Slashdot Mirror
The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage
walterbyrd (182728) writes in with this story that calls into question the conventional wisdom that there is a shortage of science and engineering workforce in the U.S. "Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber? The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce."
Why link to an article about some studies that "prove" common knowledge is false, instead of linking directly to the studies themselves?
Is it journalistic courtesy?
yup there is a shortage.
.. no shortage ..
Wanna install windows 8 on 100 machines ?
Nope
I think it's mostly politics trying to improve conditions for STEM students. They are worried that if the amount of graduates goes down their might be a shortage, studying takes four years. Most people don't want to depend on graduates from India or China.
Also it could be that these warnings prevent shortages...
Just like the myth that the U.S. is a capitalist oriented economy.
We are full on socialists, have been for many many years and the socialists in charge seek only to confiscate more and more of the wealth of the citizens.
Because that they have taken so far has created ever so much prosperity, hasn't it?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/20/Illinois-to-Follow-California-s-Lead-With-Millionaire-Tax-Referendum
"The real goal of the proposed referendum may not be fiscal, but political. The winner of the Republican primary this week was billionaire Bruce Rauner, a political newcomer who enjoys close ties to Democrats such as Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, yet has vowed to take on the public sector unions and the Madigan machine."
Uh huh. Unions, confiscatory taxes, globul warming (a state mandated religon if there ever was one), socialised medicine. Yea, this is exactly what our founders fought and died for so many years ago.
There is a lot more to this article than the mythical labor shortage. There is a discussion of the complexity of the issue. That includes things like labor market cycles, shortages in some specializations with surpluses in many, the cost of misinformation to graduates, and a fair bit more.
To the summary skimmers, this article is probably worth your time.
Speaking for only the IT shop where I work, there is a shortage of young people (under the age of 40) who want to work for State Government (union dues must be paid). Average age is 58.
So can the "shortage" be quantified within specific limits? Union dues, age, location, pay?
Fuck slashdot Beta!
An analysis of salaries and salary trends for STEM employees will tell you exactly whether there is a shortage or not.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
If you need to have ten engineers above of the 10sigma distribution of capability and have use for 10000 engineers otherwise, of course you have a shortage of engineers when you have only 100000 available.
Unless joblessness and consequently insurmountable student debts are "somebody else's problem", increasing the number of students is not the solution. In particular not if you push people into the education that are not interested in engineering and are certain not to reach outside of the 10sigma range.
Instead you need to increase the quality of education.
Countries like Germany traditionally have a two-pronged approach here: university education is free. Any student loans are purely for the cost of living. That increases the base material. And there is basically no externally organized effort or incentive to keep students from failing and/or procrastinating (there are student organizations trying to help, though). That causes a wider sigma.
In a way, it is a lot of social Darwinism based on capability, whereas the social Darwinism of the United States is based on silver spoons. The latter, of course, creates more stable social castes.
I often found myself wondering the same thing for those in the field of software engineering. When I was straight out of high school, I tried applying for many software developer jobs (being that I had picked up coding as a hobby in school) but I couldn't even get an interview without a college degree. Now, a few years later, I'll be graduating in a month with a bachelor's degree in the subject. Now tons of people are extending interviews and phone interviews for me. The job offers seem to be at a decent starting wage, around three times what I made in traditional jobs before college. However is the money decent because companies are competing for a scarce resource of developers? Or is it because companies dismiss most applicants that don't possess a degree thereby limiting the available pool of potential developers even more?
Is it me, or does "a shortage of workforce" make no sense at all?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There isn't a shortage of STEM graduates.
There's a shortage of _cheap_ STEM graduates for businesses too cheap to pay properly.
I think the real shortage is probably for H1-B visas so that companies can hire foreign workers at lower salaries.
The authors agree:
"Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations."
We had plenty of qualified workers back in, say, 1997 when the internet first boomed.
The economy was strong as ever.
Can't we just pretend it is 1997 again?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
There's a shortage of people who want to work a temp job for half pay after earning an education and building a professional resume.
liars touts & shills oh my http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=motive%20shortage%20weather%20WMD&sm=3 free the innocent stem cells little miss dna cannot be wrong
Just as there is in every other area of media coverage, manufactured crisis?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There is shortage of people who will work with as low pay as possible.
CEOs want to reduce payments and have worse work conditions for science and engineerig people. It is all about money.
There is no major shortage that would hinder economy signficantly.
It is like saying there is shortage of medical people because there are no people unemployed that can be hired to do whatever you like.
to the wealthy investor look to individuals as an investment. a young person selling themselves on an open market is becoming an option, i think investors are familiar with that word. slayerwulfe cave
There's absolutely a shortage of experienced, top notch talent who know how to do something.
