in the same area of technology. There really aren't many people working in some areas of tech. Did the employer try to compromise on their requirement of "rockstar coder with 1000 wpm typing speed, PhD in app programming, merge k-sorted arrays in 15 mins with good syntax and no compiler?" NO. And this is why there is no shortage. It's their demand for rockstars when reality is most companies are mediocre (at best). It's not shortage, your company sucks, interviews suck and nobody wants to work there.

frozenport 10y ago
What you described is exactly how a labor shortage feels. When unemployment is low employees can be extremely picky. If you compare this to other fields with a glut, for example English literature majors, you'd see that they only hire rockstars.
- randomdata 10y ago
  A shortage, by definition, requires a situation where the price cannot rise. Of course, if the price is rising, then the poorer businesses are priced out of the market and no longer need developers. As long as price can rise, a shortage is impossible. Even if there was only one developer in the entire world, the services would eventually go to the highest bidder and everyone else would be priced out of the market, leaving no demand for other developers. That leaves me wondering what force is preventing price from rising in the case of developer talent?
  - pravda 10y ago
    >That leaves me wondering what force is preventing price from rising in the case of developer talent? Well, it's not Steve Jobs. Not anymore.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

RachelF 10y ago

There is not a shortage of STEM graduates. However, from an employer's point of view, there is a shortage of cheap STEM graduates. Hence the recent tech company uproar over the skilled visa changes.

trendia 10y ago
The companies should just admit: "There is a shortage of STEM graduates at the price I want to pay."
swuecho 10y ago
no shortage of stem graduate, but shortage of CS graduates or people with programming skills. You can say there is not shortage of anything if you want to pay a good price. Then ignore what I said or remove the word 'shortage' for your world.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  You say there's a shortage, yet all software development jobs available require a Bachelor's degree plus 3-5 years of experience. That doesn't seem like much of a shortage to me.
  - swuecho 10y ago
    I get a MS degree in biology, which is STEM. I happen to know programming. I do not even seek job in biology, because i know the field is oversupplied. instead, get a decent software engineer job instead, without degree, without any real world experience. If the market is the same in biology and programming related jobs. I would get job related to my degree. It is obvious there is a shortage in people who have programming skills. I manage to get above average productivity compared to my coworkers. I realized that even more shortage for productive software engineer. sure, any adjective is relative.
    - grainsout 10y ago
      I have a friend who graduated with a PhD in Chemistry a few years ago. He went down the research path, but eventually didn't like the pay. He had a good amount of programming experience and was primarily building simulation frameworks for chemical-environment interactions. I told him he could triple his salary if he applied for non-research positions. He's now a research developer at a pharma company making three times as much. Many hard science STEM graduates don't realize that their programming skills (even if they're not totally honed) will make them more valuable on the market. If you can find a position that uses both your degree skills and programming, then you'll be a unicorn to that company.

jamesmp98 10y ago

In relation to programming specifically, I once saw someone on Quora put it perfectly. It effecticly stated that we don't need more programmers. We need more senior developers with 10+ years of experience.

techterrier 10y ago
Chimes with anecdotal experience hiring in London. Glut of really well educated, keen and passionate juniors but tumbleweed when trying to hire seniors, even at higher salaries.
- darkmarmot 10y ago
  When I've looked at salaries in London they seem relatively low compared to the States. Perhaps higher isn't high enough?
- explainthisth 10y ago
  Have you tried offering internationally competitive salaries?
  - ScalaFan 10y ago
    Then there is also the issue of the ease or difficulty of getting someone from a foreign country to work in the UK. Are work permits required? How much paperwork? etc If I were an American, what would it take to work in London?
    - Swizec 10y ago
      > If I were an American, what would it take to work in London? A good internet connection and some perseverance in getting remote jobs. Also strong work habits. I have many friends back home in Slovenia who stay in Slovenia but work for San Francisco. Sure they don't make 100k, but they don't have to. At 80k they're socking away 40k+ per year. And the SF startup is super stoked because they get good engineers for peanuts.
- 10y ago

draw_down 10y ago

Well, it's a shortage in the sense that there is a shortage of brand-new Ferraris for $15,000.

