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Millennial Tech Workers Losing Ground In US
Nerval's Lobster writes Millennial tech workers are entering the U.S. workforce at a comparable disadvantage to other tech workers throughout the industrialized world, according to study earlier this year from Educational Testing Services (PDF). How do U.S. millennials compare to their international peers, at least according to ETS? Those in the 90th percentile (i.e., the top-scoring) actually scored lower than top-scoring millennials in 15 of the 22 studied countries; low-scoring U.S. millennials ranked last (along with Italy and England/Northern Ireland). While some experts have blamed the nation's education system for the ultimate lack of STEM jobs, other studies have suggested that the problem isn't in the classroom; a 2014 report from the U.S. Census Bureau suggested that many of the people who earned STEM degrees didn't actually go into careers requiring them. In any case, the U.S. is clearly wrestling with an issue; how can it introduce more (qualified) STEM people into the market?
College is too Expensive, doesn't guarantee a job in the US. In WA State, they used to be heavily subsidized. Now they aren't. Not enough STEM, Businesses lobby the Govt for more H1B visas and out-source more. Vicious circle since the mid 90s.
I made this: http://www.bpftpserver.com
They are for H1Bs, silly.
EEs coming out of places like MIT with degrees in MATLAB. Physicists coming out of Stanford with degrees in Mathematica. Circuits? What's that? FPGAs? What's that stand for again? Been happening long enough in some places I've seen that senior management thinks it have software without coding, eletronics without soldering, and mechanisms without machining. Sad. But all rooted in laziness and an inability to handle criticism or recognize polite discouragement for what it is. No mystery.
Pay us well (and give us raises as we gain experience so we don't have to job-hop to be paid market rates).
Treat us well (no more 70 hour weeks, no more rollout-on-weekends-with-no-comp-time, no more demand to fix bugs on our own time, no more keeping us in meetings all week then wondering why work didn't get done on time, etc).
Give us job security (no more you-are-useless-if-you-are-over-40).
Do that, or even some of that, and the workforce will swell with tech workers.
the companies that are hiring electrical engineers either aren't doing it in America or they're importing their labor. EE is a dead end in America because of this. There's also practically no entry level jobs because there's no factories to cut your teeth in. It's kinda hard to compete when other countries can dump their toxic sludge into drinking water. It's not laziness, it's survival instinct. That skill is all but worthless in a country with zero protection for it's native industry and workers.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Dumping on people does not make them better. Study after study has shown how fragile children's psychs are and how important positive reinforcement is. But hey, it's a lot more fun to be a dick and crush everyone you see. And if you think of human beings as a resource to be used and without any intrinsic value whatsoever you're way works too. You just have to be willing to grind your populace into dirt for the sake of profit and to buy one more Car Elevator and one more Private Jet. Yeah, I know I'm trolling, but damn if I'm not sick of this culture of disposable human beings.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Another problem is that very few companies want to invest in their workers. They want somebody who already has the skills that they need, and will be performing the same role for the extent of their employment there. No wonder there is so much job hopping among the people who are qualified. Never mind that even qualified people take weeks or months to get up to speed in a project of any complexity. Everybody's asking for, "Hit the ground running."
My problem is that my last 15 years of education, work, and hobbies, they just sweep it away as "Not qualified." Heinlein's Specialization is for insects? Doesn't exist as far as recruiters are concerned. You've been a network admin but haven't used OSPF? Fail. You've been a Clojure programmer but haven't used it for a commercial client? Fail. You've run a helpdesk for dozens of clients but haven't supported thousands of clients? Fail. Well, you recruiters fail, as far as I'm concerned.
Have a nice time.
Makes me glad I'm one of the leading edge Millennials, one of the ones that grew up with Windows 95/DOS and all the associated bugginess and user-unfriendliness of the applications of that era. We actually had to learn how our computers worked and how to really get in and fix things. These later edge Millennials that got iPhones in middle school and high school have utterly no idea how any of this stuff works.
For reasons I don't understand, the media continues to refer to the trailing edge Millennials as technology whiz kids who have grown up with technology and are "technologically savvy", but to my way of thinking they really know nothing about technology at all. It takes absolutely no skill to use some Apple store approved iPhone app with a super simple, refined UI. It did take skill to try to install and run old DOS games and get all those crazy, primitive drivers to install, work, and not have conflicts with each other. Those issues led to a curiosity about computers, which led to me learning programming, which led to a computer engineer degree and ultimately a good career in IT, but had I grown up with an iPhone I wonder if it would ever have happened.
Oh, and let's not forget leading edge Millennials are phenomenal typers too, because we grew up with Instant Messaging clients, not texting with our thumbs. Not a bad skill to have in IT.
