The STEM Crisis is a Myth | Hacker News Reader

The STEM Crisis is a Myth

m.spectrum.ieee.org

30 pointsmattquiros25 comments

"Even in the computer and IT industry, the sector that employs the most STEM workers and is expected to grow the most over the next 5 to 10 years, not everyone who wants a job can find one. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., found that more than a third of recent computer science graduates aren’t working in their chosen major; of that group, almost a third say the reason is that there are no jobs available."

Yet another article that hinges on the critical mistake that seems to underpin all these anti-immigration op-eds: that all workers trained in x are interchangeable.

Any programmer knows this isn't true-- that there is a huge difference between great programmers and people who are merely trained in computer science. And that there is a genuine shortage of the former in former in Silicon Valley.

Incidentally, the Economic Policy Institute is not merely "liberal-leaning." It was created by labor unions to spread precisely this sort of message.

Not all football players are interchangeable. Teams are all competing for the same talent pool. There is no shortage of football players. Want better players? Pay more so that there's incentive to work and come up with better management and training.

Oddly enough the best example to contradict this argument is football. The reason Real Madrid has so many foreign players is not that there's not enough infrastructure to train Spanish players, or that Real Madrid doesn't pay players enough. It's because being really good depends on natural ability, and if natural ability is evenly distributed, more than 99% of the best players are born outside Spain.

"American" football, damit !

Money matters. I'm almost certain you know of people working in other (non programming) fields that were good programmers and if offered a 250K salary they would go back to programming, but they won't for a 120K salary. Employers need to stop whining and pay more.

Edit: I can think of plenty of people (most former coworkers, actually) that work for the Accentures and IBMs because they got, among other things, more pay by working as a program manager. And they would love to leave that job and work as a programmer if they could get paid the same and not worry about their job being outsourced.

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2012-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx...

No, actually, I can't think of one person I know who left programming because it didn't pay well enough.

We must be living in different worlds then. I've seen many people leave programming to get a job in program management because those jobs a) are not easily outsourced and b) get healthy pay increases each year.

and perhaps c) are considered careers for people older than 35

just wondering, when an engineer is promoted to manager, is he no longer a STEM worker? and isn't he no longer employed in the field of his educational background?

Not to mention the seemingly large number of programmers in the HN community that go the entrepreneurial route. Even if not giving up programming completely, the demands of running a business can significantly cut into the amount of programming work that can be done.

If there was adequate compensation on the traditional job side, making that move would be a much more difficult decision. Everyone has their price.

I'm noticing a bit of an exodus from programming to traditional engineering disciplines also, though primarily over working conditions, not mainly pay. One specific concentration is people leaving the game industry to do non-game simulation work at places like Lockheed. The pay is comparable and the environment is much nicer for someone over 30. Game companies complain they can't find enough good talent, but don't seem willing to own up to their role in driving away good talent.

1. Yes, valid point on "all workers trained in x are interchangeable" -- but there's a contrast here between jobs in the 1000s and jobs in the 1-10s. Problem is, the "average" level jobs are relegated to "race to the bottom", leaving a dog-eat-dog realm where only top 1-10% star/superstar can attain a profitable career. I realize your focus and perspective is skewed to small, entrepreneurial startups, but most STEM workers are employed or contracted with large corporate (or government) organizations. In my experience, a great many computer science graduates are not working in their chosen major, and it exacerbates as they age.

2. Yes, there is a "huge difference between great programmers and people merely trained in computer science". OTOH, it used to be that aspiring programmers could bootstrap their way up (even many without formal "Computer Science" education) but now that age has passed, and instead it's expected that someone would just be waltz in at the superstar level. It's a strong bias against anyone without necessary means to devote time and energy to pursuing such a course.

3. "Liberal-leaning" and "labor unions" are not sympatico -- the relationship was a tenuous one, and really only in effect for the duration of the New Deal coalition.

They also continually refer to "IT workers". "IT" is very different from "programmers". You wouldn't expect an engineer to be interchangeable with a mechanic.

I'm still trying to find out if this is a mistake, a failure of vocabulary on my part, or an intentional equivocation

Submitted four weeks ago under canonical URL with more than 100 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6305671

And I think patio11's top-level (and apparently highest-karma) comment in the earlier thread covers the most essential issues. People in STEM occupations with strong skill sets are still in very high demand, while possibly there are a lot more people with STEM degrees but weaker skill sets who wonder why they have trouble finding jobs.