hibikir 10y ago
But looking at individual salaries is just not the right idea though: to measure shortages in an industry, we have to look at total supply. Yes, I can get all the engineers I want if I pay a million dollars a year. But if they are also employed as engineers somewhere else, the lack of engineering talent just moves to those other companies. Say there is only a car in the entire world. I could buy it for more no more money, but ultimately there is still a shortage, in the sense that even if we had 5 people willing to pY 5 billion for the only car I. The world, they would all not be able to get it. In cars, this is fixed by the fact that we can build cars easily: It doesn't take that long to make another car, and eventually you can build thousands a day. So if we look at the system overall, we have to consider unemployment in the profession, and how many people just don't want to go I to stem because it doesn't pay enough. They say I see it, pay in CS specifically is pretty darned good, compared to alternatives in the US. Any lack of developers we have today doesn't come from them choosing other occupations because programming doesn't pay the bills: We just have way too many people getting paid a lot less, or unemployed altogether, that either can't afford the retraining to be programmers, or just. can't do it altogether. So it's not, IMO, as if the shortage of good pay is the problem: Remember the dot com boom, when a lot of borderline incompetent people were getting a ton of money and achieving very little? That,s the best we'd get if we just multiplied all tech salaries by 10x. Our real problems are far more complicated.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Any lack of developers we have today doesn't come from them choosing other occupations because programming doesn't pay the bills I dunno, I hear a lot about people who are qualified and experienced software developers moving to other fields, particularly finance and non-technical management, because they can get paid better, or leaving work entirely because no o e is offering enough to make it worthwhile for them not to just live off their savings (and not just hear about, I know people in the last category.) The idea that there isn't potential talent in the field that could be accessed by paying more is false. Obviously, employers prefer not to do that, because every dollar paid to an employee is a dollar the employer doesn't keep. > We just have way too many people getting paid a lot less, or unemployed altogether, that either can't afford the retraining to be programmers, or just. can't do it altogether. To the extent that there is a "can't afford" problem here, and this really is an undesirable situation demanding a public policy response, the solution is obvious from the statement of the problem, and it's not "import foreign workers".

st3v3r 10y ago

Every time someone mentions that they have a hard time finding qualified workers, or saying that qualified people don't apply to their company, they tend to ignore a very important question: Why would those qualified people want to apply at your company in the first place? A lot of people like to say they're paying "market wages", but most qualified people are already making that or more.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> A lot of people like to say they're paying "market wages", but most qualified people are already making that or more. The other thing to consider is that current market price of something is the price at which everyone willing to sell at or below that price has already sold. The next person to buy is going to have to pay incrementally more. If you define a "shortage" as " no more for sale without paying more than the current market price", then the normal shape of supply curves would mean that markets are usually in "shortage".
aub3bhat 10y ago
Because the money for salaries is not generated out of thin air. It gets determined by the profit-margin provided by the market. Your competitors are paying market wages in China to "qualified people", or have depreciated the high salaries in employees via higher-productivity and thus pricing you out.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "Because the money for salaries is not generated out of thin air. It gets determined by the profit-margin provided by the market." While this is true, it's also very much not my problem. If your company is offering X, and another company is offering 1.25X, then most of the good people are going to go to the other company first. And it would be quite dishonest of you to say that there's a "shortage" when it turns out you just don't want to pay as much as the competition for your talent.

grizzles 10y ago

If you run a small business, it's a real thing. On wages, it's nearly impossible to compete with the big corporations. That leaves you with one choice - outsource your engineering to China or India. Or they could just come here (wherever here is) and contribute to the local economy by buying stuff, driving down the per capita crime rate (immigrants have a far lower crime rate), etc.

runT1ME 10y ago
If a small business needs lower salaries to thrive, then that means their only real benefit they provide their customers is the fact that they can exploit some employees ignorance of market rate.
earthtolazlo 10y ago
Or, God forbid, they could pay their employees more.
whenwillitstop 10y ago
This means the business isnt feasible.
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  This is a very important point, let me expand a bit. If your business/product requires a supply of sub-market waged talent, then you have not found true product-market fit or your product just does not provide sufficient value to sustain a real business (real meaning one that can operate on market wages.)
  - grizzles 10y ago
    Why do you say sub-market? When Disney or any other huge corporation outsources their IT dept to India / China, that's the MARKET. Good Luck putting an import tax on virtual goods / services.
    - 10y ago

ryanSrich 10y ago

So is the engineering crisis and the talent shortage and the diversity gap. You think Facebook wants more H1Bs because it wants to promote diversity? You think it's because of a shortage? That's not how these things work. It just so happens that what's currently en vogue aligns with the business interests of the largest tech companies in the world.

