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Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype

162 points by rb808 8y ago

gbear605 8y ago
The article starts with a discussion about science graduates, but it’s primarily about the weak job market for college graduates in general. Unfortunately, college degrees are not a sure fire way to get hired in today’s economy, but they are essentially needed, unless you plan on going into some trade.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >but they are essentially needed Kind of. College degrees replaced high school degrees as a baseline for general knowledge. It used to be the case that a high school degree meant you had some general knowledge of math, history, geography etc., with an above average level of literacy and a reasonable level of intelligence. High school degrees do not mean any of those things anymore. Many kids who graduate with a high school degree are functionally illiterate (1 in 5 graduates).
Buldak 8y ago
Am I missing something or does the word "Glut" in the title here mean the opposite of what the article describes?
- yhoneycomb 8y ago
  Yeah uhh I'm confused Maybe everything really is opposite in Australia
- eesmith 8y ago
  The title at smh.com.au is "Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype" and the word "glut" doesn't exist on the page. OTOH, the URL slug is 'glut-in-demand-for-science-graduates-challenges-stem-hype-20190327-p517zj'. This suggests that in the intervening 10 or so minutes since the story was submitted to HN, someone in Australia noticed and fixed the problem in the title.
- rb808 8y ago
  yes, fixed. The original article did have bad headline.
hprotagonist 8y ago
recent STEM hype aside, it has historically been very challenging to find work as a "straight" biologist, especially with only a BS, and if you can it's probably going to be scut-level underpaid lab or field work. Part of the reason I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning. You just can't reasonably talk about something as one labor market if it includes zookeepers, pharmaceutical chemists, medical doctors, facebook engineers, economists, and advertiser...er, data scientists.
- eesmith 8y ago
  To add to that, 5 years ago there was an article titled "The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage" by Michael S. Teitelbaum at The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-my... > Everyone knows that the United States has long suffered from widespread shortages in its science and engineering workforce, and that if continued these shortages will cause it to fall behind its major economic competitors. ... Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. ... The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. ... No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher 122 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451835 .
  - hprotagonist 8y ago
    As i recall at the time, even IEEE's response was "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts."
    - macspoofing 8y ago
      >"there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts." That cannot be IEEE's response. It makes no sense. The market decides the rate, not the employers nor employees. If no employer wants to pay what you think you're worth, you're not worth that. Having said that, the market rate does give you some indication as to what the wider supply and demand looks like.
stevenwoo 8y ago
The title is a bit confusing as the article is about a glut in supply of science graduates and a dearth in job opportunities (in Australia at least), also the anecdote about the journalism student was not germane at all. I tried finding info on job opportunities but came up short - could only find data on worldwide STEM graduates https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-countries-with-the-most-stem-graduates-infographic/#5791cd1a268a https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-co... and STEM job info about the USA: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem-jobs-industry-careers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem-job... TLDR - vast majority of STEM jobs in USA are computer related and India/China/USA far outstrip other countries in producing STEM graduates. Whoever advised those Australian students to get non computer related degrees did them a disservice, if they did not forewarn them of the job market.
pram 8y ago
I think its been this way for a while? At least since the Great Recession imo. I have friends who have amazing credentials (talking like compsci and physics phds from places like caltech and cmu) and very few of them are employed in their field. Some of them didn’t even do anything and are basically NEETs who play video games all day. It’s pretty clear the actual value and potential of these degrees aren’t being honestly advertised. The “STEM” hype as mentioned here certainly doesn’t help the situation. It is a lot of time and money and effort thrown away for a lot of people and it’s heartbreaking.
- maccio92 8y ago
  If they want jobs as a developer there are plenty. If they see NEETs that just play video games all day it's probably their own lifestyle choices that are at fault
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    As a physicist it's easier to get into the tech field than as a life scientist. Just saying.
davidxc 8y ago
