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Comment by mrdrozdov | Hacker News Reader

The article argues that the reason companies complain that there are not enough STEM workers is so that they can pay existing workers less. It also says that an excess amount of STEM workers are created.

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-...

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These discussions are unbelievable.

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.

My litmus test for a true shortage is when employers are beating the bushes and hiring semi-retired people like me who are over 50. Until this happens, there is no shortage of STEM workers, and we shouldn't allow the H-1B cap to be raised until it does.

Exactly, there is no shortage of STEM workers, but there is a shortage of cheap STEM workers.

I'm sure many companies want cheap labor, but other companies cannot find enough of the type of STEM worker they desire.

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.

-- The issue in a nutshell

if you put this way. there is no shortage of anything.

Think about why most of factories moved to other countries?

Do you want that happen to IT?

offshoring has to do with excess supply, not shortages. eg, after telecom became cheap int't calls allowed telconferencing to bring english speaking people online who were overseas (eg, india). So, it's not that there is not shortage, there is simply new excess capacity (oversupply). The tech sector is the same way. There is no shortage... people actually just want to tap into pools of cheap labour to decrease market power of existing staff...and are marketing this as being needed by a shortage. Its complete BS as far as common english usage is concerned. There are plenty of engineers available, but there is only a shortage of engineers willing to work below market. By tapping into h1b and other new labour pools, again it shows that outsourcing is simply tapping into latent excess capacity. Totally different than a "shortage" being the original issue. But there will always be a shortage of people willing to work below market rates...that is a tautological logic working there, no/?

>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.

Where I work we're paying people no more than we paid in 2000. In constant dollars that's a big pay cut.

Yes. STEM is not equal.

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.

I wonder how long it will be before this becomes common knowledge. I remember when I was going into college (2013) a lot of my peers chose Biology and similar STEM paths with the anticipation it would yield the same salary as C.S. or engineering degrees. Needless to say, it didn't

As far as I'm aware, at least in my social circles, it is.

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.

It's already common knowledge, which is why the amount of people majoring in CS is skyrocketing.

I would make the argument that it is common knowledge among most Silicon Valley tech workers, who I believe make up the primary user base on hacker news, but is it really common knowledge among everyone else? Anecdotally my experience at a large liberal arts university suggests most students tend to 'follow their dream' rather then making the best long-term career decisions in terms of their degree path.

only when people wake from their day dream.

a lot of students are told follow your dream and never face the reality. However, after college, they can barely find a job.

what about biotech?

biotech is not good as well. too many graduates in biology majors and too few biotech jobs.

It's also my understanding that a large amount of biotech work is "grunt work" that requires a large amount of time and energy but not a large amount of skill.

> 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.

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.

The other reason is that workers in technical fields are not interchangeable. The opening article on this thread is operating under the assumption that all workers are effectively the same, therefore any industry which is simultaneously recruiting and cutting staff must be doing something "bad". If workers are not all the same, then the most likely explanation of the behaviour is instead that the industry (or company) is trying to recruit good workers and get rid of bad ones.

I agree. There are shortages in some areas, but you can't take a programmer and expect them to be a system administrator or an infosec professional.

> It shows that the only STEM category with more job openings than students is Computer Science.

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...

> But this is all one slice of the puzzle. That is, because almost half of developers don't have a degree in computer science, a survey by StackOverFlow says

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