mavelikara 10y ago
Specifically, Mark Zuckerberg is a co-founder of FWD.us which "is mobilizing the tech community in support of policies that keep the American Dream achievable in the 21st century, starting with commonsense immigration reform" according to their website [1]. The major issues they lobby for are (1) increase in H-1Bs (2) illegal immigrants. The one thing they don't talk about is legal immigration paths for people on H-1Bs. People on H-1B from India and China have long backlogs for Green Cards, which causes them to stick with one employer for long, with reduced negotiation leverage, and there by depressing wages for the entire industry. But FWD.us does not have a care for that aspect of immigration - presumably because this helps the bottom line of everyone involved in FWD.us. Meanwhile they don't miss any opportunity to shed crocodile tears for the plight of DREAMers. Sigh! [1]: https://www.fwd.us/ https://www.fwd.us/
- arjie 10y ago
  Do you know any Indian or Chinese people in the Bay? They switch all the time. Getting your H-1B transferred isn't hard.
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    I am one. When you switch jobs on H-1B, your GC application has to be redone from the first step. This is an uncertain process that can get stuck in red tape for indeterminate amounts of time. Your place in line stays intact in many cases though. So, switching jobs is possible, but is no way easy. While you wait decade+ for your GC, you freedoms are severely restricted as an alien.

thedevil 10y ago

So theoretically, without pricing controls, there's no such thing as a shortage because prices will rise until demand == supply. So the arguments that there's no shortage of STEM workers (only a shortage of below-market-price STEM workers) makes sense. But let me pitch a different angle: there are a lot of people who could do their job better if they had certain specific STEM skills (e.g. business analysts who were better at statistics, spreadsheets, and maybe SQL). It's true that you can get these skills if you pay more. However, the cost of hiring someone with these skills might be >= the business value, even though the business value might be >= the cost of the education for these skills. So I would argue that we're underinvesting in certain STEM skills.

arjie 10y ago
Wait a minute, your premise is easily susceptible to a counterexample. Take a 2-employer world with 1 candidate. Let's say both employers have the same desire for the candidate, i.e. no matter what salary one employer offers, the other will offer the same and if one employer believes a salary is too high so will the other. This system will perpetually be in a shortage. No matter what rate is offered, at least one employer will go without an employee.
- thedevil 10y ago
  Wikipedia: "a shortage occurs when for some reason the price does not rise to reach equilibrium" In your example, the price is at equilibrium, even though one buyer cannot buy at market price. Thus there is no shortage. If we define shortage as one buyer not being able to buy at market price, then you are technically correct.
  - arjie 10y ago
    That's just a problem with Wikipedia being Wikipedia. That's not a definition. If you read the actual source that's used in that section§, you'll see that what he uses as a definition is the following: > A shortage is a market condition existing at any price where the quantity supplied is less than the quantity demanded. He then goes on to talk about how the shortage provides a signal to sellers to move the price closer to equilibrium (upwards, in this case) but that doesn't make it not a shortage. In questions of definitions, it's also informative to try an alternative source. I propose the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (simply because they have a convenient online glossary): https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/glossary https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/glossary > Shortage: When the quantity demanded of a good or service exceeds the quantity supplied at a particular price. I'm not going to update the Wikipedia page because the Definition section needs quite some rewording and citation to make it authoritative and if I just add this in, it will make that part incoherent. § Tucker's Economics for Today, which is also wrongly named in that section as Economics Today. In the 7th edition, this is on Page 80

dclowd9901 10y ago

When will the curve of demand start to drop precipitously as we replace STEM workers with AI? (Right now, for instance, we have no QA team, as we can machine test changes and use program flow analysis to test)

a-saleh 10y ago
Bit off topic, but how did you manage that? I currently work in QE, but our team is miniscule compared to the devs, so we would rather just automate ourselves away and then hop over to the other side :-)
- dclowd9901 10y ago
  We still QA, but since we have a pretty sturdy code review process where we check out changes and double check them, alongside requiring debts to write test plans and then using Flowtype to limit side effecty changes.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

CJefferson 10y ago

I don't buy this. In my university, we constantly have companies trying to get our computing graduates, offer them internships, try to persuade them to come for interview. We need to teach our students how to negotiate well. In most other departments, staff instead have to teach students how to go out and find jobs, put lots of work into applying, etc. There is certainly a shortage of good graduates, compared to most degree programs.

nsgi 10y ago
What university do you go to?
- CJefferson 10y ago
  I teach at St Andrews University, in Scotland.

