The STEM Crisis Is a Myth

[LilSaihah]

I'm pretty sure h1b visas would have a significant effect suppressing wages in the field.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Ah it's the usual shit, they claim that over here as well. But they aren't really willing to pay the good ones more, can't be that servere then .

[Kellhound]

I think there's a serious problem with companies still undervaluing the use of technology. In many corporations IT is the first place the budget is cut because the effects are usually only felt years down the road as systems start to crumble.

At my old job the entire IT department was outsourced, meaning they had hundreds of people writing extremely detailed specs so the outsourced people could do the work. There was also a ton a bureaucracy around getting anything done so progress was very slow (for example, you were only allowed to release new code once every 3 months and you needed 2 months of lead time to set the date, and once released you weren't allowed to patch for another three months without emergency approval). Because the systems obviously crumbled in this environment, they gradually transitioned to a stat where they had a ton of "analysts" doing IT work in Excel and e-mailing spreadsheets and Access databases around.

It doesn't make a ton of sense until you realize that the higher ups in these companies are people who grew up pre technology.

3 months to release new code??? Yuck! We do 2 week sprints at my job, much more able to adapt that way.

That really depends on what you think of as "pre-technology". People in their 40s and early 50s grew up with PCs.

[Masark]

That really depends on what you think of as "pre-technology". People in their 40s and early 50s grew up with PCs.

They may have grown up with PCs existing, but they likely didn't grow up having them.

[Deleted]

I would much rather have surplus STEM majors than a surplus in the arts and humanities.

Those people are nothing but a drain on society.

[Wyrt]

Those people are nothing but a drain on society.

Tell those Blizzard writers and artists how you really feel while posting on a forum primarily dedicated to their games.

[Mormolyce]

Eh, you likely didn't apply yourself enough in school then. Did you publish anything? Do any internships while in school? Get good grades? Work under professors with publications that will write you a letter of recommendation? I had several job offers as soon as I got my undergraduate degree but pursued a free ride through graduate school. I got my masters and now I have jobs thrown at me left and right. The main advantage of a math degree over some kind of engineering degree is that you have a much broader range of fields you'd be qualified for. You should easily know all the math an engineer knows and then some by your third year at a university.

I got first class honours and I did pure maths up to PhD level. On a scholarship of course. Didn't submit though, left to get a job instead.

What education I had felt more like a liability than a help.

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The money isn't in theoretical math unless you get a cushy gig at a university. It's purely academic.

A basic study of math is pretty useful in quite a few careers, but you don't need a pure math degree to go that far (even though I have one).

Applied math is quite valuable, though. Quantitative analysis, actuarial sciences, etc.

Quants yes, actuaries... do they even take maths degrees? I think you'd have more luck doing an actuarial degree, or accounting or business or something.

[Spectral]

I'm pretty sure h1b visas would have a significant effect suppressing wages in the field.

I doubt the number is big enough for this to be a huge driver (there are ~300K H-1Bs the last I'd checked), but yeah, obviously there's going to be some wage elasticity caused by having the option of companies pulling in people with fake shortages driven by offering unreasonably low wages for a given position.

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IT can be outsourced, so no surprise there. I'm more interested in CS graduates and wages there. From what I've read there is a legit shortage.

There is from what I've seen anecdotally. While there are quite a few people that are "programmers" in some sense of the word, the number of good devs that are capable of taking a client request and turning it into a rock-solid piece of software that does what it's supposed to do, follows good coding principles, and is well documented is pretty low. The breadth of skills required for that role is more than just coding (although good coders are in short supply too).

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Those people are nothing but a drain on society.

This is abject nonsense. The world is deeply enriched by humanities. I don't want to live in a society that decides that history, philosophy, and classics just aren't really worth spending anything on. Even if such a society was technologically successful (I doubt it would be), it'd be aimless and intellectually impoverished.

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Wages don't rise, not because of a shortage, but because the business culture of today rather doesn't grow and remain greedy instead of trying to lure higher paid personnel.

Avoiding the impact of labor markets in this context would require massive collusion across many fields. There is no evidence that this is the case for the majority of these fields. Instead, there's just a glut of people in various areas (biological sciences are a great example) that thought it sounded cool, got told by advisors that there was a shortage, then found out otherwise when they graduated.