As someone else said below, treating STEM as one category is absurb and lumps together way too many different majors and careers (that have drastically varying levels of attractiveness and compensation growth). Majors like biology and chemistry have fairly terrible prospects with just a BS degree, but CS and the engineering majors are still quite good. Physics and math are more iffy, but if you know what you're doing and pick up some employable skills on the side, then those majors will at least get you into interviews for good jobs. There's also the question of what "not enough jobs" means. There are definitely struggling CS majors, but I think that a statement about there not being enough jobs needs to be looked at in a relative way - that is, one needs to consider what the alternative options are and whether those alternatives have better prospects. Many careers have been on the decline, and it's difficult to really identify career paths that are significantly better than computer science / software engineering (at least, at the undergraduate level). Even if we compared careers that required graduate school, the only paths that one could plausibly argue are significantly better than tech are medicine, law, and business (in my opinion). Those three careers all come with their own serious tradeoffs and downsides. If anyone has information on what career paths are significantly better than CS / engineering, I'd be interested to hear your opinion. Right now, I'm unfortunately not seeing significantly better alternatives.
- platz 8y ago
  Careers that have higher status and entry requirements have the advantage that they don't cannabalize their middle-age job prospects like CS does. CS is great for many years, until you discover it's a year too late, with only a limited number of things to show for it, along with largely useless random domain knowledge; and your peers who didn't major in CS are gaining more leverage relative to you, due to compounding nature of advancement in those other professions compared to constant skill (re) acquisition in tech
  - nopinsight 8y ago
    I largely agree with what you say for generic CS skills. A way to accumulate leverage might be focusing on hard and deep skills like distributed computing and machine learning for complex real-world problems. Although details change significantly over time, the fundamentals evolve much more slowly and take years to truly understand and be able to apply them effectively. Alternatively, moving into technical management with deep domain knowledge might be suitable for some.
taneq 8y ago
You can be a "STEM graduate" but if you insist on trying to get a job doing basic scientific research, you're probably not going to find interesting well paid work. If you do an engineering degree and get a job building mining equipment, you're going to do fine. The job market doesn't care about your aspirations, it cares about how useful your skills are in solving a company's problems.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  If you want a job doing basic scientific research the entry level qualification is a doctorate. That’s certainly true in universities and it’s equally true in biology and chemistry though that’s probably not enough. You almost certainly need a post doc or two. Physicists have enough outside options that if they want to get out the post doc is unnecessary but getting a doctorate is a terrible financial decision. That’s what happens when the government does a careful study of how to reduce the prices of highly skilled scientific labour and then follows the recommendations. > Government and Universities Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists > During the late 1990s I became convinced that in order to orchestrate lower wages for scientists, there would have to have been a competent economic study done to guide the curious policy choices that had resulted in the flooded market for STEM PhDs. For this theory to be correct, the private economic study would have had to have been done studying both supply and demand so that the demand piece could later be removed, resulting in the bizarre ‘supply only’ demographic studies released to the public. Through a bit of economic detective work, I began a painstaking search of the literature and discovered just such a study immediately preceded the release of the foolish demography studies that provided the public justification for the Immigration Act of 1990. This needle was located in the haystack of documents the NSF was forced to turn over when the House investigated the NSF for faking alarms about a shortfall. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...
ncmncm 8y ago
This is the real reason why women are graduating in computer science in much smaller numbers than when I was in school, when the number was 30%. Programming, like engineering and science, has turned out to be just not a good long-term career prospect for most people. Whenever demand softens, which it does every few years, women and minorities take the brunt. Once you have been out for even three years it is very hard to break in again. Part of the problem is that when employers don't feel like paying a living wage, they easily persuade government to import foreign help, in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. The companies pretend that this doesn't depress salaries, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, they have arranged not to be obliged to pay overtime, and then they demand overtime work on a routine basis. I have never seen such an employer pay engineers overtime, under any circumstance. Sometimes there are "bonuses" that are a tiny fraction of what overtime would cost them. The only plausible solution to this problem will be for engineers and programmers to unionize, and start cultivating representation in legislatures. We are handicapped by myths about self-reliant cowboy engineers who don't need to join together.
- anonytrary 8y ago
  I'm surprised. Out of all of the STEM degrees, I'd have thought CS was the most useful for guaranteeing a highly secure, well-paid job out of college.