niftich 10y ago

Lumping 'IT' in with STEM is a historical mistake from the days when IT was not a mass-market phenomenon, but firmly the territory of academia, government ventures, defense contractors, safety-critical systems, and research. Today its placement increasingly serves to muddy facts and justify various views and policies on H1-Bs and the like, either in favor or against. In truth, IT should be split into its own category with distinct analyses and approaches, addressed independently from S, E, M, and the leftovers of T.

tdicola 10y ago

This article is over 3 years old, is there something more recent? Not that I discount what it's saying but what made this article relevant again?

stale2002 10y ago

If the stem crisis is a myth, then why do I get paid so much? I'm not the top of my class. I'm just an average web developer doing easy stuff.

Vendan 10y ago
Probably cause you are in a good area? My last programming job was $38k a year, and considered great pay.
- stale2002 10y ago
  And... In this good area, there is a shortage, correct?
  - Vendan 10y ago
    What good area? It wasn't good pay... and they replaced me before I had even finished my 2 weeks... Sounds like the opposite of a "shortage"
- tevyt 10y ago
  Well if you considered it great pay that would mean that it was a high salary for the area, right?
  - Vendan 10y ago
    Nah, it was barely enough to cover cost of living, and I got a 136% raise by switching to another field. I didn't think it was great pay, that was the employer when they refused to give me a raise after 2 years...
hajile 10y ago
At my current position, there are several hundred devs, but only a dozen or so senior web devs. They look for more, but it's taking time for the glut of new people pouring into the field to learn all the old while keeping up with all the new stuff every year. I started off in the back-end a number of years ago, but quickly found myself being shoved to the front-end because I knew what to do and didn't complain loudly enough. I'd love to do more than just the occasional back-end job. I'd love to have a break from the constant headaches of making stuff work across dozens of incompatible browsers developed over the past decade, but moving to the backend full-time would cut my pay significantly. Supply, demand, and being forced into the undesirable job are paying off for me at the moment, but that doesn't mean that every other part of the market is dying for people.

pyrophane 10y ago

I think another factor contributing to this is a need to answer the question of how we can replace all of the jobs that we are losing due, primarily, to automation. Because our society is built on the idea that work is the means to justify one's existence, we depend on the possibility of full employment. Therefore, when jobs go away, we have to make them up somewhere. As manufacturing shrinks and automation starts to chip at the large base of service jobs once thought safe, it is necessary that there be something to replace it. Enter STEM. Instead of assembly-line workers, customer service reps, and bank tellers, we will soon all be the scientists and engineers designing and servicing the grandiose machinery that now does most of the actual work.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Enter STEM. Instead of assembly-line workers, customer service reps, and bank tellers, we will soon all be the scientists and engineers designing and servicing the grandiose machinery that now does most of the actual work. With the problem that the "automated" infrastructure has incredibly high initial capital costs and incredibly specific skills requirements. Just think how many software frameworks are used for a typical complex product that really does something useful: call that N. Now, where do you find 100 engineers trained and experienced in all of N different things?

nfbush 10y ago

add a (2013) ?

kartan 10y ago

A friend of mine studied bioengineering , but she is working out of the field. Low salaries and temporal jobs moved here to another different field. She doesn't repents her choice, as it was an incredible experience. And she would like to work in her field of choice. But the market pays more her time and capabilities elsewhere.

digler999 10y ago
> But the market pays more her time and capabilities elsewhere. or the market has somehow succeeded in depressing wages to the lowest possible rate. I've heard you have to have a minimum of a BS degree to break into the field of bio/chem. And then you're just a lab monkey following orders from a superior. yet "biotech firms" generate enormous profits, whether its in genetic engineering, healthcare, pharma, etc. It makes me sick.

leroman 10y ago

These days its easy for companies to remain mediocre and stay in business, thanks to FOSS and a competitive market lowering their tooling price. Some time ago I realized that the only way to get the real worth out of value I create (as a highly skilled developer) I need to be building products / services and selling them to these mediocre corporations, I could not see a way I could survive in these companies in the long term. (weather they provided me with a growth path or not)

oDot 10y ago

The question is not how many engineers are there, but how many _good engineers_ are there.

