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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

There is no STEM shortage and hasn't been for decades. Unemployment for CS grads in the UK is 14% according to the Graun (other sources have it at only 13%). And these people want to charge you a fortune claiming they can teach you better than a 3-year degree in a few weeks.

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Best I can guess that you are referring to is their articles referring to this gov study, which says 13% unemployment across all STEM grads: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

Then how come our salaries are so high in the bay area?

There is certainly a geographic shortage at least, right?

Perhaps those people in the UK need to move to a location where their skills are more in demand.

That's easier said than done. Which visa do I get if I'm a British citizen who wants to work in the US? The only realistic option is the H1B. This requires me to have a job offer already, can only be applied for at a certain time of year, and makes switching jobs a pain once I'm there. All the other visas either (i) have no path to residency or (ii) are very difficult to get.

> bay area

> Perhaps those people in the UK need to move to a location

It is very difficult and tedious process to go to work from EU to US. Also, most EU residents don't even want to live in US.

First world problem if there is any.

It's a lot easier than from most of non-EU world: at least you can hop on the plane for a job interview without fussing with visas.

If one can't be arsed to move there's always an option to remain unemployed.

The problem is that for a company to justify giving H1B visa the candidate must be really good.

I'm not so sure that those 13% unemployed are really good.

Huh? The main difficulty lies in getting authorization to work in the US, and EU citizens don't get any kind of preferential treatment in the visa application process.

Remote interviewing is easy now. We have Skype, hangouts, etc.

First, our salaries aren't high compared to the value we generate for these companies.

Second, the relatively higher salaries we get out here are driven by two things: 1) the number of companies competing for talent and 2) the artificial scarcity induced by how they define the arena of competition (over-focus on "CS fundamentals" and under-focus on engineering fundamentals).

If demand is high, because of a large amount of companies that are competing for talent... And supply is low enough that it can't fulfill that demand, then that is a shortage.

Supply being unable to fulfill a large amount of demand is the definition of a shortage.

Is that for CS itself? The stats I've seen published in the past bundle lots of computer related subjects together, which massively distorts the picture.

I believe so yes.

Once you consider the consolidation of the web into a few companies, and the news every week of another company outsourcing jobs to low cost locations, it's clear we are near or passed "peak tech" in the West.

People paying for training should look into things that can't be outsourced.

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