Unfortunately shoehorning the unqualified unmotivated masses into it will prove to be the same result as what happened with the supposed "Teacher Shortage"
Do the Colleges and Universities bear some of the responsibility for the quality of graduates they're churning out, or are these chickens coming home to roost from a well meant but misguided push to give every child a chance to get an advanced degree?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
For any skilled profession the resource availability usually dictates what the wage price would be for that resource. The exception being lawyers and healthcare because they've been given a licensed right to charge prices outside of market forces. When Businesses look at labor costs they always want the cheapest price because usually labor is the highest cost by percentage, meaning anything they can do to drive that cost down is thought to be best for the bottom line. That's why H1-B Visas exist, not because of a shortage but because of the mythology that somebody from another nation with a lower standard of living and costs can be brought in to do the same work for less. That's why you have lawyers and companies who specialize in gaming the system by lobbying and helping companies avoid legal risks for skirting the law to ostensibly demonstrate that yes, the H1-B system does lower labor costs and it's good for the economy and allows businesses to compete in the global marketplace. That means we need more H1-B workers. All it really does is devalue your domestic workforce and place more experienced people out of work by putting up a laundry list of reasons why you shouldn't hire somebody even though they have the skills. The same can be said for "diversity" initiatives in companies which are really which are quota systems that allow legal discrimination. Because a company has a "diversity" program, some even have senior level positions for diversity with absolutely meaningless job functions, they can claim that they'll promote the hiring and accelerated advancement within the organization for people who are considered "diverse." So H1-B programs logically follow into this because the company has an "active diversity program." Again, all a smoke screen for the fact that they just want to screw local resources looking for work. As they say be cautious in trying to buy a $10,000 Ferrari because finding one, while possible, will take a long time and when you get it it'll probably be a piece of shit.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Engineers who don't believe in fairy tales are very rare in the US.
My total compensation as a qualified Engineer is similar to the average compensation for a doctor. I think that's reasonable. It's very hard to fill positions right now.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Granted, the vast majority of CEOs and lobbyists are good at what they do, but their jobs do not involve finding an engineer. The lobbyists do not need engineers, and the CEOs have minions who can find engineers for them. I suspect that the typical CEO thinks that an engineer is a cross between Dilbert, middle management, and a random faceless guy with a pocket full of pens and bad personal hygeine plus the social skills of Sheldon Cooper - "if all those factors are not present, the person is not an engineer, and I am right because I am the CEO".
I would, however, be interested to see how strong the correlation is between people who say that there is a shortage of scientists and engineers, and the groups who are advocating for broader H1B visa use, because I suspect that what the CEOs and lobbyists really mean is not "there is a shortage of trained engineers and scientists", but "there is a shortage of qualified individuals who are willing to work the hours we demand for the wages we are willing to pay".
This is a business as usual so far as I can see from what companies claim.
There's no shortage.
There's a shortage of highly competent, high producing, years of experience individuals willing to work for peanuts.
Everyone else needs training, which companies are no longer willing to pay for. In some magical fashion, employees are just supposed to be hired and become immediately productive.
This is political wisecrackery with no legitimate basis to back it up. Congress has been informed for over seven years that this is an untruth. (Here's an article in Businessweekfrom all the way back in 2007 citing a study done by the Urban Institute debunking this myth.
This information has been reported to Congress on both the floor and in committee hearings. (Sorry, at one point, I had an old printout of one report supporting this statement. I can't seem to locate it, either in paper form nor on Google.) Congressional leaders willingly refuse to accept this truth, simply because there is more to gain politically by not accepting it. (Huge amounts of money are circulated by lobbyists in support of political agendas influenced by this...opening up more H1B visas, for example.)
Well now... I'm not so sure it's as much about corporate greed as everyone on slashdot makes it out to be. Most of the year we have our normal work and what-not... and most of our full-time employees are from the US or were temps that were damn good so we hired them and they may have emigrated here from wherever (usually India/Russia) but they're a part of the team now... But then every 6 months to a year upper management gets their panties in a knot and need "The migration project done in 3 months!!!!" and so we go to a temp agency and they, of course, provide a bunch of H1-B's who are mostly from India... and honest are probably a lot better than a lot of us are at what they do, and we get the project done. They leave and we're all better for it.
If we actually hired for these sprint projects we'd like end up in a constant Hiring and layoff cycle that I would not find comfortable at all. Ok, I don't know what it's like to work at a huge software company like Google/Microsoft or whatever... our IT/IS is under 200 people at its peak. But I can't imagine most of the country is run much differently. The Google type of organization to me is a more of an anomaly than a norm.
With rising income inequality (the 1%), there is an element of hypocrisy coming from those (generally) making any critique that STEM workers are overpaid.
When Zuckerberg et. al. speak of a shortage of STEM workers, they are speaking as vastly overpaid CEOs. For someone paid in the $2B range, to claim that $100K-$200K is too much for a STEM worker is madness.
Additionally, we have salary data points for other professional level occupations with similar training, hours, and expertise required.
