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The idea that a US citizen could rack up tremendous debt on a 4 year STEM degree only to be passed over in favor of a cheaper H1B "indentured servant" that rece

The idea that a US citizen could rack up tremendous debt on a 4 year STEM degree only to be passed over in favor of a cheaper H1B "indentured servant" that received a degree from a low cost diploma mill is vile indeed.

anjc 10y ago
It isn't just the US too. It's the same all over Western Europe. What sticks in my craw even more is that, to legitimise the process of issuing more visas, companies and governments have to continually say "there aren't enough STEM and IT grads! Do STEM and IT everyone!" knowing full well that there wont be jobs for these kids at the end of it.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Anecdata: I'm in US. Three boys, all graduated Engineers. All have jobs, easy as pie. One had $30/hr part-time remote work during last year of college. Have to move to get the right job maybe, or take what you can find, but for various reasons they're all very happy. My Niece is in a field that's chronically low on qualified Engineers - she designs and installs automation in factories. So many facets including mechanical, electrical, industrial, chemical, process, thermo, etc. You have to be an all-rounder to get the job. So they work her flat out every minute she can spare (lives in hotels in remote cities for weeks during installs). Other niece does lithium-battery development for startups in Silicon Valley. They keep going under, but no problem another one starts up the next week. Got all the work she can handle. Wife's niece does biomedical research, never been a day without work. Canada, East Coast US (Yale actually), then a regular job with Govt. Anyway, of the 13 siblings and their cousins, exactly 1 has ever had a day of trouble with employment. So all the talk about 'over-supply' might be exaggerated.
  - RileyKyeden 10y ago
    There's a reason anecdotes are useless in these kinds of discussions. Your family probably benefited from network effects: one person gets a job, then provides industry contacts and references to the next, and so on. Your family's tremendous luck should not be mistaken for a reasonable expectation. Someone will be along with an equivalent tale about how they and everyone they know looked for a STEM job for years and gave up. That's why anecdata isn't actually a thing.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Exactly one case of 'network effect' - one brother got little brother hired on at startup as intern during the summer. Others all lived at far ends of the country from one another, in entirely different fields. There're other effects, things labeled 'white privilege' or 'middle class ethics' I imagine. So no, not a recipe for escaping poverty or anything. I was the son of a dirt farmer in Iowa (like my sisters and brothers), but worked in Silicon Valley when young so my boys didn't have the disadvantages I did.
  - anjc 10y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I know that some people have major success and I'm glad that they do (I don't think 'white privilege' has anything to do with it as you contend below, as I have as much anti-anecdata as yours which also involves white people). The data is all out there with regards to the level of unemployment and underemployment amongst STEM and IT grads, the number of people who have to seek employment in alternative industries, and the level of stagnation of wages in the industry. It's not at a level which indicates systemic failures, but it's significant enough to raise questions.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    "having work" isn't the only metric, the pay is relevant too. Presumably, the pay for these individuals is competitive?
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Only moderate debt for most. None for some. Pay is relative.
- curun1r 10y ago
  Both "there aren't enough STEM and IT grads!" and "I can't find a STEM job" can be true if candidates aren't willing to relocate to where those jobs are. Despite being one of the most remote-friendly jobs possible, tech is still frustratingly regional. It's amazing how many people will opine on how expensive San Francisco is and how they'd never want to live there and then complain about how scarce tech jobs are without seeing their own hypocrisy. This doesn't condone what the body shops do, but I don't see a problem H1-Bs being used to address regional shortages in the labor market. But the program absolutely needs to have a regional component given that the scarcity of talent really is regional. We should not be issuing H1-B visas to work in cities where US workers can't find jobs. And H1-B priority should be given to companies that employ the lowest percentage of H1-Bs. With a few other provisions to ensure similar pay, this would destroy the companies that rely almost solely on H1-Bs without hurting tech companies that legitimately need H1-Bs to address the difficulty in finding talent.
ar15saveslives 10y ago
The (sad?) truth is STEM degree is useless in most IT areas. Even the most complicated development (OS kernels, drivers, a/v processing and encoding, encryption, cv, ml, etc) is all about self-education. It's anecdata, but I personally see zero to no correlation between GPA/how-cool-school-name-sounds and efficiency of a developer. IMO a university is good for building a network, but not for knowledge per se.
- dlp211 10y ago
  For deep knowledge you may be correct, but I learned a ton in College. I went back to school with no programming experience at 28. By the time I graduated I had touched on nearly every one of those topics and I didn't take a CS class until my sophomore year because I originally started as an ECE. If it wasn't for school, I would never had known where to go after I learned the basics, that is, Data Structures and Algorithms come next, then applied knowledge. Because of the school that I went to, I have a high level knowledge of programming language design and paradigms, OS and systems programming, compilers, encryption, security, and privacy. I also, because I double majored, know more than I want about signals processing and really the only thing in your list that I didn't get to touch on was ML/AI which was unfortunate. But to your point, College has always been about self-education no matter the subject. The general guidance has always been that for every hour spent in class, you should be spend 2-3 out of class studying.

