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MisdemeanorRebel
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2013 Apr 25, 1:29am
It's not just the EPI, but professors from MIT and Berkeley as well who study the issue.
Only the Industry sponsored think tanks and research says there is a labor shortage. Both indirect evidence (flat wages) and graduation rates (I believe ~300,000 new STEM bachelor's degrees issued in 2000-20009 alone) contradicts the "Labor Shortage" notion as well.
New Renter
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2013 Apr 25, 1:42am
It's not just the EPI, but professors from MIT and Berkeley as well who study the issue.
Only the Industry sponsored think tanks and research says there is a labor shortage. Both indirect evidence (flat wages) and graduation rates (I believe ~300,000 new STEM bachelor's degrees issued in 2000-20009 alone) contradicts the "Labor Shortage" notion as well.
What's amazing is the fact this myth has been around for over 30 years yet is still widely believed.
Tenpoundbass
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2013 Apr 25, 1:43am
The bigger myth is that Indian programmers are automatically brilliant because they are from India. No disrespect to any capable Indian programmers out there, they can be badass brilliant developers. But certainly no better or worse than anyone else.
For the most part, every Indian that I've ever worked with that HR hired on the spot because they looked like Apu, were clueless. I had one guy Ajoy, ask me how does he see the code, in the Visual Studio IDE, he was hired to take over a project as I was moving on to another.
Rin
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2013 Apr 25, 1:47am
Folks, the existence of the lifelong postdoc is in itself, proof of the oversupply of scientists/engineers.
One cannot have a legion (sorry, make that armies) of highly skilled laborers earning $36K-$42K with a 2-5% chance of finding full time work as a principal investigator in academia, industry, or govt.
Thus, there's no shortage of S&Es, only a shortage of idiots who're willing to work in industry, for postdoc salaries. That's it.
New Renter
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2013 Apr 25, 1:52am
Folks, the existence of the lifelong postdoc is in itself, proof of the oversupply of scientists/engineers.
One cannot have a legion (sorry, make that armies) of highly skilled laborers earning $36K-$42K with a 2-5% chance of finding full time work as a principal investigator in academia, industry, or govt.
Thus, there's no shortage of S&Es, only a shortage of idiots who're willing to work in industry, for postdoc salaries. That's it.
Yep! That's a HUGE part of the problem. Why the fuck this problem hasn't self corrected by now is a mystery to me.
MisdemeanorRebel
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2013 Apr 25, 5:52am
APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says
Dunno how many guys I know who've received code on a project from an Indian contract firm and found it was mostly reused crap that was patched together to kinda sorta map to the programming spec - and had to work it into acceptable shape.
THIS. When I had a coding shop, people would bring us sloppy code with absolutely no references or comments in anything, and pay us thousands to fix it.
But then they would turn around and buy more code from the same Indian Place, even though it was cheaper for us to do it than to pay them to write it, then us to fix it! I had one guy who sold websites to all the other tribesmembers*, he kept hiring Indians, and kept hiring us to fix it, it made no sense.
Why? Because "Everybody knows India is better and cheaper" --- even when it ain't.
The guy simply didn't believe me when I told him we would write the same thing from scratch for the same the Indians wanted, and certainly less than them doing it and us fixing it. "Same price or cheaper than Bombay in NY/NJ??? Does not compute/Does not conform to Business Week Statements". He thought I was pulling his leg and trying to set him up for extra billing or something later on down the road.
*Meaning hymies like me
Slowly but surely, as soon as businessmen get their heads out of their faddish asses and look at the bottom line, we'll see coding return more and more to the USA.
Folks, the existence of the lifelong postdoc is in itself, proof of the oversupply of scientists/engineers.
One cannot have a legion (sorry, make that armies) of highly skilled laborers earning $36K-$42K with a 2-5% chance of finding full time work as a principal investigator in academia, industry, or govt.
Thus, there's no shortage of S&Es, only a shortage of idiots who're willing to work in industry, for postdoc salaries. That's it.
It is called post-doctoral treadmill. Once you are on it, you won't get out.
Rin
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2013 Apr 28, 12:11pm
It is called post-doctoral treadmill. Once you are on it, you won't get out.
Problem is that this treadmill had started, while I was still in high school. I'd graduated from college some 14 years ago. Thus, I can't understand how a shortage myth could have sustained itself for a generation.
RentingForHalfTheCost
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2013 Apr 28, 12:20pm
APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says
If they want the jobs, American tech professional will have to prove they will work cheaper than Chinese, Indians or anyone who regards living in a cardboard box as their greatest aspiration.
Don't forget the "living in a cardboard box" that cost 30 years of your income. At the end of the day, you have to rebuild the cardboard box and then sell it to the next fool in the chain.