Finally we see can look at STEM salaries vs inflation, and find that in many cases they are flat or falling. (But admittedly I am not able to find a good, comprehensive source to put this in proper perspective). Google "STEM Salary vs inflation" for more.
The issue can be experienced first hand by anyone in a big tech center trying to build a team or expand one.
Finding people isn't too hard. Finding good people, at a price where there's SOME return on investment (that is, as much as you'd like to, you can't pay everyone 7 figure...but you can still pay them high enough to all toss them in the top 2%, and still be looking), is really hard.
If you put your office in the middle of nowhere, you won't have enough people. If you put it in a tech center, you'll be competing with google, twitter, amazon and all the other big names, so that even if you offer more money and benefits than they do, you still lose. You can offer telecommuting, but only a small portion of people work effectively like that (a few days out of the week, most people can handle, but all the time, not so much), so that doesn't scale either.
So you're boned, boned, or boned. Pick your poison. Oh, or you can hire the peanut gallery, train them for a year or two, and then lose them to Google or a video game company the moment they get good.
That's the hard part: defining precisely what is meant by "shortage". If there are more candidates calling themselves engineers than there are jobs does that mean there's not a shortage? If so then there's probably not a shortage. If every company could immediately fill all its positions by offering exorbitant salaries does that mean there's not a shortage? If so then there's probably not a shortage. In my limited experience interviewing candidates, though, we seem to get a lot of people who aren't that impressive relative to what they expect to be paid. So maybe there's a shortage of "good" engineers?
They'd rather look to individuals as a consumable resource. It's more profitable for them that way, at least in the short term.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I have no opinion about STEM as a whole, but there's a huge shortage of competent engineers in the US. Depending on how hard nosed we are about it, between 50-80% of candidates with nominal programming backgrounds fail FizzBuzz or equivalent even with their choice of language. Similar rates of EEs fail a basic question about series and parallel resistance, V=IR and P=IV.
The solution however is not H1B visas. They fail at much higher rates than those not seeking visa sponsorship. In fact I feel sorry for them - they've gone to a foreign country for college, paid 5 or 6 figures for an education, and have a piece of paper they might as well wipe with because somehow they managed not to learn a thing. Someone sold them a bill of goods.
There is no need for scientists or engineers if there are no jobs.
Thanks Obama!!!
Sure, well-designed stuff is easy to code - if you are a solid programmer.
It's amazing how many people carry the qualifications of a programmer, but can't actually code their way out of a paper bag. Abstraction, interfaces, any sort of advanced design pattern, and their eyes glaze over. By the time you break it down enough for them (write a method that takes a, b, and c - do d, e, f and return g), you'd have been faster writing the code yourself.
Of course, you also get crappy design, but that's a whole 'nother problem, usually coming from a solid programmer who just isn't able to think "big" enough. I disagree with the earlier poster who says you can have good software architects who are lousy programmers - at least, I've never seen an example of that.
From obscenely overpaid CEO to obscenely overpaid CEO who has stolen our productivity.
I do not mean to imply that academic should be training PhDs for industry
That's exactly what academia should be training PhDs for. Most PhDs work in industry. PhD programs are federal job training programs and, like all govt financed job training programs, they are ultimately insulated from the very labor markets that they supposed to supply, churning out graduates whose skills don't frequently don't match what the labor market is looking for. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the university hiring system favors candidates who track straight through the academic system without ever having professional private sector work experience. Adding to the problem is the political environment on campuses which encourages professors to view private sector employment and workers with contempt. If I had a dollar for every professor whom I have met who shows up on campus at 9 a.m., teaches one lecture, takes an hour for lunch and leaves campus at 3 p.m. thinking that he has put in a full day of work and who actually believes that the smartest and most capable people work at universities, ...
This is just Corporate-speak for a shortage if dirt cheap slaves that will work 80 hours a week without any company stock or bonuses.
The time is long overdue to unionize IT worker and protect us from this crap...
Don't forget U.S. corporate tax rates which are the highest in the world, represent part of the double-taxation burden and affect nearly every American since most Americans own mutual funds.
Reason.com has articles detailing how the U.S. tax system is actually far more progressive than the tax system in Europe which f***s everyone regressively through the VAT.
If our founding father's were extremists, then they must have been extreme believers in deism. http://nationalhumanitiescente...
Or, it's basically the same as every single country. There is no shortage of workers, there's just a shortage of qualified COMPETENT workers. Seems people usually rise to their level of incompetence.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
A few misconceptions in the above: (speaking for California, here, where I'm licensed)
1) a degree is not required; 6 years experience with reference letters from other Engineers is. Some fraction of college can serve as, I think, 2 years of the 6, if it's the right courses, etc.
1a) passing a pair of day long tests is required: Fundamentals of Engineering (formerly EIT), typically before you start working; and the actual PE exam, which is field specific (e.g. Civils take an exam on concrete and steel; Electricals look at EM fields, control loops, and logic design, etc.), and which you take after doing your 6 years.
