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Comment by CoryAmber | Hacker News Reader

One hears that espoused quite frequently.

Assuming there is "a big shortage in 'high quality' engineers" can anyone provide links to any AWS, Google, Apple, Facebook, SpaceX, position postings which typifies this big shortage? e.g. Postings which are an exemplar, of requiring 'high quality engineers' but remain open for weeks or months due to the massive STEM shortage? Based on the I-squared Act's proposed increase to a 1/4 million (250,000) H1-Bs there should be 10s and 10s of 10,000s such postings.

This massive STEM shortage debate has been happening for years. The referenced article links studies, presents supporting data (aka actual statistics) and provides direct anecdotal evidence (he is involved in the production of STEM resources). Bluntly I have seen many similar fact based articles and studies on the "there is no STEM shortage" side and can't recall a single peer reviewed study on the massive shortage side. Links welcome.

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Your assumption is not necessarily true.

A single job posting can remain active indefinitely and does not necessarily represent just one open position.

This leads to the situation where an outsider sees one 'job posting' and thousands of applicants while Tech Co sees a shortage because only a few of those applicants are qualified.

Also, there is an incentive mis-match between people who realize there is a shortage and people wanting to prove that a shortage exists. If as a 'high quality engineer' you realize you are a scarce resource, and that makes you a lot of $, why would you want to convince other people to acquire the skills you have – self inflicted devaluation?

This is why the people with the loudest voices on this issue are CEOs and VCs who were previously high quality engineers. They have a clear view, the data, and the monetary incentive to vocalize it – more high quality engineers will increase their $.

Your assumption is not necessarily true.

> A single job posting can remain active indefinitely and does not necessarily represent just one open position.

I have asked about this already, several times in several postings. At this point, I'll take but one concrete example. Could you post one link, a single link, of one of these (from I assume a huge population) endless job postings from say Google, Facebook, Apple, HP, IBM, ... well from anyone, which represents a huge quantity of unfillable positions with near zero qualified applicants? I am curious for just one example. One.

Of course CEOs and VCs want engineers at the cheapest rates possible to increase their bottom line. Yes, indeed they have both monetary incentive and the means to exercise the political influence towards that goal. I don't see how that provides any proof or even marginal evidence that there is a massive STEM shortage.

If these CEOs and VCs have the data I have never seen it shared. Not one smidgen of detailed HR data.

Again, the original referenced article does offer up evidence of its premise and cites several studies, a PBS documentary, statistics, etc.

I understand you believe there is a massive shortage of STEM people unable to fill countless blackholes of open positions. Maybe this is just too big an ask, can you provide any evidence, at all? A link to a peer reviewed study from academia? Or maybe a link to detailed testimony from Apple's or Microsoft's CEO on capital hill. Any definitive numbers?? Anything at all?

Find almost any job posting labeled 'Software Engineer', 'Software Developer' , 'Software Development Engineer', 'Product Manger', 'Project Manager', etc. for a reasonably large growing tech company. That posting will almost certainly represent multiple jobs.

Here is one example: https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/engineer

That single job listing (Engineer at Stripe) represents ALL of their Engineer hires, and likely 100x-1000x as many rejected applications as hires. That posting has been there for years. There are not enough qualified people to fill the role.

There are many, many companies that operate this way.

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