Is There a Shortage of STEM Workers?
cepr.net
cepr.net
Today we have companies making websites telling people to "learn to code" and advertising that there is a shortage of tech workers. People invest their own time, and pay for bootcamps for a shot at a job.
And the similarities don't end there. Agriculture owners would offer services like groceries and laundry to those who worked on their plantations...
The flip side of "market forces eventually make bread and apartments and cars cheap" is (and has always been) "market forces eventually make labor cheap". Quality of Life has one factor in the numerator and one in the denominator, so there are only three ways to guarantee that the quotient rises: ignore the less-rosy factor, convince yourself that past performance is proof of future returns (rather than, say, superimposition over a long-term trend of benefits from technological progress), or to fight+luck your way to the winning side of the supply/demand game and ignore those who don't.
The time will come when software engineering starts to saturate. Just like electrical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering... our time will come.
They allow the media to call them "coders" and will actually argue with you when you point out how the term is being used to marginalize them. They actively support the boot camp movement and code.org initiatives. They give talks at conferences[1] and write blog posts saying there's no such thing as programmer talent and that programming is easy and anyone can do it (could you imagine a doctor or lawyer publicly asserting likewise about their professions?)
My advice to devs: make as much money as you possibly can now. Take VCs and tech companies for all they're worth and don't leave a penny on the table, because these people are fixing to crush you under their boot.
I think it's more akin to someone saying "anyone can paint" or "anyone can make music". Sure, on a very superficial level that's true. Anyone can make crude sketches or learn how to play Chopsticks. But a true aptitude for programming is the same as a true aptitude for art or music: not everyone can do it at that level.
Thus by limiting SE to only being an art it devalues the skillset, proving OP's point IMO.
The left is supposed to be champion of the poor, and one thing is damn sure : restricting employer's access to cheap labor (meaning restricting immigration + high import taxes + restrictions on global workforces) certainly help that a lot.
Although I'm starting to see the same in Europe. The "old" leftist parties are vehemently anti-immigration, for exactly this reason : it helps their constituency. The "young" left is really almost libertarian, which I would normally classify under extreme right.
But I think the problem America's two-party political system: sometimes it feels like it's extreme-right versus lunatic-right.
But to claim that devs are basically the same as exploited migrant agricultural labor is absurd to the point of offensiveness.
I think the claim is more along the lines of "give it 5-10-20 years and ..."
It's not as ridiculous as you make it out to be though. I'd like to point out that if you go anywhere in Eastern Europe (and if you want to be truly scared: rural Eastern Europe) or (I'm told) India, and you will see just that today. Sure there's places to migrate to that will (currently) pay much better (it's scary, a decent Polish programmer can see his gross pay go up 300% and net pay almost 400% by moving to California).
I would like to say that partly this is because it's a bit of a lemon market in Eastern Europe. Since good versus bad devs is almost impossible to interview for (for the people doing the interviewing: someone in management who has serious trouble telling Java code from Korean poetry), they are extremely unwilling to pay well and in a team with 90% bad programmers, and there's a strong culture pushing NOT standing out. The only way to do well as a programmer is to be a freelancer.
>The story is then not that there are too few STEM workers, but that employers will say they can’t find workers in order to increase the bargaining power that they have and hopefully lower their labor costs. Employers are increasingly pushing for policies shift training costs onto the public and expand H1B visas, which Hiltzik mentions. Some STEM employers are so desperate to reduce labor costs they even collude to keep down their employees’ wages.
> The data indicate that Hiltzik is right to suspect that the STEM shortage is phony. The real story is that employers want to pay workers less.
> So when employers complain about not being able to find workers, what they really mean is that they can’t find workers who meet their specific requirements at the wage they are willing to offer.
e.g. Onsite work, "culture fit", low wages, interview hazing....
The reason companies are trying to create the impression there's a shortage is otherwise you see public pressure against increases in the H-1(b) cap.
I think this Stack Overflow post helps clear up the mystery here. It shows that the only STEM category with more job openings than students is Computer Science. It also mentions that the problem is still not so clear since almost half of programmers do not have a Computer Science degree.
Stack Overflow post: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27590/are-there-...
I am a software engineer with the Master Degree in Biology.
In biology, even if you have a PhD, the only way for you is a postdoc with a salary about 42,000$ per year.
Many 'bad' majors, if you want to find a job, CS is the major to transfer or at least learn some programming. This is more true if you need sponsor to work.
a lot of students are told follow your dream and never face the reality. However, after college, they can barely find a job.
I used to work with a grad student who really, really wanted to do biology research and basically worked two jobs [student + lab tech] and 25hrs/week as a programmer to achieve it.
He eventually ended up writing software for genetics research because they'd pay him double.
If there truly were a shortage of developers, then their wages would be rising, yet they aren't, as the report in the article notes.
If I complained about a "shortage" of Ferraris while only offering to buy them new at the price of a Honda Civic, no one would take me seriously. But when Fortune 500 companies make the same complaints about labor, that they can't find great programmers while only offering $85-115k, the government responds with corporate welfare in the form of the H-1B visa. If there's really a programmer "shortage" at the wages offered, then employers should have to do like the rest of us and either pay more for what they want or do without and quit whining.
Disgusting that even here on HN people make excuses for this.
-- The issue in a nutshell
Think about why most of factories moved to other countries?
Do you want that happen to IT?
Where I work we're paying people no more than we paid in 2000. In constant dollars that's a big pay cut.
