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Comment by andylei | Hacker News Reader

> Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs

Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

> “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers," ... “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.”

I'm not really sure how that squares with the fact that only half of STEM graduates were hired. Why didn't facebook and microsoft just offer those graduates cheapo salaries?

Because most of the time, these workers aren't interchangeable cogs. A degree doesn't mean you can do work in the industry effectively. Maybe there are billions of STEM graduates, but if only 100 can do the job, there's still a shortage.

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> > Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get hired into STEM jobs

> Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

In my experience, it's because companies don't want to pay to train somebody in all the basics of office work. New grads (especially STEM grads) don't know how to run a meeting, write a status report, or do a thousand other things that a modern company requires. Instead they list job openings for two or three years of experience and hope to profit off of somebody else's investment.

Companies tend to have special intake systems for college graduates. Plus, a new grad shouldn't be totally clueless in terms of how to work in an office; they should have had at least one internship.

But the companies complaining about shortages (microsoft, facebook, etc...) are the same ones who are willing to hire new grads.

"We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT) would like to have more, cheaper workers"

Microsoft just laid off 5,000 people. I don't think they're hiring much.

Microsoft is hiring plenty. Go to https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx and search for software engineering jobs, the result is "only the first 500 results are shown."

Broad layoffs like what Microsoft did often serve as cover for divesting from product areas or culling dead wood (despite many US states being at-will, it can be surprisingly difficult to fire someone who isn't performing at a large company).

1 out of 300 offers is really low assuming you're doing 2-3 screens then a ~5 panel onsite after that. I'd be seriously concerned with your sourcers.

>Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

Or maybe all the Science and Mathematics graduates go to graduate school because their entire field is centered around academic research, not jobs.

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