[Machismo]

Isn't that basically how it works though? Modern art is basically all satire or "shining a light" on something, even though you have to have it explained to you and even then it still doesn't make sense.

I quite like the story of someone's "art" exhibit being literal trash and a janitor accidentally throwing it away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SQfgYOIUh4



My understanding is that this is source of one of the biggest problems. Really strong people in IT are able to learn and adapt quickly. There's also a trend today of "everything that is old is new again" meaning people who actually are 50-60 are seeing trends re-hashed (so just how valuable is their insight and wouldn't they be the quickest to learn things?).

Unfortunately, many employers try to find candidates that already know what they want them to know, rather than people who can prove they're smart enough to learn quickly enough that their ramp-up time isn't too expensive for the business. There's a tough spot to be in for a company. If you have a high turnover or aren't a desirable place to work at (there's a correlation here), you can afford less and less ramp-up time. In general, the longer it takes someone to get acclimated in the job, the bigger the risk of having that person never actually produce value for the business.

Personally I find that just a side effect of the stagnation -- it's easier to just reject applicants than it is to train someone (and often cheaper). If people were actually paid well without being in a niche-of-the-year technology, they would be seen less as a commodity and more as just a smart person, and things like introductory salaries would be worth their complication.

I agree, it's all about hiring intelligent people who want to learn. I literally fell into my first job in IT. My buddy worked for a company, and his boss asked if any of them knew someone who was qualified. My buddy told him about me, that I had zero experience, but was a very hard worker, and was highly intelligent. In my interview, I admitted that I had no knowledge of what work he was involved in, but that I was the most intelligent person in the room. Within two months, I was up to speed, and I was his best employee.

I think a large part of the problem, is that hiring is done by HR, and not done by managers in many companies. A good manager in a STEM field is critical, because they are the ones who need to assess the intangibles. Since every job is going to have different systems, different requirements, and entirely new goals... experience means very little. Sure, knowing how to code or troubleshoot is universal, but having specific certifications is often pointless. That's where the flaw of HR comes into play. We had a new primary contractor take over for our account, and we basically had to interview for our jobs again. It was supposed to be a formality, because the people doing the hiring were the same people who ran the project. When I went into my interview with the HR person, she tried to tell me that I wasn't qualified to do the job I had been doing exceptionally well for over two years. I laughed, the project manager laughed, and we kicked the HR lady out of the office.

Good companies want to train, and the happiness of their employees show when they do. It can cost a bit more, but it helps with efficiency in the workplace.

[Deleted]

I was in tech and I had reached the top end of what guys in my profession earn (not a lot) and whenever i wanted a raise they said they couldn't give me more without managerial responsibilities. This wen't on for some time and eventually i said fuck it and went to sales.

In sales they had no problems properly valuing my skill set and gave me a substantial raise. Funny my technical skills were more valued in sales than in actually doing the engineering.

[PC2]

This is abject nonsense. The world is deeply enriched by humanities. I don't want to live in a society that decides that history, philosophy, and classics just aren't really worth spending anything on. Even if such a society was technologically successful (I doubt it would be), it'd be aimless and intellectually impoverished.

Some philosophy can rise above meaningless drivel by having roots in science and evolutionary theory. History is just past data that should be taught as such, without all the social zeitgeist embellishment.

[Spectral]

Some philosophy can rise above meaningless drivel by having roots in science and evolutionary theory. History is just past data that should be taught as such, without all the social zeitgeist embellishment.

One problem with this is that there are huge gaps in what can be known empirically. Using inference and narrative is crucial to understanding the past. Admittedly, that can stray down some absurd paths, but it's a much better method than relying on nothing but rote facts.

[PC2]

One problem with this is that there are huge gaps in what can be known empirically. Using inference and narrative is crucial to understanding the past. Admittedly, that can stray down some absurd paths, but it's a much better method than relying on nothing but rote facts.

Those gaps should still be subject to logic and not what is fashionable to each particular historian. Bayesian inference exists specifically to explore those uncertainties.

[Mad_Murdock]

Rather than trying to invest in more junior people, it seems everyone wants their own unicorn that will fix everything and has the specific experience to prove it. When they can't find it it's a STEM shortage rather than unreasonable expectations.