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    I don't recognize the world that OP is describing. CS is still a good career option and pays well in relation to the level of skill and education it requires. Having said that, it isn't a utopia and it isn't for everyone. One of the many reasons why I hate the current "Everyone learn to Code" trend is because if you don't love it, programming is as exciting as reading a EULA or TOS or any legal contract. That's certainly how some of my friends see programming, and I can totally see why.
    - NotSammyHagar 8y ago
      Yeah, I really disagree with ncmncm's world view. My experience on 25 years of Dev is quite different.
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anonytrary 8y ago
The default algorithm for most people is: 1. Get educated 2. Find a job Step 1 currently does pretty much nothing to help you transition to step 2. Sure, there are career networking events for juniors and seniors in college, but they are very superficial. It seems like colleges are producing unfinished products -- students who know a lot about theoretical concepts and not that much about applications. Maybe more colleges should try and obtain a better product-market fit by requiring vocational training for at least a semester.
- plytheman 8y ago
  I dunno, on the other hand, I got a B.S. in Ecology and have about 5 years of experience doing field work, long term monitoring, and data analysis and report writing on said research. Ostensibly that should be plenty of experience to prove I know my field and can learn new methods and skills related to it. Despite that I can't seem to find anything that isn't more seasonal work below my worth now or wanting a Masters degree even though I have plenty of real-world experience. I agree that there's some serious gap between steps 1 and 2, but I did alright in finding internships and experience and still can't find squat.I admit I knew going into my undergrad that a Masters would be needed to find a /good/ job, but I didn't think I'd need one to find any job at all. I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons to explain it, but this job market blows. I never want to hear someone tell me they can't find good employees or fill positions fast enough when I apply to five or six jobs at a time every week and don't even get a rejection email from half of them, let alone an interview.
whyenot 8y ago
Working as staff at a major university, I get to interact with a lot of students in biology and often hear back from them once they graduate. At least for biology, the job prospects are not great. With luck, you may make a living wage and have a full time job with job security by the time you reach middle age, but there are so many students that graduate and end up working at Whole Foods, or waitressing at the Cheesecake Factory, or being a personal fitness instructor at a private club. Those are all jobs recent MS degree graduates from my institution are currently working while they wait for something better to come along. Sometimes something better doesn't come along. Of course, the situation isn't always that bad -- students graduate and can do quite well for themselves, but there is no guarantee of a good job if you graduate with a BS or MS in biology, and that is a little different from graduating with a degree in math or CS. At least, that's what it looks like from my vantage point.
- NotSammyHagar 8y ago
  Instead of grouping people together with stem we could have a categorization that species people who can reasonably get a job as software engineers and then all other stem. Because isn't that really it? Bio seems much harder to do dev work, but it's common for mech engr, ee, some physics and math.
  - sgillen 8y ago
    I think job prospects for most engineering majors is still very good even if they don't want to do dev work.
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      In the UK CS is one of the least effective ways to be employed. The catch is that other grads will do terrible work like waiting on tables, while CS grads usually won't. So "employed" is a relative term. Stats for "gainfully directly employed in work that relies on their major" are harder to come by. Even so. Anyone who thinks they can do a CS degree here and walk into a well-paid job is deluding themselves.
seltzered_ 8y ago
This article is confusing overall - it talks about STEM in the headline, then cites a general chart by Grattan Institute (a policy think tank) similar to another recent piece by Grattan's Andrew Norton (quoted in the SMH piece): https://grattan.edu.au/news/graduate-employment-is-up-but-finding-a-job-can-still-take-a-while/ https://grattan.edu.au/news/graduate-employment-is-up-but-fi... . Not familiar with Australia, but there's also recent articles of it being in per-capita recession. (see https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-falls-into-per-capita-recession-as-growth-tumbles-20190306-p5122r.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-falls-... )
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systemBuilder 8y ago
This is the age-old academic scam by greedy professors who want more graduate students! manufacture a fake scientific staffing crisis to pump up the funding for stem research grants and teaching and faculty and screw a whole generation of young people with fake vaporware jobs! NSF promoted the same bullshit lies in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond!
- ncmncm 8y ago
  Professors don't have that much influence. Corporations are driving, for obvious reasons. More supply, cheaper wages, more profits.
  - kestreloats 8y ago
    I think the poster was just pointing to the parallels. It's salient to me as a professor. FWIW, I think the issues are definitely related though. There's lots of STEM hype in academics as well as in commerce which creates a labor oversupply in both. The problem is that there are genuine advancements in STEM that are interesting and rewarding, from the academic as well as commercial side, but they're sort of buried in a sea of bullshit, and being able to connect with the worthwhile stuff (financially or otherwise) can often be due to random or sketchy reasons. So people see the great stuff going on, and then either promote it (in the case of politicians and public figures) or pursue it (as someone seeking a career) not realizing that throwing more people at something will necessarily produce more of what we like. So you end up with the Gallipoli that is modern academics.