2) It's not a professional association/order (although such do exist: IEEE, CSPE, etc.): it's a license issued by the state (Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, in California; similar in other states), just like Bar Licenses, MD licenses, etc. The BPELS can take your license away if you seriously screw up. There's a delightful newsletter that comes out with all sorts of examples of struck-off Engineers which make you ask "What were they thinking that this would be ok to do".
3) PE "wet stamp" is really only required for a limited set of things: building plans is the best example. The vast majority of engineers in California toil under what is called the "industrial exemption": you're not personally liable for stuff, the company is. Product design, for example, is usually under the exemption.
4) There are laws about the use of the title Engineer in certain contexts. I can put up a sign advertising myself as an Engineer (because I have a license). Someone without a license cannot, and must call them self a "consultant" or some such. There's subtlety too, in some states (e.g. California) about "title" and "practice". The former is using the title Engineer (e.g. in advertising) and the latter is about doing engineering (e.g. designing buildings). Some kinds of engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical) are actual practice areas: as an Electrical branch PE, I can't do Civil engineering work. Some kinds are just titles: Petroleum Engineer or Traffic Engineer, and are essentially flavors of one of the "big 3".
There's also rules about whether one can practice engineering in another state, and that is, of course, state by state dependent, and whether one has to get licensed there (with or without a test, etc.; but almost always involving paying a fee).
There is a STEM shortage on the global economy. The rest of the world recognizes the importance in investing in these fields while the US continues to focus on making athletes and mediocre musicians for our children to idolize.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Ok, I will be trolled into oblivion. But please, managing and programming a computer is not engineering.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
and yes, we are short. Especially in the center of the country and south...Lots of jobs we can't take due to lack of fellow geeks. Mostly need CS, EE, Comp. Eng. Doubly so for those who are experts in hardware and software crossovers (like network systems x secure software). Strictly commercial too, no gov't work (we refuse it...too much paperwork, too long to get paid).
I am far from the only team looking for them in my region too (Midwest...STL, CHI, DLLS, etc.)...
FYI..I am an egineering grad myself, though 22 years back.
So of course we must import more geniuses because clearly there is a shortage.
There is no shortage of STEM workers, just the basic fact that all businesses want to hire geniuses - for standard pay of course.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
...never been a shortage of science or engineering staff in the United States. The only shortage is science/engineering staff that refuses to work for peanuts, and that is the only reason why there are so many H1B visas. People with 60,000 worth of student loans don't want to work for $20/hr it's ridiculous to even expect them to.
Based on the Slashdot analysis, we can/should use salary as an indicator for which job roles have the greatest shortage. ;-)
That means we have a serious shortage of competent CEO's, and should be issuing visas to shore up the shortage.
Let's see who else gets paid way more than what they are worth?
no investment in growing and developing exactly the people
HAHAHHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHA!!!!!!
The U.S. spends FAR more on education at all levels than any other country in the world. It even spends the most money per capita with the possible exception of some tiny little principality in Europe somewhere. "investment", i.e. money, is not the problem. The problem is the disconnect between academia and the private sector. Bitch about companies all you want, but our political system has seized most training and development costs as its responsibility while not really shouldering the responsibility for not training workers in a way that makes them most useful to the private sector.
If the supply and demand model applies to the job market then you can identify shortages by looking at the highest paid jobs first. Some of these professions are likely not very large, but even grouping some of these together then it appears we have a doctor shortage and lawyer shortage (Yes I hate saying that) and a shortage of middle managers. Based on these averages there is not meaningful shortage of Engineers, Scientists or IT because if there were a shortage then the average compensation would be higher. 1. Doctors $184,820 2. Chief Executives $176,840 3. Petroleum Engineers $147,470 4. Architectural and Engineering Managers $133,240 5. Lawyers $130,880 6. Natural Sciences Managers $130,400 7. Marketing Managers $129,870 8. Computer and Information Systems Managers $129,130 9. Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers $128,760 10. Financial Managers $123,260 11. Sales Managers $119,980 "Shortage" shouldn't be defined by CEOs who are going to Congress looking for more H1B visa indentured servants.
To succeed in STEM fields, you have to be smart. That means you can see clearly that there is no shortage, and that investing 4, 6, 8 or more years of your prime life to get a STEM degree is a bad investment because jobs won't be there.
A smart person who first got interested in STEM in the past decade has watched purge after purge of big companies firing people, and can look at the jobs on places like Dice and see they're crappy temp jobs that don't pay much. They've seen fad shortage after fad shortage - we need mobile developers! no, we need big data! no, we need OpenStack! and so on, it never ends and by the time you've watched about 4 years you've seen this demand for rock stars turn into an outsourced commodity, so you ask yourself about the job market when you get out of college in 4 years. So why would a smart person bet their future on this field?
