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Comment by vikinghckr | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, but I feel like when people talk of STEM as a lucrative field of study, they tend to imply CS. Non-CS STEM field hardly have a shortage of qualified and talented people. In fact, there's probably a oversupply compared to job prospects in non-CS STEM fields. I see so many talented Math/Physics majors end up switching to CS and do mundane software engineering work.

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It's much worse in life-sciences where PhDs are washing pipettes or feeding mice.

...and yet those in the life sciences who took a more practical path, for example, nurses, are both well paid and in high demand.

Well paid nurses? Which country would that be?

Median income in 2017 was $52k for men and $42k for women [1]

Median income for an RN in 2017 was $70k [2]

So, in the US it's fair to say that nurse is a moderately well paid job. Of course compared to west coast tech salaries that doesn't look so amazing, but compared to what many life sciences PhDs are earning while fighting for a tenure track job it doesn't look so bad

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26... [2] https://m.nurse.plus/how-much-nurses-make/

There is demand at low wages considering they have to work Long shifts and all hours of the day often rotating between days and nights

I know in America, in Colorado and Florida, nurses are in demand and paid pretty well. From the people I know, ~$60k+ with a 2 year degree. They're also generally happy with their jobs. They might bounce from one hospital to another for a year or two until they find the company and bosses they like. Then they hunker down. But each one I know had recruiters help place them.

Do you mean computer science or programming? Most programmers are not doing computer science, and I wonder how many are actually doing engineering.

Programming is a paradox because it's an easy job, but with entry barriers that we don't fully understand. It seems to be prohibitively hard for most people, but easy for a few, and for those few, it doesn't seem to matter too much what their educational background is. I know people with music degrees who became programmers.

I was a math/physics major. Don't know about the talented part. ;-) Today, if you were to monitor what I spend time doing at work, it's mostly programming, followed by some electronics and optics design, and lab work. Lucrative, easy, what's not to like? Also, it was possible to get into programming without anybody's permission, because the tools are free.

It's also kind of a one way street. I've noticed that once people break away from quantitative engineering work, it's hard to go back, and they can't just start doing it on their own because the tools in those fields (e.g., mechanical and electrical CAD) are proprietary and expensive. This is like an imaginary thermodynamics experiment where you have two livestock pens separated by a one-way gate, and eventually all of the animals end up on one side if they are just walking at random.

People with a solid STEM background may not get a job in their field, but they learn skills that are generally useful outside of their specialty. I was working with a recent MIT graduate who had a Masters in Engine Design. While his job had little to do with that, it did make use of his significant statistics training and paid a significant salary.

By comparison my coworker with a Philosophy degree had gained what he described as zero useful skills. He was also making good money, but he described his degree as little more useful than a check box on the application.

It's true that non-CS STEM degrees are very fungible. CS degrees, however, are not.

CS is still a little fungible. I have worked with many programmers without a CS degree. They often took some programming classes as part of a STEM degree and spent significant time coding in collage.

These people often go back for a masters in CS, but that’s not required to work in the field.

Anyone with a real CS degree should be able to learn a new toolkit in six months. The "STEM" crisis is from companies not wanting to pay for that six months.

That's not what I meant by fungible. You don't see CS degree'd people moving into electronics, fluid mechanics or mechanical design.

The math and mathematical techniques for electronics, fluid mechanics, statics, and kinematics is all the same. For example, a mass/spring/damper system is the same as an inductor/capacitor/resister network.

Good point. Although I have a undergrad CS degree, it's old enough that I got a general engineering education, from thermodynamics to drafting. (A later MSCS at Stanford was 100% CS. And, pre machine learning, did not involve a single floating point multiply. Lots of number theory, no differential equations or statistics.)

> Math/Physics majors end up switching to CS and do mundane software engineering work

My degree is in mechanical engineering, and I have had a nice career doing mundane compilers. A big motivator to switching to software is I could start a business with nearly zero investment.

Engineering, too. Electrical and Mechanical specifically. And Biotech.

There’s plenty of engineering jobs besides CS that pay very well.

They may pay well but most non-computer engineering grads I know end up in software because that's all that was available.

I really think you’re just living in a bubble. I know many recently graduated non-CS engineers who stepped straight into high salaries in their fields. Civil, mechanical, structural, aerospace, petroleum, acoustic, chemical, material, biomed, marine, geological... There are literally hundreds of different specialised engineering disciplines, and so many of them are high-demand and high-paid. Don’t get all your information about the world from SF job listings.

You are talking about biology students?

Engineering is highly in demand. I imagine math too.

I know lots of people go pre-med and leave college in a saturated field

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