analogwzrd 10y ago

From my experience job searching, it seems that companies are looking for someone to fit the job description exactly instead of being willing to hire and to train someone. And when they can't find anyone, they complain about a shortage of eligible workers. It's really difficult to find a job the traditional way (submit resume/cover letter, interview, etc.) in this economy. The article makes a good point that if there was a shortage of STEM talent, companies would be drooling over everyone with a B.S. degree, but I haven't really seen that. I do agree with the article that there is a STEM literacy problem...I have friends in grad school constantly complaining about people gaming the peer review system, students getting by on shoddy research, etc. I've had co-workers that I've been really disappointed with in terms of having solid engineering fundamentals. If the article is right, and there's not a STEM shortage, what would you tell a high schooler applying to college? What field should they study so that there's a better chance of them having jobs?

booleandilemma 10y ago

I feel like the industry treats software development as a race to the bottom. The goal seems to be to pump out as many STEM grads as possible so they can pay them barista wages. Are other industries like this? Why do I not see bootcamps for electricians and plumbers?

hajile 10y ago
Electricians and plumbers have the same kind of issues. I have a relative who worked for a company that did the electrical contracting for a huge amount of [huge retail company] stores. Ultimately, [huge retail company] started bringing in large groups of cheap Mexican labor who were mostly inexperienced in the trade. These groups would screw up the job, so they'd bump the opening date a bit and bring in experienced crew to patch everything up. The end result was a much worse job, but [huge retail company] didn't care because the overall cost was a lot lower. The places where this does not happen are places where the electrical union is strong and laws make sure workers are certified journeymen/masters (or in an apprenticeship). I've thought quite often that the world would view programmers much differently if there were a viable programmer's union.
runT1ME 10y ago
I feel like the industry treats software development as a race to the bottom Why have programming salaries skyrocketed the last five years then???

HillaryBriss 10y ago

SV Tech Companies remind me of contractors who want to build a giant mansion on a hilltop. But instead of hiring workers with years of experience building houses they hire the best athletes from US university sports programs. Fantastically talented athletes. Then they give these great athletes a bunch of shovels, cement mixers, hammers and nails and say: "Build the best mansion the world has ever seen." Somehow it doesn't work out. They get a large house, but it isn't really any better than other large houses. Some of the workers decide to leave. I wonder if management really knew what it was doing in the first place. Maybe they figured they could just hire "the best" and everything would take care of itself?

th3rooki3 10y ago

I think it's likely that both sides of the argument are correct. There are a large amount of STEM jobs that are not being filled, while at the same time there is a surplus of STEM graduates. The takeaway is that businesses don't just need people that have STEM degrees, they need people that will add value to their company. Just because you have a STEM degree does not mean that you'll be a net positive for the company. It seems to me that incentives for colleges right now are way out of wack. They're not doing a good enough job at preparing students for actual industry roles (elite institutions being the exception), yet their enrollment rates and the cost of their tuition keeps going up.

matwood 10y ago
> The takeaway is that businesses don't just need people that have STEM degrees, they need people that will add value to their company. Just because you have a STEM degree does not mean that you'll be a net positive for the company. I agree. I graduated a long time ago with a CS degree and almost a minor in business. The CS foundation helped with all the learning I have done since then, but if I think about the most valuable classes I had in college they were economics, accounting, finance and management. Of course some jobs need PhD level CS without any other skill, but the majority of positions need someone who knows how to program plus <insert skill here>.
spyspy 10y ago
> elite institutions being the exception Having worked with a lot of people with "elite" degrees, I disagree with this a lot. I walked out of school with much more relevant experience than I feel they have (through both school and co-ops). Don't get me wrong, they're all smart people, but knowing how to write merge sort in haskell is different than knowing how to comfortably use git.