As companies grow, it's more profitable to buy legislation then compete. The move to expand the H1-B visa program is a perfect example. The best employee is a slave. The closest we get to that in the USA is an H1-B serf. CEOs across the board will try and purchase legislation that reduces their labor costs by insuring a supply of imported serfs, since remote serfs often prove to be less useful.
That's the reality. Anything coming out of the mouth of a CEO or a media company(s) where that CEO sits on the board, is simply self-serving noise.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I am running for a school board seat in my local community. I am a vocational school graduate with around 25 years of experience in the IT/Programming field. I have been a network guy and a DBA and I can code. I am running against college graduates who continuously tout what this article is trying to refute so it was a refreshing read. After reading the comments as well, I am left wondering why, as the article states, would there be a cycle of over training in the first place? Also, how would I use this in my campaign effectively? STEM is the rage, along with the achievement gap, so how best to articulate this without coming off as a loon?
Some of you may have seen the common core style math problems going around the net. If that's the kind of B.S. that's being taught to future STEM students, we're in deep doo doo. When a bridge you designed collapses killing people, you don't get to talk about how you felt while you were designing it. The court will want to know why you did your math wrong.
Don't misunderstand me here. Slamming endless, pointless math problems pushes the very definition of tedious. IMHO, STEM education is too focused on theory as opposed to practical applications. No non-academic employer is going to care if you can solve differential equations in your sleep if you don't know how to make practical use of them.
They want H-1B that can be pushed to the max as if they quit or get fired they are kicked out of the USA.
> Don't forget U.S. corporate tax rates which are the highest in the world,
Stop swimming in the Fox News Kool-aid.
The US tax code is specifically set up to be easy on anyone that's not a working stiff. Those "published rates" will quickly get reduced to nothing as all manner of legal loopholes and exceptions are applied to corporations that don't apply to individuals.
Even a single working person can benefit greatly from being reclassified as something other than a wage earner.
If you think US corporate tax rates are high, you really have no clue at all about how things really work.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In 2003, you could get a masters degree quality indian programmer for a third of the price of an american bachelors degree.
Then it was a "bachelor's degree 'A' student" about 2006.
By 2010, the quality was lower but the price was cheaper.
In 2011, we started seeing a new scam around the "L" visa. These indians were physically here but legally still in india. They could work 6 months in each calendar year then had to return home.
Two years ago, inflation ran over 20% in india and over 30% in china (and over 50%-- up to 100% at non technical jobs) for these jobs and Infosys started changing it's business model.
The typical offshore programmer in 2013- always said yes, delivered exactly to the specs- even if the specs were clearly insane/wrong/incomplete, was still willing to work 60 hour weeks but less so than in the past.
And the turnover was insane. Entire teams of people would just be gone replaced by new people every six months. And you realized the outsourcing company was training people at our expense. And our american managers LOVED the concept that programmers are generic glorp to begin with so they bit really hard on the concept that process documentation would allow an offshore programmer to be instantly productive the second they walked in the door. You can imagine the actual results in reality. Regardless of the level of documentation (which wasn't as good as promised), it was a multi *million* line system. In reality, it took years to learn how things hooked together.
The sneaky thing is the always saying "yes". An american manager asks an american programmer to do something and they know what is desired and say "can't do it on this set of constraints" while the indian programmer says "I'll do my best". "I'll do my best" is code for "can't do it on this set of constraints". But the managers bit on it every single time. And then had us working 70+ hour weeks to try and make up the difference/fix it.
Glad I was able to retire having saving half what I made since 1990. Now when I program, it will be for fun like it used to be.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
right so you covered income tax, and state taxes,
you're forgetting local taxes and VAT, I'm not sure about the US but here in the Netherlands VAT is 21%, in other words slightly more then 1/6th of everything I spend goes to the goverenment
so if you pay 33% income tax (pretty usual in all industrialized nations AFAIK) and 1/6th of the remainder as VAT then between those 2 taxes you're allready at 33% + 66%/6 = 44% of your income going to the state
add in things like, property taxes, garbage tax, water tax, local taxes, etc it really isn't that hard to get to more then 50% payed to the state.
"Call me again, when the house you are living in is state owned or at least state administered, like 95% of all other
housing."
even if you supposedly 'own' your house you pay a periodic fee (yearly property tax) to the government for the privelege, in other words you're renting from the government. So yeah that is actually the case in the US and the entire western world.
is that managers, sales guys, execs, hr, etc hate engineers and scientists due to the high cost and large number of personality issues making them difficult to manage and want to control the group by getting so many people to choose from they compete at lower salaries and make themselves disposable. Of course, there aren't enough to do that because people simply aren't that smart (if they were the managers would easily be able to manage them, not due to numbers but because the managers would similarly be intelligent enough to do so - a retard can't control a genius by any mechanism other than force, in this instance obfuscated through economics).
