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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."
yup there is a shortage.
.. no shortage ..
Wanna install windows 8 on 100 machines ?
Nope
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.
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
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.
You have no clue what it means to live in a socialist society. So stop putting completely inapprobriate labels everywhere just to appear alarmist. The U.S. is capitalist. Pure and simple. With a very small amount of socialist icing on top. I've grown up in a socialist state. To call the U.S. socialist is akin to calling snow black.
Companies have no desire what so ever to train up employees. Which is of course part of the shortage right there. Companies bitch that they can't find people with the exact skill set they need, but are unwilling to hire and train. Also the management set has their heads very far up their asses and have convinced themselves that engineers and other highly skilled workers are overpaid.
Consider that to be an engineer requires 4 years of 'work' during high school (unpaid). 5 years of college (also unpaid and requiring taking on debt). 2-3 years work experience. That's probably an investment of 15000-25000 hours. An investment worth 3/4 to a 1.25 million dollars. Certainly a 5-10% return on investment is very reasonable right? Well that's 50-100k per year.
Unreasonable to the political and management class, why? Cause reasons.
What gets me is these guys think, oh lets just outsource this to India and China. Forgetting that then India and China get the factories, trained work force, supply chains, technical know how, etc. And while the managers still control trademarks, patents and distribution, that won't last either.
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.
You just don't know how it is when a farmer is blackmailed to join a farmer's collective by having a truck outside his house all night with a running engine, shining the beams into the bedroom. When his son is put in jail for trumped up traffic violation charges, and the charges will only be dropped if his father joins the collective. You don't know how it is when a private owned print shop just doesn't get any paper, because the order for new paper was put back and back and postponed again by the state owned papermill. You don't know how it is when you can't rent out your house anymore, but you are required to report all available appartements to the municipal appartement administration which then will send you whoever people they allocated the appartments to.
Stop your clueless musings about how socialist the U.S. would be. It just isn't true.
Apparently, you don't believe in education either, or you wouldn't spell "global" as "globul" or "religion" as "religon". Tax rates in the U.S. are well below those of other countries. That alone doesn't make the U.S. not-capitalist, but it does put it in perspective. Yes, the company tax rates need to be adjusted, that usually happens about every 20-30 years, so hold on to your britches.
Socialized medicine? Errr....how come the insurance companies are still in business and the new ACA requires everyone to get insurance somehow. Ma and Pa Kettle do get Medicare, but that is because the sainted insurance companies want to cherry pick the healthy people and insure them. Death panels you say? What do you think actuarial boards of insurance companies are?
Global warming is a fact, stop trying to turn it into a political issue. Don't believe me? Look up Miami and the plans they have for sea level rise and how expensive it will be for them. And even if you do not believe in global warming (although frankly I think it is like not believing in gravitation), observe the data on the acidification of the oceans. That's directly due to CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere. It's killing coral in....Florida and throughout the Caribbean. Localized? Hardly, it is also killing coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. They expect it to be gone within about 50 years if something isn't done. Yes, I know, what's a good Libertarian care about coral. Well, the crux is the ocean is the bottom of the food chain. Maybe you've heard of it, you're at the top...for now.
And if the U.S. isn't a capitalist economy, how did the real estate market manage to tank the U.S. economy and give the world's a cold? The basic problem is that a pure capitalist economy spawns bubbles and monopolies. In order or to level that out, laws and regulations were needed. Don't believe me, look at the U.S. before the Great Depression. The economy was a wild west of an economy and lurched from crisis to crisis. Of course, if you lost your money in one, your days of lurching were over. The Great Recession happened because the Bush Administration did not believe in regulation. The head of the SEC was a puppet of Wall Street. That allowed Wall Street to run amok. Realtors, the local zoning officials, the builders, and the sainted American people worked with almost no rules and...splat...there went the economy.
Normally I'd agree, but the article summarizes a collection of studies, so is a work by itself. To skip the article, you'd either need to just link a number of studies and skip any useful summary of them, or you'd need to reproduce the summary in the article (which would be plagiarism, or at least wasted effort).
Correct. While some may not appreciate this, it's the compilation and interpretation of the links that provides value.
I learned this, first hand, when I had opportunities to read published "classified" documents as part of my military duties. My first thought was, like, "No Shit Shirlock...this is common knowledge." The information sources that were cited in the paper were all public domain or common, open sources, and readily available and even were the subject of discussions I had made with my peers. However, it was the analysis of the information, the common threads, and the meaning the analyst derived from that information that made it a classified document.
The point I took away from this article is not that there is not a shortage of capable works. Instead, it's a shortage of capable workers willing to work at the salaries and rates being offered. The VISA opportunities, as stated in the article, have enabled positions to be filled with qualified individuals at a substantially lower cost. In many cases, the job positions are created with the specific goal of filling with someone offshore. While this works out well for corporations, Sadly, this puts American workers at a serious disadvantage since they still have to live in this environment.
I have no qualms with hiring someone from overseas who has a passion for the work and willing to work for a little less. I do have issues hiring someone just because they can do it cheaper. My experience is the latter costs more in the end while the former can be a great bargain. Nonetheless, I still would prefer to see those jobs go to Americans first, those with passion second, and finally qualified but lower-cost last.
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).
No, not really. Companies are complaining about lack of supply and are unwilling to do anything about it when they hold most of the power and have most of the resources. They want to treat people like dirt and they're surprised it's biting them in the butt.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.