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> "There are many STEM individuals that did not adapt with the times that are considered no longer employable. Rather than reaching out to and training these in

by jlgreco 14y ago

> "There are many STEM individuals that did not adapt with the times that are considered no longer employable. Rather than reaching out to and training these individuals, companies want the quick fix -- thus the H1B path." I think it is very easy for companies to lose their patience with people who have not kept up with technology and need to be retrained when, on the other hand, a large portion of the people that they are hiring are kids with no experience who trained themselves with current technologies and require less handholding with those current technologies. So basically let's say 25% of your new-hires are out of school and ramp up in a few weeks. What do you do with the other 75%? Hire people who have more industry than the young 25% but require more training with recent tech, or look potentially outside the country for some more of those 25% types?

jmspring 14y ago
Companies used to hire and invest in training, many don't do that now. On the other end, there are a lot of tech workers that don't try and keep abreast of new technologies and build their skill set. Often life/work may not allow for it, but one should be able to find a few hours a week to explore something new. Unfortunately, the middle of those two circles are the ones hardest hit re: STEM at the moment. I, personally, believe that if we are going to incentivize STEM work visas, there should be a cost associated with the visas that goes into a pool/fund that pays for training for STEM candidates that are out of work. If you are importing labor, despite an existing pool, there should be a cost associated with it.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I think what I am suggesting is that if the younger in-experienced STEM job candidates were not so experienced with modern tech, then companies would be more willing to invest in teaching older experienced STEM job candidates new technology.
  - ArtB 14y ago
    As one of those young people I can tell you that we lack the domain knowledge that the old dinosaurs who produce crap code have. Who is easier to bring up to speed is hard to say but I'd bet against us.
learc83 14y ago
> Hire people who have more industry than the young 25% but require more training with recent tech What evidence do you have that kids just out of college do require less training than people with work experience? What kind of "new tech" are kids using these days, that experienced employees can't handle? In any kind of STEM field (other than the most basic IT tech support) college kids definitely aren't going to be able to "ramp up" to the level of someone with 10 years experience in a few weeks.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  My hypothesis is that all tech people teach themselves whatever is trendy at the time when they are still in school (college, or if they decide not to go that route, highschool). Older more experienced candidates of course did the same, but the trendy tech they taught themselves in school is now out of date. There will of course be those golden candidates that have extensive industry experience but also know the modern newfangled hipster shit that any junior in college is hacking away with at the time. I don't see these candidates having trouble finding work. You're a startup. You're trendy; your office is littered with nerf-guns and shit, or whatever trendy startups are doing these days. Your systems are all Node/Go/Ruby/Whatever. ...Do you hire the guy out of college, for an "out-of-college" salary, that has all of this stuff on his resume? Or do you hire the guy with 15 years of experience on his resume who only has "C/C++/Perl" on his resume for a "15 years of experience" salary? Even if you'd go with the 15+ years guy, can you see why companies might become frustrated?
  - learc83 14y ago
    Sorry that doesn't make sense. In my experience there are few college kids with Node/Go/Haskell/Clojure on their resume, and those same kids will have whatever is new and exciting in 10 years on their resume then too. Your average brand new college CS graduate knows Java. The average foreign programmer also knows Java. The average programmer with 10 years experience knows Java and probably C++. The average programmer doesn't work with "modern newfangled hipster ship", and the average employer isn't looking for employees who do. And if you are a startup, you definitely aren't going to find people skilled in Node/Go/Whatever by hiring cheap H1-B workers. In general Colleges are about 10-15 years behind what's considered the new hip thing in programming. Since most new grads only know what they learned in college most new college grads are 10-15 years behind the new hip thing in programming. Startups don't hire new grads because they can ramp up faster, they hire them because they don't have families to take up their time, so they don't mind working 80 hours a week for peanuts.

by jlgreco 14y ago

jmspring 14y ago

Companies used to hire and invest in training, many don't do that now. On the other end, there are a lot of tech workers that don't try and keep abreast of new technologies and build their skill set. Often life/work may not allow for it, but one should be able to find a few hours a week to explore something new. Unfortunately, the middle of those two circles are the ones hardest hit re: STEM at the moment. I, personally, believe that if we are going to incentivize STEM work visas, there should be a cost associated with the visas that goes into a pool/fund that pays for training for STEM candidates that are out of work. If you are importing labor, despite an existing pool, there should be a cost associated with it.

jlgreco 14y ago
I think what I am suggesting is that if the younger in-experienced STEM job candidates were not so experienced with modern tech, then companies would be more willing to invest in teaching older experienced STEM job candidates new technology.
- ArtB 14y ago
  As one of those young people I can tell you that we lack the domain knowledge that the old dinosaurs who produce crap code have. Who is easier to bring up to speed is hard to say but I'd bet against us.

learc83 14y ago

> Hire people who have more industry than the young 25% but require more training with recent tech What evidence do you have that kids just out of college do require less training than people with work experience? What kind of "new tech" are kids using these days, that experienced employees can't handle? In any kind of STEM field (other than the most basic IT tech support) college kids definitely aren't going to be able to "ramp up" to the level of someone with 10 years experience in a few weeks.

jlgreco 14y ago
My hypothesis is that all tech people teach themselves whatever is trendy at the time when they are still in school (college, or if they decide not to go that route, highschool). Older more experienced candidates of course did the same, but the trendy tech they taught themselves in school is now out of date. There will of course be those golden candidates that have extensive industry experience but also know the modern newfangled hipster shit that any junior in college is hacking away with at the time. I don't see these candidates having trouble finding work. You're a startup. You're trendy; your office is littered with nerf-guns and shit, or whatever trendy startups are doing these days. Your systems are all Node/Go/Ruby/Whatever. ...Do you hire the guy out of college, for an "out-of-college" salary, that has all of this stuff on his resume? Or do you hire the guy with 15 years of experience on his resume who only has "C/C++/Perl" on his resume for a "15 years of experience" salary? Even if you'd go with the 15+ years guy, can you see why companies might become frustrated?
- learc83 14y ago
  Sorry that doesn't make sense. In my experience there are few college kids with Node/Go/Haskell/Clojure on their resume, and those same kids will have whatever is new and exciting in 10 years on their resume then too. Your average brand new college CS graduate knows Java. The average foreign programmer also knows Java. The average programmer with 10 years experience knows Java and probably C++. The average programmer doesn't work with "modern newfangled hipster ship", and the average employer isn't looking for employees who do. And if you are a startup, you definitely aren't going to find people skilled in Node/Go/Whatever by hiring cheap H1-B workers. In general Colleges are about 10-15 years behind what's considered the new hip thing in programming. Since most new grads only know what they learned in college most new college grads are 10-15 years behind the new hip thing in programming. Startups don't hire new grads because they can ramp up faster, they hire them because they don't have families to take up their time, so they don't mind working 80 hours a week for peanuts.