EIT = Engineer in Training, and a necessary precondition to taking the PE exam for getting your license (as well as your record of engineering work under the supervision of licensed engineers).
after passing the Fundamentals of Engineering test, you don't get to sign drawings, etc. nor legally use the title Engineer (where such use is regulated by law). Nope.. you've basically proved that you know basic engineering principles..
But no matter, really... by the time you take your test, you will have learned the difference.
the means of production aren't controlled by private owners, they're controlled by multinationals.
Both multinationals and governments are social mega-structures. That the power of a multinational is based on economical power en the power of a government on territorial control is ultimately an irrelevant detail.
The core ideal of capitalism is 'a perfectly competitive free market' note the adjectives they are critical, the result of that is the inability to use economical power to force human beings. Obviously we're currently nowhere near that ideal.
The various welfare programs are an attempt (though admittedly a bad one) to create a truely free labor market that, one where it is realisticly possible to say 'i want no part of that' for everyone, not just the economically powerfull (i.e. the rich).
There's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to opt out of being labor: maybe nobody is paying decent wages, maybe working conditions are unacceptable, maybe there simply is no work or at least no work in your sector, maybe you need to take care of a sick relative or to raise your children, maybe you spent time on research or writing a book, maybe you want to go back to college and get the degree needed to break into another sector , maybe you want to spend time working on your big idea, or heck maybe you're just plain lazy
As long as survival depends on a steady stream of money coming in, those who control the money will control the world. As long as that is true to much concentration of economical power is highly problematic and dangerous.
Which is why big finance and big business rules the world today.
I've been there and built a software team of about 30. It's DAMN hard. Just consider the complicating factors:
- Good engineers already have jobs.
- Personality/skills fit. (Engineers A, B, and C get a lot done, but add in engineer D and productivity drops by 40%. Why? Well, it's complicated...)
- Career paths. And everyone wants something different. One engineer just wants regular pay increases. Another wants a better title every year. And not everyone can be the boss.
- Poaching. Competitors get hold of a list of our employees and contact ALL of them. (and yes, it's our responsibility to keep our people happy enough that they don't want to leave.)
And I see a lot of people complaining that companies won't invest in training their employees. I would LOVE to invest in training my employees. I've done it. I've put 10's of thousands into training individual employees. Do you know what happens? They start calling recruiters. People complain that companies don't have loyalty to employers, but employees don't have loyalty anymore either. The relationship is just broken.
Here's a real example. All real numbers. I hired a guy with only 2 years of experience. He had limited skills, but he was smart and had a good attitude. I offered him $70k/year, which is above market rate. In the first 9 months, I put about $15k into training him. He then used those new skills on his resume not to help my company or return the investment, but to get a job paying $90k/year with a competitor. Lesson learned. Smart engineers are in high demand. They can do their own professional development. Why should I subsidize it if they have zero loyalty?
To encourage you to read the article, here are a few quotes:
Do read the IEEE Spectrum article.
That if there actually were a shortage, the price for those jobs would be going up, not down or level. The only shortage of labor in this country is that where people are willing to work cheap.
Read The Billionaire's Apprentice, paying close attention to p. 139 where Gupta explains how at McKinsey they took the GDP of America (and Germany) and broke down all the jobs which could be offshored, then made their big bucks selling corporations on offshoring them (which didn't really take much selling, after all).
The outsourcing of jobs is a direct result of policies which make that advantageous to profitability. It doesn't have squat to do with onerous mandates or your political views. Oh, and all those mandates are typically a direct reaction to those same business activity. Obamacare is the best thing to happen to US business in a 100 years since they'll be dumping those costs on the taxpayer as time goes on. Deal with reality.
These bozos and rubes making such inane comments have no idea how the super-rich "earn" their wealth, by rigging ALL the financial markets (LIBOR rates, interest rate derivatives rates, precious metals markets, forex, commodities speculation/manipulation, virtual naked short selling through the DTCC's Stock Borrow Program, internalization --- where the top brokerages sell almost 100% of their retail stock orders everyday to the top banks and hedge funds, where they control the matching internally on their own computer systems, or "dark pools" and therefore have insider knowledge of the market, etc., etc., etc.). Bet the commenter has no idea how naked swaps work!
...the corporations use H1Bs is the first phase of offshoring the jobs, as they need to prepare offshore project managers, etc., next comes your reason, good citizen.
Engineering is about design, programming is about putting down code.
When I started in this field, they were one in the same.
But then some programmers had engineering envy (and companies wanting title inflation to compensate for shit pay or in the case when I was at NCR, that was how the payscales went. The company's culture is stuck in the 19th century and they threw us in with the engineering crowd to make HR's job easier - I was in NO way an engineer.).
And now, I see folks with just a 4 years degree in CS wanting to be called "scientists" - and all they do is program.