-Born in late 1983.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Green Card is the only honest resident alien immigrant status. All others (student visas, J1, H1B, etc.) exist to force techies to accept 2nd class citizen status. If you compete with people for whom getting fired equals getting deported, you will think twice about asking for a partnership in your tech company the way any lawyer or doctor would ask if they contribute to their practice. You may be just as smart or well-educated, but you can be replaced by an indentured servant. Before serfdom was abolished, they used to advertise serfs with special skills (music talents, poetic writing talents, etc.) Being better skilled won't get you ahead if you have no power to bargain for your wages. And unlike low-skilled workers, you can't retrain after half a life-time of learning. You are in. As long as there is any legal immigrant status other than a Green Card, any US citizen would be insane to pursue a STEM career. To make a decent wage, you need to be in top 10%. And if you that smart, any career other career will do.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
For reasons I don't understand, the media continues to refer to the trailing edge Millennials as technology whiz kids who have grown up with technology and are "technologically savvy", but to my way of thinking they really know nothing about technology at all.
That one is pretty simple: The media have no clue about technology at all and think being able to use a simple user-interface is actually is some way comparable to "mastering" and "controlling" a device. Of course, none of that is the case. Instead, there are just even less incentives to learn how technology actually works. All surface, no deeper understanding at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's not that hard to figure out.
4 jobs at 40 hours equals 5 jobs at 32 hours.
And as an employer, my per-employee loading costs go up by 20%.
Tell you what: Go to a single payer health care system, roll unemployment, disability, and retirement into a Basic Guaranteed Income program, and define away poverty because with a BGI, it doesn't exist, and I'll happily split up jobs into as many pieces as you want, down to 20 hours/week/worker, because it won't cost me extra to hire more people, as long as the same number of hours get worked.
Until then, thank your government unfunded mandates and offshoring for current unemployment levels (26%+, according to World Bank numbers, since DOL unemployment statistics only count people receiving unemployment insurance, and vastly underestimate the number of unemployed).
If you want to fix the offshoring problem, I can help with that, too, but you really need to abandon the TPP, modify NAFTA to eliminate the trans-shipment loophole, and eliminate MFN status for China (for starters; there's other things that will need to happen on top of that, but it's the minimum foundational bedrock necessary to move forward).
Anyone else remember typing games into their computer from a magazine? The would provide the printed source code and you would type it in. I had an Atari 400 which had a membrane keyboard. So many terrible memories.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Exactly that. Its as if knowing how to use a steering wheel and pedals suddenly turns you into a vehicle engineering expert.
"Pay us well" Meaning that Fair Market value shouldn't be based on what you can pay people in a third-world country where the cost of living is 1/8 what it is here.
"Treat us well". Not equally, Working everyone to death equally is like Communism - everyone equally poor.
"Give us job security". Once upon a time, your knowledge of the company and how it runs and how best to make it run was considered as important as actual technical skills and not something to be lightly discarded just because this quarter ran under than management wants to keep their bonuses up/prop up stock prices by laying off people en-masse.
Just because you have a cushy job where they still behave companies did pre-1980 doesn't mean that that's how the majority of today's corporations work. If they should happen to change - and companies do change - I worked at one where doing a good job was guarantee of employment until one day - literally one day - their new owners threw that policy away, dumped whole departments on the street. It was such a big cultural shift that the local news agencies reported on it.
And when that day comes, you'll find that all those job offers you've been getting aren't so shiny as they appeared.
Finally, one last bit of advice. Before you go quacking out that Nobody owes anyone a job, remember that nobody owes a company any business either. If you're going to go by third-world market rates and lay off the greedy locals, don't be surprised if the unemployed locals can no longer afford your products and the third-world potential customers don't want to pay first-world prices.
Why do you think I'm pissed?
I've paid the taxes that paid for Social Security for the Greatest Generation.
My taxes went towards the failures of the War on Poverty, to cleaning up our environment, to three economic bubbles and the collapses, towards wars, and the education of the most ungrateful generations ever.
I may or may not receive Social Security and Medicare, but I don't expect to retire anyways.
I didn't grow up on computers and technology. I spotted them, adopted them, and made a living from them, from the very beginning of the personal computer revolution. While you were figuring them out, I was making then work. I still am.
I found Linux while working with its successors, and made a living off of it also.
But I'm not angry. Unless you count in the current political climate, them I'm angry, but that's a very different topic.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yes, that's exactly what the employers want. Oversupply == cheap labor. It also means they system will tolerate a certain amount of employee abuse because the proles knows they're easily replaceable.