  - mythrwy 8y ago
    University Departments engage in that though, at least mine did. Ambassador programs trying to get kids into the field, pumped up graphs about great career prospects and coming shortages. Got out of school and story on ground was very different. Wound up programming instead. I guess their job is to get kids into the program. What happens after doesn't matter so much.
  - systemBuilder 8y ago
    As an ex-professor myself, do you understand how the world works? NSF is run by high ranking(in the pyramid scheme) professors. Your tenure depends on raising an army of researchers so you lie about job prospects, lie about research potential outcomes and importance, over-drsmatize the importance of your work, and some even lie in their publications! This is the path to success. The career path at MIT is work 20 years at MIT then go to a US government funding agency (DARPA, NSF, ONR, etc.) to raise even more money for MIT. These places are staffed 100% by ex-professors (and a few token PhDs who succeeded in industry, to provide political legitimacy "cover".)
m3nu 8y ago
I never get this notion of "jobs" being a bottleneck that's "created" by employers and how there are "not enough jobs" around. The real bottleneck are problems that can be solved in a profitable manner. And those are almost endless. So instead of waiting for someone to match your skills to a problem, just go and find a problem yourself :-)
- sudden 8y ago
  You are right, but this would only be possible in a truly capitalistic society. We are much more socialist as a world than capitalist, as thats what maintains the elite's power, so right now what you say is just too utopian from any current perspective.
etaty 8y ago
This is about Australia, which is not like our average developed country with no primary ressources. When you have one sector in your economy producing most of the export, you have a lot of trouble to have a high level of good job in another sector to export. Your currency exchange rate and cost of life is being driven by your main exportation. Countries rich in oil or other primary resources are like that.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
This is just basic systems thinking (I am re-reading "the Goal" sorry ...) We know overall we need more STEM based jobs because that drives innovation and invention and wealth. So we educate people in STEM. But when they arrive, we have failed to arrange incentives to grow new industries or expand use of STEM in current ones. It's a bit like taking 100 newly graduated astronomers to the observatory, and when they say sorry our last telescope is broke, just telling the 100 go plough fields, we are pretty sure the sun just goes round the earth once a year. We'll be fine.
christopher8827 8y ago
As a developer in Australia, this is true... there are literally no jobs for people doing a science degree. Even doing a CS degree can be pretty shaky - most businesses/companies here are just looking to get a basic app out, and something like Machine Learning / AI is just not required as of yet. That's why I'm looking to move to the US for better opportunities...
- Arbalest 8y ago
  As I approach my 30's, I'm seriously considering a roadmap to getting out. This, along with recent legislation makes me very concerned about my future prospects.
  - christopher8827 8y ago
    Just out of curiosity, why not move to the US now? I know a ton of friends that went over once they did their Bachelors.
    - Arbalest 8y ago
      Don't really like the way the US has conducted themselves, particularly with healthcare, and I have a family which makes things more complicated.
jefftk 8y ago
The examples in the article are: * "X, 23, from Sydney's inner west graduated with a bachelor of creative arts in film and television production from a private college in 2016. She wants to be a film director and actor." * "Y, 23, studied journalism at the University of Wollongong and was warned it would be tough to get a job." * "Z graduated with a degree in social research and policy from the University of NSW in last year said it took her a year to find a project management job." None of these sound like STEM to me?
- stonogo 8y ago
  That's a different topic, as signalled by the words "Meanwhile, a new study has found ..."
_bxg1 8y ago
The same thing happened with lawyers around 5-10 years ago. It's almost like having everyone jump into the same market at the same time causes the market to change...
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  An analysis of this very thing, from 6 years ago: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/bimodal-lawyers-how-extreme-competition-breeds-extreme-inequality/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/bimodal-lawyers-how-ext...
ui-explorer12 8y ago
Shouldn't STEM (and to a greater extent STEAM) refer to degrees that combine the component areas into a program and not a degree that is solely a single component? Yes, I understand you do very little Chemistry or Physics in a Comp Sci program, but your fundamental building blocks are almost entirely pure Chem and Physics, even more so in engineering. I mean, ultimately the response really should be: 1. The overall macro measures still support success rates of STEM trumping other areas of study, 2. All hype is not created equal; even within Comp Sci or Engineering there are winners and losers. 3. Use general trends and measures to guide your overall strategy, not set specific tactics

