Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype

Thought not.

The only thing I have used since graduation, for work, that I actually studied for a class was big-O notation and reasoning.

But! Every week, in every engineering class, they assigned problem sets. Every week I read them through and knew, with certainty, there was no way I could do them. Then, every week I turned them in, completed correctly.

So that was what I really learned in school: that I have no real sense of what I can learn to do, and do. Since then, I have just done things, without worrying about whether I was really capable.

You see a momentary spike in wages. I (and most people not blinded by the glare) see an unstable career prospect.

I've interviewed in a different city and been willing to relocate there. I don't have a lot of roots here besides family (who honestly probably love that I get out of the state) and this isn't a great location to begin with.

I can't be the only decent developer fitting those criteria - I'm sure some new grads or even mid-levels might be open to moving.

Or is your "shortage" actually a "shortage of people we deem suitable for this position and already live here" and not a general tech shortage?

Where? If it's NYC/SF/LA etc, then look at the price of homes in that city. Then look at the CoL. Then see if engineer compensation has kept up with CoL.

As an analogy, consider someone fresh out of high school who plays for a professional sports team and is paid $5 million per year. That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid.

What do you think "shortage" means? Because my understanding agrees with bloomer's. There is no shortage of Volvo V60s simply because new ones aren't available for $10,000. But the calls for STEM training sound very much like that sort of complaint.

While it's true that (nearly) "Every industry always tries to market itself", those are market forces.

"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down. (Note that this means other topics would be covered less.)

Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields. The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary.

A market solution is to have companies including training as part of hiring new employees. Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them. It also increases risk in two ways. First, someone may decide after 9 months that this isn't the career for them. They still get paid for those 9 months. Second, after the training is over, the employee may decide to take that training and go elsewhere for better wages. Calls for increased STEM funding can reasonably seen as a way to push the risks onto the student, and onto the government ("socialized", rather than "free market").

There is no need to reference rent seeking for this interpretation, which I believe is also the standard interpretation.

> That is such a weird way to phrase it. Every industry always tries to market itself to kids and students as a great career option. I'm not worried about the fact that companies in IT want more kids to go into IT.

Well if you wanted to work in science without insane competition and crap wasted that was possible in the US until industrial policy made supply of scientific labour high and wages cheap. Sometimes employers get what they want.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-gove...

Why is $120K a "crazy wage"? Perhaps labor in general, and particularly highly specialized labor, is underpaid across the board. It's not uncommon for traders or investment bankers to earn 7 or even 8 figures yet I don't hear anyone claiming there's a shortage of speculators and financiers. We just seem to have this built in cognitive bias that doctors, lawyers, and bankers are "supposed to" be highly paid but that it's somehow a "problem to be solved" for engineers and scientists to be paid similarly.

In commonwealth countries they bleed young males dry and tax most of their salary away to pay for social programs like medical care for the elderly single mother care for the single mothers, free or mostly free education for the masses, and early retirement for everyone! These high tax rates further depress the salaries of the young engineers! who wants to give 75 cents of every dollar to the government??

In the United States we don't do that BS and the salary 100% pays for retirement, healthcare, education, etc that part is not something skimmed by the governement! This is why our young workers supposedly make the big bucks: because they are more responsible and are held accountable by the economy.

There's a shortage of passenger pigeon meat - okay, complete lack of what used to be a common and cheap meat. Yet the government did not fix that price. Indeed, its belated attempts to fix the price through laws to protect the pigeon were not successful.

Similar observations can be made about many ecological situations, like the nuts and wood from the American Chestnut Tree. Some few survive, but not enough that the line "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" resonates with the general American Christmas experience.

More generally, you should expect to see oscillations any time there's a delay in the feedback in coupled systems. This comes naturally from the predator–prey equations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio... . There's no need to require government price fixing for that to happen.

your assertion that a few weeks of coding bootcamp can land a good job is highly suspect. I can assert that I know of community college graduates who are teaching at MIT. My assertion holds as much water as yours!

Most Engineering students share a common first year (again, no electives) but the subsequent years differ depending on speciality (electrical, mechanical etc).

Contrasted to a science degree, where two people with a "Physics major" may have done very different work, both in subject matter and in difficulty.

assuming you went to an accredited school, of course.

While engineering (including EE) programs tend to have less flexibility within schools, and probably also between them, than other fields, it is by know means zero difference in classes.