AD
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2013 Apr 28, 12:21pm
“Even in engineering,†the authors said, “U.S. colleges have historically produced about 50 percent more graduates than are hired into engineering jobs each year.â€
True, nobody is courageous enough to take on the higher education industrial complex (aka: Ivory Tower).
Dan8267
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2013 Apr 28, 12:38pm
Chief executives regularly come through Washington complaining that they can’t find qualified American workers for openings at their firms that require a science background.
Pass a law requiring that every H-1B Visa worker must be paid at least $200,000 in year 2000 dollars adjusted for M3. Do this and no fucking CEO will complain about a shortage of American workers. The entire H-1B racket has always existed only to take away bargaining power from the one class of worker who still has it, high-tech skilled workers. That is the sole purpose of H-1B Visas.
And allowing this and outsourcing is causing the largest brain drain in the history of the human race. My fellow STEM engineers, would you really let your son or daughter major in what you did? I wouldn't. There will be no jobs for them. And that illustrates how bad these outsourcing and H-1B policies are. Any politician who votes for them should be removed from office and shipped over to India to work in a sweatshop for the rest of his or her life.
The fact is that third world nations with cheap labor forces are incapable of producing any engineer that isn't shitty. Good engineers can only come from places where good engineers make a descent living.
Engineering, unlike any other profession, is about pushing the envelope of what can be done. It can't be dumb down. Any engineering task that can be dumb down is automated out of existence. And any engineering that that is automated out of existence can't make your company money because you are adding no value to industry. For example, try making money by coming up with a better spreadsheet or word processor. So how many people give a shit about your product.
Comments 1 - 13 of 310 Next » Last » Search these comments
If there's one thing that everyone can agree on in Washington, it's that the country has a woeful shortage of workers trained in science, technology, engineering and math — what's referred to as STEM.
President Obama has said that improving STEM education is one of his top priorities. Chief executives regularly come through Washington complaining that they can't find qualified American workers for openings at their firms that require a science background. And armed with this argument in the debate over immigration policy, lobbyists are pushing hard for more temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs, which they say are needed to make up for the lack of Americans with STEM skills.
But not everyone agrees. A study released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reinforces what a number of researchers have come to believe: that the STEM worker shortage is a myth.
The EPI study found that the United States has “more than a sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations.” Basic dynamics of supply and demand would dictate that if there were a domestic labor shortage, wages should have risen. Instead, researchers found, they've been flat, with many Americans holding STEM degrees unable to enter the field and a sharply higher share of foreign workers taking jobs in the information technology industry. (IT jobs make up 59 percent of the STEM workforce, according to the study.)
The answer to whether there is a shortage of such workers has important ramifications for the immigration bill. If it exists, then there's an urgency that justifies allowing companies to bring more foreign workers into the country, usually on a short-term H-1B visa. But those who oppose such a policy argue that companies want more of these visas mainly because H-1B workers are paid an estimated 20 percent less than their American counterparts. Why allow these companies to hire more foreign workers for less, the critics argue, when there are plenty of Americans who are ready to work?
The EPI study said that while the overall number of U.S. students who earn STEM degrees is small — a fact that many lawmakers and the news media have seized on — it's more important to focus on what happens to these students after they graduate. According to the study, they have a surprisingly hard time finding work. Only half of the students graduating from college with a STEM degree are hired into a STEM job, the study said.
“Even in engineering,” the authors said, “U.S. colleges have historically produced about 50 percent more graduates than are hired into engineering jobs each year.”
The picture is not that bright for computer science students, either. “For computer science graduates employed one year after graduation . . . about half of those who took a job outside of IT say they did so because the career prospects were better elsewhere, and roughly a third because they couldn't find a job in IT,” the study said.
While liberal arts graduates might be used to having to look for jobs with only tenuous connections to their majors, the researchers said this shouldn't be the case for graduates with degrees attached to specific skills such as engineering.
The tech industry has said that it needs more H-1B visas in order to hire the “best and the brightest,” regardless of their citizenship. Yet the IT industry seems to have a surprisingly low bar for education. The study found that among IT workers, 36 percent do not have a four-year college degree. Among the 64 percent who do have diplomas, only 38 percent have a computer science or math degree.
The bipartisan immigration plan introduced last week by the so-called Gang of Eight senators would raise the number of H-1B visas, though it would limit the ability of outsourcing firms to have access to them. Tech companies such as Facebook and Microsoft have fought hard to distinguish themselves from these outsourcing companies, arguing that unlike firms such as Wipro, they're looking for the best people, not just ones who will work for less.
But some worry that the more H-1Bs allowed into the system, the more domestic workers get crowded out, resulting in what no one appears to want: fewer American students seeing much promise in entering STEM fields.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/study-there-may-not-be-a-shortage-of-american-stem-graduates-after-all/2013/04/24/66099962-acea-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html
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