162 points by rb808 8y ago

The article starts with a discussion about science graduates, but it’s primarily about the weak job market for college graduates in general. Unfortunately, college degrees are not a sure fire way to get hired in today’s economy, but they are essentially needed, unless you plan on going into some trade.

macspoofing 8y ago
>but they are essentially needed Kind of. College degrees replaced high school degrees as a baseline for general knowledge. It used to be the case that a high school degree meant you had some general knowledge of math, history, geography etc., with an above average level of literacy and a reasonable level of intelligence. High school degrees do not mean any of those things anymore. Many kids who graduate with a high school degree are functionally illiterate (1 in 5 graduates).

Buldak 8y ago

Am I missing something or does the word "Glut" in the title here mean the opposite of what the article describes?

yhoneycomb 8y ago
Yeah uhh I'm confused Maybe everything really is opposite in Australia
eesmith 8y ago
The title at smh.com.au is "Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype" and the word "glut" doesn't exist on the page. OTOH, the URL slug is 'glut-in-demand-for-science-graduates-challenges-stem-hype-20190327-p517zj'. This suggests that in the intervening 10 or so minutes since the story was submitted to HN, someone in Australia noticed and fixed the problem in the title.
rb808 8y ago
yes, fixed. The original article did have bad headline.

hprotagonist 8y ago

recent STEM hype aside, it has historically been very challenging to find work as a "straight" biologist, especially with only a BS, and if you can it's probably going to be scut-level underpaid lab or field work. Part of the reason I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning. You just can't reasonably talk about something as one labor market if it includes zookeepers, pharmaceutical chemists, medical doctors, facebook engineers, economists, and advertiser...er, data scientists.

eesmith 8y ago
To add to that, 5 years ago there was an article titled "The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage" by Michael S. Teitelbaum at The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-my... > Everyone knows that the United States has long suffered from widespread shortages in its science and engineering workforce, and that if continued these shortages will cause it to fall behind its major economic competitors. ... Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. ... The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. ... No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher 122 comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451835 .
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  As i recall at the time, even IEEE's response was "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts."
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    >"there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts." That cannot be IEEE's response. It makes no sense. The market decides the rate, not the employers nor employees. If no employer wants to pay what you think you're worth, you're not worth that. Having said that, the market rate does give you some indication as to what the wider supply and demand looks like.

stevenwoo 8y ago

The title is a bit confusing as the article is about a glut in supply of science graduates and a dearth in job opportunities (in Australia at least), also the anecdote about the journalism student was not germane at all. I tried finding info on job opportunities but came up short - could only find data on worldwide STEM graduates https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-countries-with-the-most-stem-graduates-infographic/#5791cd1a268a https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-co... and STEM job info about the USA: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem-jobs-industry-careers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem-job... TLDR - vast majority of STEM jobs in USA are computer related and India/China/USA far outstrip other countries in producing STEM graduates. Whoever advised those Australian students to get non computer related degrees did them a disservice, if they did not forewarn them of the job market.

pram 8y ago

I think its been this way for a while? At least since the Great Recession imo. I have friends who have amazing credentials (talking like compsci and physics phds from places like caltech and cmu) and very few of them are employed in their field. Some of them didn’t even do anything and are basically NEETs who play video games all day. It’s pretty clear the actual value and potential of these degrees aren’t being honestly advertised. The “STEM” hype as mentioned here certainly doesn’t help the situation. It is a lot of time and money and effort thrown away for a lot of people and it’s heartbreaking.

maccio92 8y ago
If they want jobs as a developer there are plenty. If they see NEETs that just play video games all day it's probably their own lifestyle choices that are at fault
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  As a physicist it's easier to get into the tech field than as a life scientist. Just saying.

davidxc 8y ago

As someone else said below, treating STEM as one category is absurb and lumps together way too many different majors and careers (that have drastically varying levels of attractiveness and compensation growth). Majors like biology and chemistry have fairly terrible prospects with just a BS degree, but CS and the engineering majors are still quite good. Physics and math are more iffy, but if you know what you're doing and pick up some employable skills on the side, then those majors will at least get you into interviews for good jobs. There's also the question of what "not enough jobs" means. There are definitely struggling CS majors, but I think that a statement about there not being enough jobs needs to be looked at in a relative way - that is, one needs to consider what the alternative options are and whether those alternatives have better prospects. Many careers have been on the decline, and it's difficult to really identify career paths that are significantly better than computer science / software engineering (at least, at the undergraduate level). Even if we compared careers that required graduate school, the only paths that one could plausibly argue are significantly better than tech are medicine, law, and business (in my opinion). Those three careers all come with their own serious tradeoffs and downsides. If anyone has information on what career paths are significantly better than CS / engineering, I'd be interested to hear your opinion. Right now, I'm unfortunately not seeing significantly better alternatives.