anjc 10y ago

It isn't just the US too. It's the same all over Western Europe. What sticks in my craw even more is that, to legitimise the process of issuing more visas, companies and governments have to continually say "there aren't enough STEM and IT grads! Do STEM and IT everyone!" knowing full well that there wont be jobs for these kids at the end of it.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Anecdata: I'm in US. Three boys, all graduated Engineers. All have jobs, easy as pie. One had $30/hr part-time remote work during last year of college. Have to move to get the right job maybe, or take what you can find, but for various reasons they're all very happy. My Niece is in a field that's chronically low on qualified Engineers - she designs and installs automation in factories. So many facets including mechanical, electrical, industrial, chemical, process, thermo, etc. You have to be an all-rounder to get the job. So they work her flat out every minute she can spare (lives in hotels in remote cities for weeks during installs). Other niece does lithium-battery development for startups in Silicon Valley. They keep going under, but no problem another one starts up the next week. Got all the work she can handle. Wife's niece does biomedical research, never been a day without work. Canada, East Coast US (Yale actually), then a regular job with Govt. Anyway, of the 13 siblings and their cousins, exactly 1 has ever had a day of trouble with employment. So all the talk about 'over-supply' might be exaggerated.
- RileyKyeden 10y ago
  There's a reason anecdotes are useless in these kinds of discussions. Your family probably benefited from network effects: one person gets a job, then provides industry contacts and references to the next, and so on. Your family's tremendous luck should not be mistaken for a reasonable expectation. Someone will be along with an equivalent tale about how they and everyone they know looked for a STEM job for years and gave up. That's why anecdata isn't actually a thing.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Exactly one case of 'network effect' - one brother got little brother hired on at startup as intern during the summer. Others all lived at far ends of the country from one another, in entirely different fields. There're other effects, things labeled 'white privilege' or 'middle class ethics' I imagine. So no, not a recipe for escaping poverty or anything. I was the son of a dirt farmer in Iowa (like my sisters and brothers), but worked in Silicon Valley when young so my boys didn't have the disadvantages I did.
- anjc 10y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I know that some people have major success and I'm glad that they do (I don't think 'white privilege' has anything to do with it as you contend below, as I have as much anti-anecdata as yours which also involves white people). The data is all out there with regards to the level of unemployment and underemployment amongst STEM and IT grads, the number of people who have to seek employment in alternative industries, and the level of stagnation of wages in the industry. It's not at a level which indicates systemic failures, but it's significant enough to raise questions.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  "having work" isn't the only metric, the pay is relevant too. Presumably, the pay for these individuals is competitive?
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Only moderate debt for most. None for some. Pay is relative.
curun1r 10y ago
Both "there aren't enough STEM and IT grads!" and "I can't find a STEM job" can be true if candidates aren't willing to relocate to where those jobs are. Despite being one of the most remote-friendly jobs possible, tech is still frustratingly regional. It's amazing how many people will opine on how expensive San Francisco is and how they'd never want to live there and then complain about how scarce tech jobs are without seeing their own hypocrisy. This doesn't condone what the body shops do, but I don't see a problem H1-Bs being used to address regional shortages in the labor market. But the program absolutely needs to have a regional component given that the scarcity of talent really is regional. We should not be issuing H1-B visas to work in cities where US workers can't find jobs. And H1-B priority should be given to companies that employ the lowest percentage of H1-Bs. With a few other provisions to ensure similar pay, this would destroy the companies that rely almost solely on H1-Bs without hurting tech companies that legitimately need H1-Bs to address the difficulty in finding talent.

ar15saveslives 10y ago

The (sad?) truth is STEM degree is useless in most IT areas. Even the most complicated development (OS kernels, drivers, a/v processing and encoding, encryption, cv, ml, etc) is all about self-education. It's anecdata, but I personally see zero to no correlation between GPA/how-cool-school-name-sounds and efficiency of a developer. IMO a university is good for building a network, but not for knowledge per se.

dlp211 10y ago
For deep knowledge you may be correct, but I learned a ton in College. I went back to school with no programming experience at 28. By the time I graduated I had touched on nearly every one of those topics and I didn't take a CS class until my sophomore year because I originally started as an ECE. If it wasn't for school, I would never had known where to go after I learned the basics, that is, Data Structures and Algorithms come next, then applied knowledge. Because of the school that I went to, I have a high level knowledge of programming language design and paradigms, OS and systems programming, compilers, encryption, security, and privacy. I also, because I double majored, know more than I want about signals processing and really the only thing in your list that I didn't get to touch on was ML/AI which was unfortunate. But to your point, College has always been about self-education no matter the subject. The general guidance has always been that for every hour spent in class, you should be spend 2-3 out of class studying.