That seems to be in contradiction with an IEEE Spectrum article from a couple years ago that says "more than a third of recent computer science graduates aren’t working in their chosen major; of that group, almost a third say the reason is that there are no jobs available"[1]
> It also mentions that the problem is still not so clear since almost half of programmers do not have a Computer Science degree.
I don't doubt this at all, but I do question how much of this is skewed by those that entered the workforce before Computer Science became the most common degree for those becoming developers (i.e. degrees in Math or Electrical Engineering were far more common for most of the history of our profession).
[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...
That isn't true. Wage growth isn't even 4% for computer programmers.
The excess job postings are meant to generate H-1B applications and justify them, not to actually fill positions.
It really is a price point problem where people want to pay sub-$60k wages for a programmer. I can throw a rock and hit at least 10 companies that are willing to pay me $45k simultaneously.
The problem is, none of these people are worth me taking such a massive pay cut.
I'll believe you when I see 5% YoY wage growth for 5 years for Comp Sci.
However, I don't think this is a conspiracy to drive down wages, but a miscommunication. There is a shortage of good, competent STEM workers.
Ironically, complaining that there aren't enough STEM workers runs the risk of pushing a training glut, and as less qualified but equally credentialed labor enters the market, the cost of finding these workers increases, then there are more complaints about "not enough STEM" and we enter a reinforcing cycle.
The solution is to improve training quality, but that is difficult to measure or plan and thus not as appealing to political solutions, which is to just gun supply.
Additionally, STEM vs Computer Science jobs has been discussed before.
Besides health insurance (which really ought to be considered a basic requirement rather than a "fringe" benefit), catered meals, and a flexible WFH policy, what do Silicon Valley/SF companies even really offer in terms of benefits?
If you have any options you want to sell for close to zero in post series A companies that are still around, I'd love to chat...
This is the crux of the article's argument, and I disagree. In a shortage, employers would need to raise compensation, not necessarily wages, to attract workers.
(a) You're missing my point. The study cites hourly wage data for years 2009 through 2014. How large, or even how common, were sign-on bonuses (not perf bonuses) in 2009, and what are they at now? Sign-on bonuses are trivial to value. Any fair study would make an attempt to include that data - this one doesn't.
(b) How common were were shuttles, day care, onsite yoga/fitness lessons, gender reassignment surgery, egg freezing, and whatever else in 2009? These things do have some value - to me at least, it's the amount of post-tax money I would have spent for these amenities elsewhere. People are unlikely to use all of the benefits of course, but the basket has grown.
Health insurance as a benefit can't be considered to be a "basic requirement" and ignored, since plans vary a lot in coverage.
(c) While the stock of "most companies" might be worth nothing, those companies tend to be small and short-lived. Regardless, the majority of engineers work at larger established companies, and most of those working at a startup that might fail in a month are doing it out of choice.
TL;DR I am making an argument against the merits of the study. Rise in total compensation, and not rise in wages, is what matters.
* Signing bonuses, I'll give you; they are trivial to value and probably should have been included.
* I would doubt that most companies are offering shuttles, day care, or any of these other benefits. Of that list of more esoteric benfits, my company offers yoga and Pilates classes. I'd value them about as highly as catered lunch (if I took advantage of them), because that's about what it would cost me to go do that stuff on my own.
I guess I'd go even farther on health insurance, then, and say that for a valued professional employee, good health insurance should be a basic requirement.
You know what the most common tech company "benefits" have in common? They allow people to stay at the office longer.
* Finally, stock and stock options. Ok, if you're going to give me straight up liquid stock, I'm going to value that as a part of my compensation.
But, options are literally worth the paper they're printed on until they're exercised. And after that, unless the company has gone public, they're still hugely illiquid. Exercising them can be an issue in itself, depending on the strike price. And, then there are the taxes to contend with.
Let's just say I don't put a lot of value in stock options, in general.
All I was pointing out is that imo, the study is flawed in its central argument.
As for the benefits, while it is true that most companies don't offer all of those benefits, it's offset by the fact that the larger companies do. Most large companies have shuttles now, for instance. So, the % of engineers who have these benefits is higher now than it was in, say, 2009 :)
I think that benefits that are actually used are more valuable than they appear to be because they are untaxed. But of course, depending on what your indifference curve looks like, you might well prefer post-tax cash to pre-tax benefits.
Meanwhile, there are actual laws that prohibit you from importing prescription drugs from countries where they're sold for a fraction of the cost they are here, even when those drugs were originally manufactured in the US! What about the free market? Unbelievable.
In the case of pharmaceuticals, there probably isn't a free market at all. Regulatory capture has happened, and we're seeing the end result.
In other things, the idea is "globalization for me, but not for thee". That is, ship US IT jobs to India or Viet Nam or where ever, but keep lawyers and doctors scarce in the US, and forbid bringing in cheap subsitutes. Or perhaps region codes: keep prices high in US and western Europe, but allow lower prices for Africa and South Asia, via DRM.
You're basically interviewing to study under an existing doctor in a particular specialization for a period depending on the exact specialization, but minimum 2 years and I believe up to 5 years (you have to interview and get hired for this job). After that, assuming the guy/woman you studied under supports your application, you get your medical licence. The issue is interviewing successfully without support from a US institution.
For a lawyer it's much simpler : either you interview and get hired by a company, or you take the bar exam. Exactly the same process as US citizens (you do need a valid work permit - but that would be required for actually doing any law work anyway - although it can delay things). I know 2 lawyers doing cases in the US that aren't US citizens.
This undergrad-level analysis of the labor market is a side show compared to that.