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Do We Really Have a Shortage of STEM Workers?
New pweidema writes "Michael Teitelbaum, a senior research associate in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School who has been writing a book on the subject of the current state of employment in science and technology fields, recently spoke at an Education Writers Association Conference about the 'STEM Worker Shortage: Does It Exist and Is Education to Blame?' The National Science Board's biennial book, Science and Engineering Indicators , consistently finds that the U.S. produces many more STEM graduates than the workforce can absorb. Meanwhile, employers say managers are struggling to find qualified workers in STEM fields. What explains these apparently contradictory trends? And as the shortage debate rages, what do we know about the pipeline of STEM-talented students from kindergarten to college, and what happens to them in the job market? An article LA Times summarizes his findings of his findings on the STEM hype: '...some of it comes from the country’s longtime cycle of waxing and waning interest in science; attention seems to focus on science every 10 to 15 years before slacking off. The only forces pushing the idea of STEM doom, he said, are those that have something to gain from it. Mostly those are STEM employers ... that want to pack the labor force with people to suppress wages ... Joining the chorus are universities that want more funding for science programs...'"
No. We do not have a shortage. The US has been shedding STEM jobs, not gaining unfilled ones. For almost 3 decades at this point.
There is a vested interest in driving down wages for those few jobs that remain however.
There's no conspiracy to push down wages - these are real complaints. The same problem exists in many fields - there's a difference between good people and qualified people. As a hiring manager, when I complain about finding qualified people, I mean people that can show, in an interview, that they're open to and reasonably good at learning. I've hired highschool dropouts (and am one myself) and PhD grads.
We need people that are in STEM because they WANT to be in STEM. Trying to get more people educated in a field by saying "we need more people with STEM degrees!" is like saying I need more people who know how to run. I don't want someone who knows how to run, I want someone who loves running.
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Colleges teach high-level theories and models and UMLs and chess board Java CS projects - useless to 99.9% of tech employers. So many compsci students I see come into class half-asleep, barely pay attention in class, and don't seem to think much about it once they leave the classroom. They think they're going to make a ton of money as .NET developers by using drag-and-drop software like Visual Studio. I am looking to hire 3 student programmers right now, and even amongst our best candidates, they can't write a simple 4-line script to output a file to screen. They are very, very smart students, but they don't have any skills!
Employers need workers with practical experience, and in general WANT workers who have lots of experience with specific software. Colleges don't teach software suites, they teach theories.
Programming and information technology should be taught as vocations... high-paying, of course.
Because nobody wants to do on the job training any more. And chances are if a company is hiring a DBA, it's because they are short a DBA. If there is anyone else on the database team, they're going to be struggling to do the work of two people and won't have time to train anyone else.
Companies want someone who has already been trained to do the job they are hiring for. They want someone who can hit the ground running.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
if you can't find the talent you're looking for at the price you want, then the problem is with you and your price - not the talent. if you're not getting enough "bang for your buck" then you have either grossly overestimated the "bang" you're going to find or you've grossly underestimated the "buck" that you're going to need to spend.
i can't go car shopping and complain that no one will sell me a car for ten bucks, then say "oh well i guess i don't get a car and you don't get to sell me a car!"
if the talent "isn't worth the money" then i guess you don't really need it.
I work in a small town with a very small number of high tech employers. The place across town posted a job with extremely specific job requirements that happened to align perfectly with my resume... I applied for the job and immediately received a back channel request to withdraw my application because the job opening was posted for a temporary foreign worker they had who had to be given a permanent position or go home... Apparently they were required to post the job and could only hire her if there were no qualified applicants who were US citizens... It's a small town, I didn't want to burn bridges, and already had a good job so I withdrew but I wonder how often this happens where the applicant for the fake job does not get a heads up and has his time wasted interviewing for a fake job opening...
Having been on both sides, interviewer and interviewee in the past few years there are problems on both sides. And, it also depends on what you mean by qualified.
For example, NFL teams complain that there is a lack of qualified people who can throw a football even though every college team in the country has 3 or 4 on the roster. However, there is only one Peyton, Brady, or Brees. There is a reason they get paid an insane amount of money and it's because once you've narrowed the field to the best 32 guys in the country, there is still a big difference in quality.