platz 8y ago
Careers that have higher status and entry requirements have the advantage that they don't cannabalize their middle-age job prospects like CS does. CS is great for many years, until you discover it's a year too late, with only a limited number of things to show for it, along with largely useless random domain knowledge; and your peers who didn't major in CS are gaining more leverage relative to you, due to compounding nature of advancement in those other professions compared to constant skill (re) acquisition in tech
- nopinsight 8y ago
  I largely agree with what you say for generic CS skills. A way to accumulate leverage might be focusing on hard and deep skills like distributed computing and machine learning for complex real-world problems. Although details change significantly over time, the fundamentals evolve much more slowly and take years to truly understand and be able to apply them effectively. Alternatively, moving into technical management with deep domain knowledge might be suitable for some.

taneq 8y ago

You can be a "STEM graduate" but if you insist on trying to get a job doing basic scientific research, you're probably not going to find interesting well paid work. If you do an engineering degree and get a job building mining equipment, you're going to do fine. The job market doesn't care about your aspirations, it cares about how useful your skills are in solving a company's problems.

barry-cotter 8y ago
If you want a job doing basic scientific research the entry level qualification is a doctorate. That’s certainly true in universities and it’s equally true in biology and chemistry though that’s probably not enough. You almost certainly need a post doc or two. Physicists have enough outside options that if they want to get out the post doc is unnecessary but getting a doctorate is a terrible financial decision. That’s what happens when the government does a careful study of how to reduce the prices of highly skilled scientific labour and then follows the recommendations. > Government and Universities Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists > During the late 1990s I became convinced that in order to orchestrate lower wages for scientists, there would have to have been a competent economic study done to guide the curious policy choices that had resulted in the flooded market for STEM PhDs. For this theory to be correct, the private economic study would have had to have been done studying both supply and demand so that the demand piece could later be removed, resulting in the bizarre ‘supply only’ demographic studies released to the public. Through a bit of economic detective work, I began a painstaking search of the literature and discovered just such a study immediately preceded the release of the foolish demography studies that provided the public justification for the Immigration Act of 1990. This needle was located in the haystack of documents the NSF was forced to turn over when the House investigated the NSF for faking alarms about a shortfall. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...

ncmncm 8y ago

This is the real reason why women are graduating in computer science in much smaller numbers than when I was in school, when the number was 30%. Programming, like engineering and science, has turned out to be just not a good long-term career prospect for most people. Whenever demand softens, which it does every few years, women and minorities take the brunt. Once you have been out for even three years it is very hard to break in again. Part of the problem is that when employers don't feel like paying a living wage, they easily persuade government to import foreign help, in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. The companies pretend that this doesn't depress salaries, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, they have arranged not to be obliged to pay overtime, and then they demand overtime work on a routine basis. I have never seen such an employer pay engineers overtime, under any circumstance. Sometimes there are "bonuses" that are a tiny fraction of what overtime would cost them. The only plausible solution to this problem will be for engineers and programmers to unionize, and start cultivating representation in legislatures. We are handicapped by myths about self-reliant cowboy engineers who don't need to join together.

anonytrary 8y ago
I'm surprised. Out of all of the STEM degrees, I'd have thought CS was the most useful for guaranteeing a highly secure, well-paid job out of college.
- macspoofing 8y ago
  I don't recognize the world that OP is describing. CS is still a good career option and pays well in relation to the level of skill and education it requires. Having said that, it isn't a utopia and it isn't for everyone. One of the many reasons why I hate the current "Everyone learn to Code" trend is because if you don't love it, programming is as exciting as reading a EULA or TOS or any legal contract. That's certainly how some of my friends see programming, and I can totally see why.
  - NotSammyHagar 8y ago
    Yeah, I really disagree with ncmncm's world view. My experience on 25 years of Dev is quite different.