capRidiculous 10y ago

I can speak from my own anecdotal experience. I am an Indian immigrant with 2.5 yrs of industry experience and a masters degree from a decent school. Please note that I do not support the H1b abuse by the outsourcing firms. They are pure evil and I honestly hope they go bankrupt. I also believe H1b needs to be reformed to remove the loopholes but that is a topic for another day. I was recently in the job market and got three offers within a month. One from a big four tech firm Amazon/Facebook/MS/Google, one from a big four consulting firm Deloitte/E&Y/PWC/KPMG and the final one from a very promising startup in North Carolina. The first two paid above market rate but the startup paid 105k + equity because they cannot afford to pay more than that. Thing is, my specific skill set is in shortage ( Big Data and Analytics) and I am sure there are a few other specialized fields where there is a shortage. There may be a number of kick-ass local software engineers in the market but it is the specific skill set the companies need. Please do not tell me that companies can just hire local candidates and train them on the skill set they need. There simply isn't that much time and experience trumps(yea I know its ironic) training. When a company pays you N amount, they expect X amount of value from you where X is a multiple of N. Also, these companies are often competing with each other to get a product out to the market as fast as possible. Loosing precious time in training is not very optimal as your competitor might beat you. To be honest, I do not think I can be considered the best in my field and a good american developer can do my job if s/he has the necessary experience. Right now, demand for data engineers with big data skills far outstrips the supply. This won't be the case in say 4-5 years down the line. STEM in itself is a very broad term, Software development has many disciplines. Are you a Sr. Software Developer who wants to get paid that 200k salary in your local market outside of Silicon Valley? Make sure to cultivate a skill set that is in shortage. Simple macro economics. For those who are curious, I took up the consulting position and am getting paid 120k base + 10k signing bonus + 10-15% year end bonus + other benefits. Not bad for a person with 2.5 years of industry experience who lives in North Carolina. Is it?

TuringNYC 10y ago
By the way, $120k is nice for NC, but the banks in NC pay $180k for the same talent. There is no shortage in NC for Big Data and Analytics talent, the company cannot find the talent because they are simply not paying as much as Wells Fargo next door. If they pay $180k, they will find all the talent they need. They might even convince talent from NY/NJ to move down for that sum. AIG Investments recently convinced a dozen+ group of analytics workers to move down to NC for that salary range. The people would not have moved down for $120k. Also, $120k is pretty nice, until you have some kids and loads of medical co-pays, dental fees, school fees, and then it is simply too little. Dont believe me? Several years ago, my medical co-pays post insurance were over $20,000 for the year, which is more like $32,000 pre-tax. What happens is people move into non technical roles which pay commensurate to skillsets. There is no shortage of skillsets, there is simply a shortage of experienced people willing to take sub-market wages for strong resumes.

Animats 10y ago

Useful question: how many unfilled STEM jobs could be filled by hiring an available applicant and putting them through three months of training? If you want narrow expertise, create it. HR organizations need to be thinking that way. "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on my part."

st3v3r 10y ago
I think part of it is, there doesn't appear to be any penalty for sitting and waiting for that Unicorn candidate that checks all the boxes and works for peanuts. Most employers already feel empowered to have their existing employees do the work of 2 or 3 people, so not hiring someone for a couple months doesn't affect them.

aub3bhat 10y ago

All these articles start with an implicit assumption that talent in other countries is somehow automatically inferior and that USA will always remain a leader. The reality could not be further from the truth. Just take a look at what haappened to the EE / Chip-making industry. The cost difference has shifted all but very high end (intel processors) manufacturing and along with them jobs out of USA to Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan. While as an employee you might think you can ignore competition from other countries via protectionism, sooner or later the entire industry ends up suffering the effects. This is also what happened to Detroit car makers. Unionization & Protectionism guarantees salaries for half a decade until the market effect trickles down. The real existential threat to SV is not from Indians or Chinese immigrants as much as the post-Trump Anti H-1B wave might have you believe. Its from failing to remain competitive in an age where privacy corncerns and a hostile US government are causing a rethink worldwide.

eva1984 10y ago

But it is also very difficult to hire a qualified candidate. There is also data suggests that SDE's salary has been hiking for several years in a row and beyond inflation rate. If there is no shortage, how so? https://www.fastcompany.com/3051405/the-future-of-work/the-20-jobs-with-the-biggest-salary-increases-this-year https://www.fastcompany.com/3051405/the-future-of-work/the-2... I don't think paying 110k+ in Bay Area for a entry level is unfair, but from what I can tell, my company has a hard time finding one candidate and often the ones we like also get multiple offers and prefer big companies like Google/Facebook, etc. Yes, 'qualified' is very subjective standard, however, if you ask 5 experienced people, their opinion towards the same candidate barely changes dramatically from one and another, it is either unanimously yes/no, very rarely in between. So, I think yes, there is a lot of STEM students, but how many of them actually have actual engineering skills is question left for debate.

Balgair 10y ago

There is a nasty little issue that is not very well communicated: cheating. There is a non-zero amount of grads from prestigious to lousy universities and boot-camps that cheated. Some cheated a little bit, some cheated the whole way. But this may be a factor in the STEM issue. Some non-zero amount of prospective hires may have the cred, but the company can identify them quickly as hacks. I'm going to go out on a long limb here and say that most grads from large research universities cheated their way through and know squat all.