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Comment by robbles | Hacker News Reader

One issue I keep seeing in these kind of studies is the use of the "STEM" acronym itself.

I'm sorry, but with the current job market, this kind of grouping makes NO sense. The jobs and opportunities are mostly in the middle two letters - technology and engineering.

Science and mathematics are still tied to academia enough that only the real go-getters with the ability to self-educate and work out how to transfer their skills to other fields will easily find careers. Despite the flaws in most of the institutions offering engineering degrees, an education in engineering/technology is still the most straightforward path to a career, with the most applicable job skills being taught.

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I have a good friend who is a mathematician, masters degree. She works for an insurance company doing statistics as an actuary.

This is just based her anecdotes, but from her stories it sounds like the world of professional mathematicians/staticians is suffering from a talent shortage that completely dwarfs what we experience in the technology sector. A good mathematician is rare gold in the finance/insurance worlds right now.

That's a great example - Your friend sounds exactly like the people I mentioned who "work out how to transfer their skills to other fields". I think that these kind of people are outliers who underestimate the difficulty involved in doing this for others, probably because they're very talented people. What most people want to get out of their degree is a straightforward path to a job, not a stepping stone that they can use creatively to build their own career.

I suspect that the issue with that particular talent shortage might be similar to the software engineering one - it hinges on the definition of "good mathematician". If I graduated with good grades from a top university with a degree in mathematics, will I automatically have a good chance of being hired by a financial institution? Or do I need to somehow acquire domain-specific knowledge first and have the right personal network?

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