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anonytrary 8y ago

The default algorithm for most people is: 1. Get educated 2. Find a job Step 1 currently does pretty much nothing to help you transition to step 2. Sure, there are career networking events for juniors and seniors in college, but they are very superficial. It seems like colleges are producing unfinished products -- students who know a lot about theoretical concepts and not that much about applications. Maybe more colleges should try and obtain a better product-market fit by requiring vocational training for at least a semester.

plytheman 8y ago
I dunno, on the other hand, I got a B.S. in Ecology and have about 5 years of experience doing field work, long term monitoring, and data analysis and report writing on said research. Ostensibly that should be plenty of experience to prove I know my field and can learn new methods and skills related to it. Despite that I can't seem to find anything that isn't more seasonal work below my worth now or wanting a Masters degree even though I have plenty of real-world experience. I agree that there's some serious gap between steps 1 and 2, but I did alright in finding internships and experience and still can't find squat.I admit I knew going into my undergrad that a Masters would be needed to find a /good/ job, but I didn't think I'd need one to find any job at all. I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons to explain it, but this job market blows. I never want to hear someone tell me they can't find good employees or fill positions fast enough when I apply to five or six jobs at a time every week and don't even get a rejection email from half of them, let alone an interview.

whyenot 8y ago

Working as staff at a major university, I get to interact with a lot of students in biology and often hear back from them once they graduate. At least for biology, the job prospects are not great. With luck, you may make a living wage and have a full time job with job security by the time you reach middle age, but there are so many students that graduate and end up working at Whole Foods, or waitressing at the Cheesecake Factory, or being a personal fitness instructor at a private club. Those are all jobs recent MS degree graduates from my institution are currently working while they wait for something better to come along. Sometimes something better doesn't come along. Of course, the situation isn't always that bad -- students graduate and can do quite well for themselves, but there is no guarantee of a good job if you graduate with a BS or MS in biology, and that is a little different from graduating with a degree in math or CS. At least, that's what it looks like from my vantage point.

NotSammyHagar 8y ago
Instead of grouping people together with stem we could have a categorization that species people who can reasonably get a job as software engineers and then all other stem. Because isn't that really it? Bio seems much harder to do dev work, but it's common for mech engr, ee, some physics and math.
- sgillen 8y ago
  I think job prospects for most engineering majors is still very good even if they don't want to do dev work.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    In the UK CS is one of the least effective ways to be employed. The catch is that other grads will do terrible work like waiting on tables, while CS grads usually won't. So "employed" is a relative term. Stats for "gainfully directly employed in work that relies on their major" are harder to come by. Even so. Anyone who thinks they can do a CS degree here and walk into a well-paid job is deluding themselves.

seltzered_ 8y ago

This article is confusing overall - it talks about STEM in the headline, then cites a general chart by Grattan Institute (a policy think tank) similar to another recent piece by Grattan's Andrew Norton (quoted in the SMH piece): https://grattan.edu.au/news/graduate-employment-is-up-but-finding-a-job-can-still-take-a-while/ https://grattan.edu.au/news/graduate-employment-is-up-but-fi... . Not familiar with Australia, but there's also recent articles of it being in per-capita recession. (see https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-falls-into-per-capita-recession-as-growth-tumbles-20190306-p5122r.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-falls-... )

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systemBuilder 8y ago

This is the age-old academic scam by greedy professors who want more graduate students! manufacture a fake scientific staffing crisis to pump up the funding for stem research grants and teaching and faculty and screw a whole generation of young people with fake vaporware jobs! NSF promoted the same bullshit lies in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond!

