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Comment by leoc | Hacker News Reader

This story doesn't exactly scream "STEM shortage", does it?

I've always taken "STEM shortage" to mean "STEM shortage of low cost, high tolerance for long hours overseas workers".

Does anybody actually still think it's anything else than that?

Same is true for talent. There's no shortage for talent. There's a shortage for talented people willing to work for "the price we're offering".

Reminds me of this recent Businessweek story:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-wor...

"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel

I don't get this kind of reasoning. Since when is $100K+ a year, plus bonus and stocks, "very little money"?

I'm a foreign STEM worker myself, currently on an H-1B visa. I have a very decent life here in the US, much better than I had it in Brazil. Back there both my wife and I worked and we lived at a quite lower standard than we live here. Now I'm currently the only one working and we live in a way nicer looking place, have a car we could never afford there and we're able to save some good money and still get to travel a few times a year.

So really, where is the "very little money"? A lot of other people share stories similar to mine and are doing pretty well too. And by the way, we're in our 20s and I was a college hire, so the good situation is not really due to having experience and being hired into a higher position.

The only thing you did here was inject a personal anecdote; that hardly disproves the Keppel Effect. The point of my Keppel quote is to counteract the constant drumbeat of "skills shortage" STEM news in publications based in the USA.

I don't know for sure but I also suspect that if your salary is $100K+, you're probably far above the median STEM worker salary:

Median earnings for those with a bachelor’s degree in fields including aerospace, chemical and mechanical were $75,000, according to a study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW). [1]

[1] http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/

Right, but my point is, if there isn't a shortage, how did I get such a job and why do so many other like me get them? Why would companies go through the trouble of recruiting overseas if they could find people with the skills they need in the local market? It doesn't add up. I've personally witnessed my former manager spend almost a year looking locally and abroad for someone to fill a software engineer position, and yet he couldn't find someone fit for the job.

Do you understand what "anecdotal" means? You're using yourself and your company to extrapolate to the entire industry. One of the reasons why companies recruit overseas is because they don't want to pay US market salaries. This has been discussed over and over again here on HN with regard to the H-1B visa and the use of foreign engineers and developers, because of the difficulty for "handcuffed" H-1B holders to transfer to other companies:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h...

http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/23/what-americans-dont-know-...

http://www.ifpte.org/news/details/Obama-Administration-propo...

Google, Apple, Adobe, Intel, et al. have been caught red-handed in illegal collusion in order to keep US engineer salaries suppressed. Knowing this, why would anyone find it hard to believe they would turn to foreign talent to effect the same goal?

There isn't a STEM shortage, STEMs are just expensive. If you don't have enough STEMs you can steal them from another company by paying more. If your company cannot afford the labor it will die, STEM or not.

Demand and supply dictates that if a product is expensive that's equivalent to there bring a shortage of it.

Is there a shortage of cruise ships? Perhaps cruise ships require many man hours and not-abundant resources to make. Perhaps software engineers require many man hours to make and intelligent people with a passion for computer science is a scarce resource.

We can say "there is a food shortage" because a certain amount of food is necessary for a society to survive. The same can't be said of software developers.

Also, if you argue a high price means it is scarce, does that mean there is a shortage of hedge fund managers and CEOs?

Which explains the critical shortage of Ferraris in my driveway.

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