Having worked for a large international Corp the past 20 years, I can confirm we have seen a fair amount of this the past 10 years or so. At a Quarterly meeting a few years back, a manager let us seen behind the veil of Management. Her hiring directions, were to get rid of, sorry, Allow the older, sorry, senior employees to pursue other interests (aka lay them off), to hire much cheaper junior\college level people to fill those spots and to outsource as much work to India as possible. Fortunately that fad didn't last very long.

Recently we had a another meeting in which folks talked about new careers opportunities in the company. Mobile has some spots, but the company has indirectly said that there will be no internal training, it's just cheaper to bring in a new group of people or contract out the work, as it seems to be cheaper than retrain the current employees.

[Spectral]

Those gaps should still be subject to logic and not what is fashionable to each particular historian. Bayesian inference exists specifically to explore those uncertainties.

I don't know why you think this isn't what historians do. Ultimately, the ability to scientifically test this just isn't going to be there when it comes to discerning things like Athenian history. By all means, be empirical where feasible, but the idea that history's a "drain on society" (that's seriously what the guy I initially responded to claimed) is appalling stupid and anti-intellectual.

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That is like claiming that economic theory is a massive collusion, where people all 'agreed' to follow certain economic decisions. No, it's just
expected human reaction to social norms and market variables. I have first hand knowledge and experience with businesses who could badly use PhDs in civil engineering or computer sciences, but who refuse to pay more than ~€3000/month 'because that is what most companies pay them', or rather what some of them used to get paid when they started their jobs in the field.

There definitely is no agreement between these business to never pay more, there is just a certain greediness that has taken a strong hold of businesses who refuse to pay more to attract the people they need. Like, they'd rather hire east-european or middle eastern engineers who can't even speak the mother language of the company but who are glad to work for less instead...

It's actually a pretty good example that the market theory of supply and demand is deeply flawed when it comes to employment.

I don't see how upward wage stickiness is a remotely plausible explanation here. Are you suggesting that engineering and software firms are substantially handicapping themselves by just refusing to raise wages to levels required to bring in candidates? This seems like it wouldn't survive a brush with competition or any consulting firm worth its salt. While YMMV in different nations, I don't see much evidence for what I'd consider an extraordinary claim; if labor markets completely fail adjust to tight supplies, that'd be pretty remarkable.

Any NBER papers or similar that I could look at?

[Auxora]

This may change with Trump. He's wanting to crack down on the H-1B visa program very soon, and if he does that will create a pretty big job void in the US. We'll see though, it's one of those things corporations are pushing back on and don't want at all, since wages for US STEM employees would be higher than bringing in workers on H-1B's is. They use the line that "we can't find employees to fill these positions", but that's a self-fulfilling prophecy since H-1B's push US wages down and directly take US jobs, which then reduces students interested in going into STEM. I personally know some really smart and nice people working on H-1Bs. So it's not an easy topic. But reducing or eliminating it would be a huge boost to employment, especially US STEM students coming out of college and looking for a job.

[sarahtasher]

Is there something in the US that can't be blamed on migrants ?

[Mad_Murdock]

They may have grown up with PCs existing, but they likely didn't grow up having them.

At 46, I grew up with a commodore Vic 20, others had a C-64 or the Texas Instruments TI-994a. Very few besides the geeks touch the things, and 50% of my time was playing video games on them. So I would agree that it might be generous to say we grew up with them, in comparison to kids of the 90s and 2000s.

[Glorious Leader]

Both are a waste and there is more to life than writing code.

In truth IT is another sector that will suffer from automation. Write a script to automate some function that would normally be taken care of? You just wrote someones job. When i was in college the data communications teacher told us that a good networked admin was a lazy one who would script and automate as much as he could get away with. At least in so far as repetitive every day stuff was concerned. It occured to me that was just automating my way out of a job.

I had a friend who was a database admin for kpmg. Had been their for 5 years. Well one day they up and closed down his department locally to run everything from a cloud. Its the snake eating its own tail.

Better tech increases effeciency by reducing labor cost. If you cant grow the company the only other way to report a profit is to become more effecient. You simple cannot take the foot off the gas pedal.

[Lockula]

A decade ago a design project would need many people, but now a days that same project could potentially be done with half the needed people. For the usage of automation, standard designs, and better computer usage accounts for this. Such that a first draft of a building design could be done in a couple days with a proficient CAD user. While in the past it could take weeks due to needing to hand do everything.