I am a CIS guy. I do business software - data in, data out, display data: screen or paper.
I am not a hotshot kernel developer, embedded systems guy or scientist. Just business apps.
I am good at it. I understand why things that make no sense from a CS standpoint are done because FASB, IRS, some other rules and all of the above may apply.
I go into an interview and I am given these programmer tests that melt my brain. I can see giving them if I were to design and program OSes or some other CS intensive software, but I am applying for a business programmer job.
One such company in Ft. Lauderdale, FL gave a test like that. It was INTENSE. Some of my friends who had CS degrees didn't pass.
What did this company do? Visual Basic on a MS stack. Data in. Data out. Display data. Their business? Video Rental.
The one friend who did pass - GA Tech Grad. She was bored in a month and was looking for another job.
I would have found that job, interesting, challenging, and I would have stayed - all for less money because I realize the reality that people like me aren't worth that much in our society.
They lost because they wanted an "engineer" for a CIS job.
There's a place for us "stupid people" but unfortunately, the current STEM job market doesn't think so.
Were am I? Well, unemployed for a few years - unemployable.
All because some everyone thinks their business is rocket science.
I honestly believe that because individual income tax rates are higher the corporate rates and additionally because to the liberal expenses that corporations are given, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if tax revenues didn't increase if corporate taxes were completely eliminated.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
You forgot teaching.
I have been hiring engineers in Silicon Valley for the last 8 years continuously. I have a preference to hire people who are already authorized to work within the US, without any conditions on that work such as length of time I will need to replace them if their status doesn't change. And I know from personal experience, having hired over 75 positions in that time period, that it's VERY HARD to find people who were trained here and authorized to work here. I end up sponsoring a lot of work visas by pure necessity, not because I want to pay people less. So I don't need a study; I have first-hand knowledge and experience, and have shared that experience with my industry peers (and no, that's not an echo chamber; we are the DOERS that these studies are studying).
Golf clap for you....
(Wait, that was a troll right? You didn't really just accuse someone of knowing nothing about other nations while displaying that quality yourself? Ok, just checking)
Our society has become more service orientated, so most products have to be built sufficiently to manage the service sector. Companies land startup's like uberontime.com get this need. New entrepreneurs, especially the younger once are changing history.
If you teach for 30 years and only produce 10% good programmers, the problem the students. The 10% who you call good already knew how to code and you didn't teach them anything.
I remember back in the old days when I used to write kernels. Back then there was no such thing as a Linux job but if you knew VAX or VMS and had 5 years experience you could get top dollar. After my last employer fired me for using Linux I decided to go into farming. Oh now you have a shortage of kernel developers? get bent. Oh you have a surplus of windows 8 fanboys? get bent.
Employers want more Engineers and Scientists so they can reduce pay for the current ones to reduce their costs. They also want this to be funded by public education expenses instead of paying their employes for more job training.
Oversimplification. For one thing, some professions (like doctor) require a lot of expense up front. An MD entering the profession with over a hundred thousand in loans can't afford to take a low-paying job, and hasn't gone through that many years of really hard work to work for peanuts. The pay level at which essentially no new doctors enter the field is much higher than the average pay level of a lot of occupations. For another, the supply and demand curve is not the only thing that affects average pay. High executives tend to be able to set their pay higher than it would cost to find another exec, and some jobs are underpaid. If companies are complaining about shortages, that means the pay offered is lower than equilibrium. (I once knew a painter/carpenter who did wonderful work, who complained of not having enough money or enough time. We suggested that she raise her rates. Not everybody has internalized the supply and demand curve of pricing.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There's room for the stars, the supporting cast, and even a few janitors, and that actually makes a lot more economic sense, since those of us with star talents are neither being efficiently used when we have to do the grunt work nor likely to be very happy to so so.
I am a janitor. I am proud of it because I am being the best that I can be. I have worked very hard to be a "janitor" in this field.
What get's me is when other janitors who think they are rock stars disparage people like me.
Or when the "rock stars" disparage me. So, do you want to write that UI code that doesn't challenge you? Or shall I - and I'll write it FASTER because that's what I do and by the time you figure out the API and libraries, I'll be done - even though you ARE smarter than me.
Here's the thing, I cannot get a job. I just want a janitor job, but the entire profession wants "rock stars" for their janitorial work - and they aren't willing to pay the "rock stars" and they do not want us "janitors" because they think we are stupid.
I'll take that job.
When I started in this field in 1991, there was room for people like me. Room for "us" to make a nice living as a "janitor".
Those jobs don't exist anymore - at least in the minds of employers. When I see a startup in SV demanding "rock stars" to do what I did for 10 years in 'C' but exclaim that they can't find "JavaScript 'Engineers'" to do the work, I just have to mumble Bullshit-bullshit-bullshit-bullshit whenever I see an employer bitch about not finding enough "qualified" people.