However, the difference between superstar programmer and basically competent programmer is probably on the range of 5 to 10K at most on average. What companies mean when they say "qualified" is frequently superstar. They want 10+ years of experience in 10 different technologies and would prefer that you be under 30 and fairly cheap. They don't want to pay the equivalent of Brady or Brees salary (relatively not literally). They want people who do it because they "love" it or have passion for it.
Where I work, for programmers and engineers (P.E. types), not only do you need to be better than minimally competent in your technical field you also need to be able to manage people and do business development. How many people do you know who are average to above in a technical area, management, and marketing? And yes, we complain we can't find "qualified" people. I keep pointing out that every company would like to have the people we want and there just isn't that many to go around. In the end, coaching or management is taking a group of guys and leading them to perform such that the team is greater than the sum of the parts. It's easier if you have all stars at every position, but that is almost never going to happen.
STEM covers a wide range of fields; while there is a shortage of computer scientists and engineers (mostly due to the fact that many non-CS engineers go into software), there is an oversupply of biologists and other sciences. http://csl.stanford.edu/~pal/e...
The economist says there's never a shortage, just a shortage at a given price. E.g., Robert R. Prechter, Jr: "In a free market, shortages are impossible; there is only a price. Rubies and Picassos are scarce, but there's never a shortage of them. You can buy all you want any day of the week. Just pay the price." You can have all you want if you're willing to pay more.
I am not a crackpot.
You should have reported it. They are committing fraud.
A large part of the problem stems (heh :) from the fact that the disciplines are not interchangeable. Policy makers typically do not have backgrounds in _any_ of the fields, so they see little distinction between a computer science student, software engineer, math, physics, etc. While we can all agree that those disciplines are technical in nature, the fact is you do not learn the same set of skills. When employers say then need more STEM grads, they aren't looking for a generic chemistry or biology student. They want a C++ coder, or they want someone that can build an antenna, or someone that can operate a mass spec. The learning outcomes from different STEM degrees are vastly different. Notwithstanding issues related to wages, H1-B etc, the acronym itself is a big part of the problem.
After a while, I simply started to ignore degrees. Especially because I need people with a very specific skill set that is hardly, if at all, taught at schools.
My solution today is to post short "problems" with our job description. Your degree doesn't matter too much, your previous experience matters a little, your answer to my problem is what really matters, though. Of course there are always the wise guys that solve it with Google, but usually the phone interview already takes care of that (because that's where you get your next problem tossed at you).
With this strategy I now have assembled a small but very good team of people, most of whom don't have any kind of university degree at all. But they're good at what they're doing.
That's what matters to me. Not what sheet of paper decorates their walls.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sounds like the company I'm contracting with currently. I hadn't worked at a defense contractor for 20 years, when I was an intern in college, so I was a little shocked when I came to work here and found that everyone seemed to be near retirement age. It's OK though, in 10 years they won't need to replace these people because this company (despite being a F500) isn't going to be around I'm fairly sure. There doesn't seem to be much work going on, there's a lab downstairs I use that's full of test stands that look like they haven't been used in 30 years, and there doesn't seem to be much of a future. The company is profitable only because they can bill the DoD ridiculous sums of money for systems for white elephant airplanes.
Sorry .. we do have a dress code where we work. If someone can't manage to wear clean clothes that include long pants and a collared shirt every day because it's a little too restraining, they can't work here.
Fuck you and your dress code. I've dealt with shit bags like you for 20 years. I don't meet with customers. There is no reason why I cant wear shorts to work. You're a pretentious douche bag. Listen here, people don't like being fucking zombies, walking single file into their cubicle farm to be barked at by a fuckwad like you about fucking TPS reports. Assholes like you walk around the office looking like fucking peacocks stinking up the office with your god-awful cologne and hitting on every chick in the office until she quits and files a sexual harassment suit.
I've done just fine for decades in my shorts and t-shirts when its 105 degrees outside. You want to wear a suit and tie in that kind of weather, be my fucking guest. Just don't sit next to me with your BO stink mixed with cheap cologne. I sincerely hope an employee slaps this piss out of you for being such an anal fucking douche bag. You would deserve it.