ncmncm 8y ago
Professors don't have that much influence. Corporations are driving, for obvious reasons. More supply, cheaper wages, more profits.
- kestreloats 8y ago
  I think the poster was just pointing to the parallels. It's salient to me as a professor. FWIW, I think the issues are definitely related though. There's lots of STEM hype in academics as well as in commerce which creates a labor oversupply in both. The problem is that there are genuine advancements in STEM that are interesting and rewarding, from the academic as well as commercial side, but they're sort of buried in a sea of bullshit, and being able to connect with the worthwhile stuff (financially or otherwise) can often be due to random or sketchy reasons. So people see the great stuff going on, and then either promote it (in the case of politicians and public figures) or pursue it (as someone seeking a career) not realizing that throwing more people at something will necessarily produce more of what we like. So you end up with the Gallipoli that is modern academics.
- mythrwy 8y ago
  University Departments engage in that though, at least mine did. Ambassador programs trying to get kids into the field, pumped up graphs about great career prospects and coming shortages. Got out of school and story on ground was very different. Wound up programming instead. I guess their job is to get kids into the program. What happens after doesn't matter so much.
- systemBuilder 8y ago
  As an ex-professor myself, do you understand how the world works? NSF is run by high ranking(in the pyramid scheme) professors. Your tenure depends on raising an army of researchers so you lie about job prospects, lie about research potential outcomes and importance, over-drsmatize the importance of your work, and some even lie in their publications! This is the path to success. The career path at MIT is work 20 years at MIT then go to a US government funding agency (DARPA, NSF, ONR, etc.) to raise even more money for MIT. These places are staffed 100% by ex-professors (and a few token PhDs who succeeded in industry, to provide political legitimacy "cover".)

m3nu 8y ago

I never get this notion of "jobs" being a bottleneck that's "created" by employers and how there are "not enough jobs" around. The real bottleneck are problems that can be solved in a profitable manner. And those are almost endless. So instead of waiting for someone to match your skills to a problem, just go and find a problem yourself :-)

sudden 8y ago
You are right, but this would only be possible in a truly capitalistic society. We are much more socialist as a world than capitalist, as thats what maintains the elite's power, so right now what you say is just too utopian from any current perspective.

etaty 8y ago

This is about Australia, which is not like our average developed country with no primary ressources. When you have one sector in your economy producing most of the export, you have a lot of trouble to have a high level of good job in another sector to export. Your currency exchange rate and cost of life is being driven by your main exportation. Countries rich in oil or other primary resources are like that.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

This is just basic systems thinking (I am re-reading "the Goal" sorry ...) We know overall we need more STEM based jobs because that drives innovation and invention and wealth. So we educate people in STEM. But when they arrive, we have failed to arrange incentives to grow new industries or expand use of STEM in current ones. It's a bit like taking 100 newly graduated astronomers to the observatory, and when they say sorry our last telescope is broke, just telling the 100 go plough fields, we are pretty sure the sun just goes round the earth once a year. We'll be fine.

christopher8827 8y ago

As a developer in Australia, this is true... there are literally no jobs for people doing a science degree. Even doing a CS degree can be pretty shaky - most businesses/companies here are just looking to get a basic app out, and something like Machine Learning / AI is just not required as of yet. That's why I'm looking to move to the US for better opportunities...

Arbalest 8y ago
As I approach my 30's, I'm seriously considering a roadmap to getting out. This, along with recent legislation makes me very concerned about my future prospects.
- christopher8827 8y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why not move to the US now? I know a ton of friends that went over once they did their Bachelors.
  - Arbalest 8y ago
    Don't really like the way the US has conducted themselves, particularly with healthcare, and I have a family which makes things more complicated.

jefftk 8y ago

The examples in the article are: * "X, 23, from Sydney's inner west graduated with a bachelor of creative arts in film and television production from a private college in 2016. She wants to be a film director and actor." * "Y, 23, studied journalism at the University of Wollongong and was warned it would be tough to get a job." * "Z graduated with a degree in social research and policy from the University of NSW in last year said it took her a year to find a project management job." None of these sound like STEM to me?

stonogo 8y ago
That's a different topic, as signalled by the words "Meanwhile, a new study has found ..."

_bxg1 8y ago

The same thing happened with lawyers around 5-10 years ago. It's almost like having everyone jump into the same market at the same time causes the market to change...

rossdavidh 8y ago
An analysis of this very thing, from 6 years ago: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/bimodal-lawyers-how-extreme-competition-breeds-extreme-inequality/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/bimodal-lawyers-how-ext...

ui-explorer12 8y ago

Shouldn't STEM (and to a greater extent STEAM) refer to degrees that combine the component areas into a program and not a degree that is solely a single component? Yes, I understand you do very little Chemistry or Physics in a Comp Sci program, but your fundamental building blocks are almost entirely pure Chem and Physics, even more so in engineering. I mean, ultimately the response really should be: 1. The overall macro measures still support success rates of STEM trumping other areas of study, 2. All hype is not created equal; even within Comp Sci or Engineering there are winners and losers. 3. Use general trends and measures to guide your overall strategy, not set specific tactics