I REALLY hate this industry now and I'd get out if I could but no one will hire a middle aged man who wants to get out of software development.
Why? Do not know.
I strongly suspect that you're right. Corporations are crazy malleable shape-shifters that can do all sorts of crazy stuff to lower their tax incidence, so why bother trying to extract it from them? Just wait for the money to end up in the hands of investors and tax the investors. There's a much smaller set of things a human being can do to avoid taxes, and it has the added advantage of progressive taxation. With a straight up corporate income tax, grandma's penson plan pays the same tax Warren Buffet does on a per-share basis. This is not a big win.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Because your comment reveals a vast and untouchable ignorance, even stupidity, about history.
You're looking at this from a noble position. You're thinking like you act in real life (I hope) i.e. work 8 hours get 8 hours pay and do the best job to your ability. That shit is old school, sorry. Think like the corps do. If you are afraid they're gonna enslave you for 5 years, remember you have the upper hand. Just show up and then don't do shit. What are they gonna do? Fire you? If they do that then you're out of the loan and so that debt is not chaining you anymore. Problem solves itself. Now before you and many others process what I said to mean "be a useless piece of shit", I'm not saying that is your initial plan. That is the plan you fall back on when you believe they're mistreating you.
Stop the anti-Union trolling AC. My union dues cost $48/mo and that is only because I've opted for the "A" ticket. If you're working somewhere Unionized, I seriously think you can afford the dues and I have absolutely zero belief that the dues are a make/break thing.
This reminds me of the perpetual demand for "High-quality low-cost child care." In other words, parents (companies) want to hire smart, caring nannies (engineers) who are experienced and well-trained (already know Java, python, C#, C++...), for low wages (peanuts).
What company (Google, Facebook, Cisco) would NOT want cheap engineers that can "hit the ground running"? But that doesn't mean the government (tax payers) owes it to them! ...oh, except for the politicians who need cash from the CEO/lobbyists to get reelected.
People attack whom they can see, and blame. The politicians are always in react made and they will constantly change their tune as a result. Why blame them when they are at worst just opportunistic? Why not look a bit deeper and look at where the memes come from? If you want to criticize somebody, why not look at economists and investors and the business managements that appeal to them for funds? Why not look at the business schools who train people to think in a certain way. To make it appear that they can assign value to things objectively, when they can't, or that they have too much opportunity to rig evaluation to their personal advantage. And what about the desire to reduce every evaluation to a line item? Isn't the objectivity of that suspect from the start? Some of the people with the most to gain want you to tihnk that their opinions are impartial and objective, maybe the light of scrutiny needs to be shown on these guys as much as on any politicians, on the rating agencies, on the market analysts, on the economists, on the biz schools, on investors, all of them and in a theoretical unity that acccounts for more than just capital.
I think the problem here is that too much time and money is spent on the hiring process and much of that, including a stingy attitude about training, comes from the stress of an oversupply. Taken from the candidate's perspective this is a disheartening effort of blind shots into the wastebasket, something the job-hunting so-call-experts think is worth while. It generally isn't.
From the Hiring Manager's perspective this is highly stressful, if he or she trusts the filtering of the on slot by the HR department, or not, the stress spent talking to candidates takes its toll in time and money. They might save both time and money when hiring non-senior people to find a candidate with at or just below the skill level desired, and to pay to train them, even at the risk of losing them to a competitor.
If training was the only value add of hiring on, maybe the company ought to think about what it offers its employees in the first place. Often the training is not general or applicable to other situations. A market process on the cost and quality of the training would result. So, to talk about forcing employees to pay for training only plays into the greed of employers and then maybe they deserve disloyalty.
My point was that not escalating the standards and writing highly specific job descriptions and paying for training might actually cost less than trying too hard to discourage the unqualified. Then if they really want to hold the feet of candidates to the fire, they do that only with lead employees and even let them recruit the non-lead employees and encourage a shorter hiring process. Or spend less resources on hiring the non-lead employees at the company level.
There is a shortage of science and engineering speciailists that will work for free. There is a glut of unemployed scientists and engineers that wish to be paid.
In the last couple of years:
- Had 3 tooth extractions (old geezer here, it'll happen to you )
- Had eye diagnosis for rare eye condition using state of the art equipment
- Had emergency treatment for an accident
- Visited GP for various minor ailments
Total cost? Zero.
Not too shitty if you ask me
Oh no no, you mustn't let anyone know that it is a myth! It is imperative that we make it especially clear to every youth that the only profitable, respectable, and practical path of study and practice is science and engineering! It is more like a noble lie; even if the related industries are over-saturated with individuals, we must convince every person that reality is concretely grounded in science and engineering because it is what is closest to the truth. The success of science and engineering fulfills its own demand for power: we are headed toward a singularity, we can genetically modify entire forests to prevent the extinction of species, and the comfort of contemporary life is unparalleled.