Thanks for the link. Excellent comments there.

Too bad that HN can't dedup canonical URLs properly. It wouldn't be that hard - just analyze the title, domain, URL, samples of the article.

pg: maybe crowdsource development and start accepting pull requests?

Prices for all goods and services are determined by supply and demand. The best ways to increase supply of labor is increase wages and on the job training. This will send a signal to potential workers to seek work in the field. The government does not need increase subsides to wealthy industries with special access to non-immigrant guest workers and free training programs. Business can solve this "problem" with good wages. Every business complains about paying for talent, and workers always want a little more. They can both set the market rate for wages which will determine supply of labor.

From the article - To parse the simultaneous claims of both a shortage and a surplus of STEM workers [...]

Or to put it another way: there is no shortage of applicants, but there sure is a shortage of good ones.

That is the impression I have always gone away with when this subject comes up. Companies don't want STEM workers, they want the "top 1%" of STEM workers. There is a shortage of them, but training more people in the field will not necessarily increase the suitable labor pool.

I also find that a lot of the problem is that many companies want a ready STEM worker. In other words someone who can get up and going immediately. Business plans require it but such a person is specialized and cannot have got up and running without dabbling in the field either alone or in another job. So you get a lot of able STEM workers not well honed in any specialty and get rejected for a big job.

My girlfriend graduated valedictorian with a 4.0 GPA majoring in math and minoring in physics, including completing a 4 month internship at NASA, and she has been unable to find a job related to either of those fields for over a year now. Every job she's looked at/applied for requires 1-2 years of experience or more education. To live and pay off debt she taught herself HTML/CSS and some web programming and has been working freelance. She'd still love a job in math or physics. She might go back to school, but is hesitant to go into more debt without knowing she can get a job in her field of study. Everyone told her in college that she would have no problem finding a job studying math/physics.

So put your business guy hat on, who only cares about the bottom line. You could train her for 2 months or so and she might work out, or you could do a temp hire from an outsourcing company. Which is less risk, easier and gets results sooner?

I don't agree with that kind of thinking but that's basically what is going on. What about the long term for that organization, community and country? The business guy is not thinking about that.

"finding a job [by] STUDYING math/physics" != "finding a job DOING math/physics"

*I studied math and physics, am in high demand, but do neither

Duplicate (mobile version) of an earlier submission. See the earlier discussion at

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6305671

Actual research on the topic instead of punditry. A good article that will sadly sway no politician.

but he concludes stating that giving everyone a grounding in STEM is a good idea.

Insisting there's a shortage is an economic method to inflate study in that area. How would he rather things change? I sure hope it's not "You need to take a heap of courses you're not interested in because maybe it will help you later"

That's the same line someone gave me with art and literature courses. I am not fond of that person, BTW.

There is a minor blind spot of the often repeated but completely false claim that there are no STEM jobs or STEM activity of any sort outside SV/Manhattan, so its perfectly statistically possible for a shortage of STEM grads willing to for for $7.25/hr in SV/Manhattan to exist, therefore "the entire nation" has a STEM shortage, although solely in two relatively microscopic geographic locations. I assure you there is NO SHORTAGE of qualified STEM folks in, say, Wisconsin. Qualified STEM folks willing to work for $7.25/hr? Yes. Qualified STEM folks willing to work at Starbucks and sling coffee? Yes.

Another tangent on the topic is "real STEM" work vs business successes. You don't exactly need Knuth to implement "We're gonna serve ads to IRC implemented over SMS reimplemented over a smartphone app" "We're going to implement an online workforce automation website for middle school girls by making a database of peoples friends and then they can play virtual farm games with each other and then we'll sell ads and database dumps". What I'm getting at, is if you want to implement the great wall of china, your limit is always going to be logistics issues relating to grunts with shovels and wheelbarrows, not PHD level theoretical civil engineer problems.

So add some geographic concerns, and add some discussion of real STEM vs grunt labor type of tasks to the in a previously STEM-ish field.

Other than those two mostly untouched topics, its a good article with no obvious mistakes in what topics were covered.

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