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>As this Sydney Morning Herald article points out, STEM includes fields like biology, which don't have crazy wages. Correct. The comment was clearly directed a

>As this Sydney Morning Herald article points out, STEM includes fields like biology, which don't have crazy wages. Correct. The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession. >That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid. That's true but unlike professional athletics, programmers are paid well on average. >"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down. I really don't understand this argument. Government isn't trying to get people into STEM in order to drive down STEM wages. That is not how government works. That is not how politics works. This is not a good metaphor to understand the motivation. Governments will always have programs and policies to move people into specific industries or move people out of specific industries. That usually stems from good-intentions, values of the population (Armenia loves Chess, and therefore teaches Chess to kids in primary school), and maybe for some economic, ideological or political reasons. >Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields. And that would be preferable to what the US (and Canadian) government is doing - mainly underwriting huge loans (or subsiding tuition) for majors that have low probability in resulting in a good paying job. Trust me, if government wasn't involved in post-secondary education, you would see an even larger move to CS because no bank would ever underwrite a student loan for a 4-year history degree. >The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary. OK. This is basic econ. Having said that, the math isn't so straight forward. Sometimes increasing the pool of engineers can also increase the market for engineers because more companies relocate to the area, or more companies get started by those engineers. >Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them. All employees need some training because no business is identical. But OK, I understand the point you're making though I think it is nonsensical. For example, you're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers? That would be like building a house by grabbing a guy off the street and training them on how to build a house. If a company needs programmers to work on their software they will advertise for professionals with those skill-sets. This is why they pay good money for those professionals.

eesmith 8y ago
You wrote "The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession." No, it is not clear. The SMH article was on STEM. The thread concerns STEM. The IEEE position you doubted is (almost certianly) about STEM (see https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-... ). You presented a data point about programming, which is part of STEM. Nowhere did you say that the data point was only meant to be restricted to programming. Even then, you defined it as those tech companies which pay high wages. There are plenty of tech companies which do not pay high wages. (Especially if your definition of "tech" includes things like "biotech", though I know that's not what you mean.) Here's another IEEE piece, this one a podcast interview (with transcript) from "Techwise Conversations" titled "Why Bad Jobs-or No Jobs-Happen to Good Workers" from 2012, at https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-bad-jobsor-no-jobshappen-to-good-workers/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-b... . It concerns Peter Cappelli's book 'Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It.' You ask "You're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers?" That's of course silly. A 4-year liberal arts degree in computer science is different than job training. Few companies will require me to learn a foreign language, or take a fine arts course, as part of becoming a software developer. Or, as you point out, take a history course. Which is all fine. Colleges aren't trade schools. (And I think we need more trade schools.) Instead, I'll quote that podcast: > Well, the employers, if you look at what the hiring managers are saying and what they’re looking for, they’re not, for the most part, hiring people out of college anyway or out of high school. What they want is three to five years’ experience. So the shortages that they report, the difficulty hiring, are for people who have quite specific skills, and those skills are work-experience based. So no, most employers are NOT looking for the equivalent of someone of a 4-year degree in the first place, so they aren't going to pay for someone's college degree. In fact, that podcast concurs with my point, which you think is incredible: > the shortfall is in giving people experience, taking people out of school who are bright and capable, and giving them the basics and getting them up to speed in these work-based skills. And the problem is, employers a generation ago used to do this routinely; now, virtually none of them are willing to do it. Cappelli makes the argument (which I hadn't heard before): > the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people. What I (and hprotagonist) wrote here is nothing exotic or abnormal in the discussions about the "myth" of the need for more STEM training. Nor does it ignore basic economics like you think it does. Since you are so incredulous that the IEEE (or at least articles in the IEEE) can have a position which can be summarized as "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." , and yet it's so easy for me to find IEEE articles making that point, suggests that you need to take a closer look at what the IEEE has written on the topic before making such a blanket response, or characterizing our viewpoints as fundamentally flawed from an economics perspective.

eesmith 8y ago

You wrote "The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession." No, it is not clear. The SMH article was on STEM. The thread concerns STEM. The IEEE position you doubted is (almost certianly) about STEM (see https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-... ). You presented a data point about programming, which is part of STEM. Nowhere did you say that the data point was only meant to be restricted to programming. Even then, you defined it as those tech companies which pay high wages. There are plenty of tech companies which do not pay high wages. (Especially if your definition of "tech" includes things like "biotech", though I know that's not what you mean.) Here's another IEEE piece, this one a podcast interview (with transcript) from "Techwise Conversations" titled "Why Bad Jobs-or No Jobs-Happen to Good Workers" from 2012, at https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-bad-jobsor-no-jobshappen-to-good-workers/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-b... . It concerns Peter Cappelli's book 'Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It.' You ask "You're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers?" That's of course silly. A 4-year liberal arts degree in computer science is different than job training. Few companies will require me to learn a foreign language, or take a fine arts course, as part of becoming a software developer. Or, as you point out, take a history course. Which is all fine. Colleges aren't trade schools. (And I think we need more trade schools.) Instead, I'll quote that podcast: > Well, the employers, if you look at what the hiring managers are saying and what they’re looking for, they’re not, for the most part, hiring people out of college anyway or out of high school. What they want is three to five years’ experience. So the shortages that they report, the difficulty hiring, are for people who have quite specific skills, and those skills are work-experience based. So no, most employers are NOT looking for the equivalent of someone of a 4-year degree in the first place, so they aren't going to pay for someone's college degree. In fact, that podcast concurs with my point, which you think is incredible: > the shortfall is in giving people experience, taking people out of school who are bright and capable, and giving them the basics and getting them up to speed in these work-based skills. And the problem is, employers a generation ago used to do this routinely; now, virtually none of them are willing to do it. Cappelli makes the argument (which I hadn't heard before): > the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people. What I (and hprotagonist) wrote here is nothing exotic or abnormal in the discussions about the "myth" of the need for more STEM training. Nor does it ignore basic economics like you think it does. Since you are so incredulous that the IEEE (or at least articles in the IEEE) can have a position which can be summarized as "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." , and yet it's so easy for me to find IEEE articles making that point, suggests that you need to take a closer look at what the IEEE has written on the topic before making such a blanket response, or characterizing our viewpoints as fundamentally flawed from an economics perspective.